RSarkar

Hi,
I am a research scholar who is interested to have a career in academia. From my experience and observations of research scenario I would like to suggest some considerations for the policy makers in the path of making India a leading country in scientific discoveries and innovations. My suggestions are:
1) A dedicated government cell to promote Research as a career option among young students in school and college level guiding students for different processes and aspects to get in research and academia.
2) In the continuation of my first point, we should also approve more research projects, scholarships, steadily creating more positions for PhD, postdoc and permanent positions which should be done with keeping in mind every branch of science. The ratio of new PhD, postdoc and permanent posts should be maintained.
3) Though with continuous affords we are lacking diversity on the basis of gender, caste, religion, states, tribe and economy in many research institutes. We should invest more in policies to make research and academia more accessible for brilliant minds coming from different communities.
4) Since India is geographically a large country, many prominent research institutes are still geographically are clustered around metro cities. But if we consider establishing new institutes at every parts of country, it will help declutter many densely populated locations India and also will improve the local economy and community in general.
5) In many job sectors, specifically government, there is no direct recruitments for PhD degree holders. Hence many PhD holders had to search jobs outside of this country. If government makes opportunities for PhD degree holders in sectors that are aligned with their research fields not only candidates will be benefited but those sectors will improve too.

The following suggestions are particularly for PhD studies in India:
1) PhD scholarship amount should be revised every year and consider for a yearly increment.
2) The rules and regulations considering the expenditure of PhD contingency fund is often not clear and causes confusion. If the guidelines for this is more clear and also if it allows students to spend the five year contingency fund at once it could be helpful.

Since we are facing a pandemic which nobody foreseen even few months ago, most of our research works are heavily affected and until the situations gets stable again it will continue to be so. Hence the following suggestions are against the backdrop of ongoing pandemic:
1) I would urge to consider an extension of scholarship for all present research scholars in India.
2) During this pandemic times, many are awaiting for SRF interview, PhD tenure extension,PhD viva voice, submission of proposals. If the dates are extended for all aforementioned cases it will be helpful. Also in many universities it is required to have minimum three years between proposal and thesis submission. In such cases, if the dates are changed because the lockdown it would be better to relax those rules. Similarly people who are waiting for SRF interview during this time, if due to lockdown the interview dates are changed it would better to consider the earlier effective dates for SRF tenure.

Thank you very much for creating this space for an open interaction between the top advisories and young researchers.
With regards,
R Sarkar.