GREAT OPPORTUNITY IN R & D

MINISTRY OF Human Resource Development (MoHRD) and Ministry of Science and Technology (MoS&T) assert that talented researchers should be selected for research and teaching. Top administration in these ministries think that they are doing enough to motivate and entice top talents of the country who study in IITs and other high profile academic institutions. However, on surface level, as usual, only money speaks and since money-package to young researchers is not enough and never comparable to packages offered in jobs, especially in private sector, talented pools from top institutions in our country prefer to avoid joining R&D sector as a viable career option.

Since B Tech and M Tech graduates from IIT and other top engineering institutes are offered high-package jobs where they receive Rs 30,000 - 50,000 salary in hands and other perks, they could not opt for joining research where a Junior Research Fellow (JRF) gets a meager Rs 12,000 and a Senior Research Fellow gets Rs 14,000 with no other incentives and an indirect deduction for regular registration fees for about four years (during a crucial phase) in one's life. Moreover, those students, who are not getting high-package job from IIT and keep research as good career option, meticulously opt for joining PhD programmes abroad where they easily gets US 2000 dollars on an average while a foreign degree will rather help them to be the first preference for teaching and research jobs in our academic institutions too.

In the recent sixth pay commission, salary package of Central government has seen abrupt hikes and now employees in research and teaching in India also seem satisfied with their jobs and job packages. Therefore, just because of the generous sixth pay commission, reports say for the first time 12 per cent of the 500 recruitments at DRDO has been from top IIT whose students are primarily known to grab six-figure dollar salaries across the world. But for a great surprise, in previous years the 52 DRDO labs, conducting R&D in naval, aeronautical, life sciences and other sectors, could manage to recruit just one or two engineering graduates from IIT. Though DRDO recruits employees through an entry test and through campus recruitment across 40 IIT, central universities and other engineering schools, the IIT graduates are recruited on campus. Not for big surprise, the sixth pay commission has also helped DRDO to get 30 non-resident Indians recruited last year. Nevertheless, this success of DRDO in recruiting so-called talents is mainly attributed to the recession and lack of high package jobs in the market and only figures in coming years and after recession will tell where country's so-called top talents prefer to move for jobs.

You will definitely be surprised to know that seven IITs together produce on an average 1,500 – 2,000 PhD in an year despite having big structures whereas a single university in America like Princeton University or MIT has intake of 1,500 students for MS and PhD programs in an year. On an average, India produces only 5,000 – 7,000 Science PhD in a year whereas the figure is about 30,000 and more in America. Usually, master and doctoral programme students in the US are paid good stipends during the research and are in great demand for high profile jobs. This keeps the standards and innovation in each sector. Universities as well as industries both marvelously entice students to join higher studies in America.

Therefore, our young researchers after obtaining PhD from IIT and IIS always look for joining post doctoral research or jobs abroad despite there are number of vacancies in teaching and research sectors. Administration opts a foreign degree holder should join or a local PhD pass out should have some years of industrial experience or post doctoral experience in foreign labs whereas as work-environment at home is pathetic in attitude and do not motivate or even allow researchers to implement their ideas properly. A person starts earning US 3,000 - 4,000 dollars on joining job or even research in foreign country, so it is difficult to assume that he or she would prefer to come back to work on a low package and in poor work-environment at home. There are good number of cases when scientists and academic faculties of this country quit jobs to move to foreign countries as there has been large volume of reports on brain drain and talents moving to green pasture. Even employed scientists and faculties from IIT, IISc and top laboratories usually take many year leave to work abroad only for earning good amount of bucks and for the matter of prestige also.