abbey1me

Currently, it looks like as if its a punishment to stay in academia to do postdoctoral research and not join an industry when it comes to livelihood and having a family.

Concerns:
1. Postdoc fellowships/salaries should be tax-free, AND/OR,
2. (If taxable) postdocs should be given benefits in addition to the basic salary, just like that given for working in companies, like
a. reasonable health insurance for self (and for family) comparable to the one given to employees of companies,
b. Provident Fund
c. Dearness Allowance
d. HRA (not all fellowships give HRA).
3. Postdoc salaries/fellowships should be increased (minimum of 80-85k/month in hand esplly when working in metro cities, rather than having just a handful of fellowship schemes which pay 75k-1.25lac/month).
4. Salaries/fellowships should be increased at fixed intervals (eg. 5-10% yearly like in companies) based on increasing no. of years (experience post PhD)
5. All PhD/postdoc projects, institutes, working environments and people (students/supervisors) are not the same. Many a times, a postdoc is preceeded by a not so good PhD (or vice-versa). Defining an age limit (35yrs) during recruitment for faculty positions should be reconsidered.
6. For all postdoc fellowships, manpower fund to hire a project staff should be provided in addition to self salary. A project student/staff will help with project, speeding up the pace of work, and the postdoc will automatically full-fledgedly gain experience in supervising a student (like a PhD supervisor).