nipabasak@gmail.com

A few points:

1. Same and high cut off marks for the people coming from regional language background and English medium students. Like, DST-INSPIRE division allows bright people to get selected for Newton Bhabha fellowship, but disallow people for DST-INSPIRE faculty scheme to some people, who could not score 60% in their BSc! People coming from regional language background, take 1-2 years to get acclimatized to English medium. Isn’t it injustice to screen them out for not having 60% in their BSc, even if their subsequent achievements are high (during MSc and PhD)? Especially where some universities (like Calcutta University) are really very stringent regarding marks during BSc?

2. Not sure, whether SERB Overseas Postdoctoral fellowship (SERB-OPDF) is active now. If it is active, it should be modified because of current corona-situation and should be increased in number too. Joint collaborative projects must be encouraged now too, and the students should be allowed to officially start their fellowship in overseas institution, while staying in India, until situation improves. Official joining will help the fellows to avail the opportunity from the overseas institution like accessing their computational capacity, learning from them directly etc.

3. Time has come to understand, that, in India, we have plenty of resources, but we lack computational skill/analytical skill a lot. Reversing the brain-drain, new GAIN-BRAIN situation should be created. It’s true that CSIR has VAJRA scheme, but it is unlikely that someone having very bright profile (let’s say Venky) would like to join in that scheme to work under (I mean head of the institute) someone in an Indian institute, overcoming bureaucracy. It’s high time that, co-professorship is allowed to them with proper honour for longer time, where these bright minds can guide to the Indian students via online mode even sitting in his/her primary office in some other corners of the world. Bright minds, but loosing grant and hence office/job from foreign origin also can be given this opportunity. They can either join as faculty here in India or guide students via online mode majorly sitting in their home-country and visiting India few times a year.

4. Collaboration/tie-up within the IITs and other research institutes (let’s say, for analyzing big data) should be actively encouraged. Researchers can be allowed to get classes in the renowned Statistical/Computational Biology labs across the India (at least virtual classes!). IITs, ISI, CSIR/DBT/ICMR institutes can be directed to make such arrangements. Inter-fields communication in such way can help us to fulfill our dream of Genome India initiative, Big data initiative etc. Placing PhD/post doc students in foreign institutes having expertise in the respective fields for longer time (let’s say 1-2 year(s) instead of 2-4 months) can be helpful.

5. Senior PhD students or at least post doc students should be encouraged to write their own grants to acquire funds in their responsibility.

6. To give equal opportunity, 1-2 years extra time should be given to female applicants (upper age limit is 45 years currently for both males and females), having kid(s), for Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology.