To those who are out to wipe out menace of rat solely with trap!!

The issue of plagiarism in Ph.D theses is a new entrant to the list of news items as such instances are reported from various parts of the country. Given such a background, it is timely and necessary to reflect on this issue especially by academicians who are obliquely put in dock. Certain things are worth mentioning here. First, why this kind of incidents are so rampant in academics or in any intellectual endeavors? Of course, compromising the quality of intellectual pursuits through plagiarism or else cannot be tolerated especially in this era of knowledge as it push back the country in the ladder of excellence. Therefore, we, the citizens of this country especially academicians must open their eyes and ponder over this kind of developments which obliquely erodes their own stature. However, the funny side of this stealing issue in the doctoral theses is that it is being simply reduced to a political problem often to make political mileage out of it by cornering political opponents over this kind of issues. In other words, matters have come thus far that if your political opponent in the highly politicized educational system is a Ph.D holder, then you have cheap and easy way of finishing your opponent by way of digging into his PH.D thesis and identifying certain percentages of plagiarism and supply this to hawkish media. That is all.

However, this issue is systemic to our academics and requires much deeper analysis to unearth the real cause and find out original culprits. Here, I would like to answer the question raised just above. No menaces cannot be addressed effectively either by way of creating political   storm or simply penalizing individuals indulging in it (trapping rat), let alone plagiarism in researches. For, plagiarism in researches symbolizes the acute decay of our academics. Our academics in general with few exceptions are a festival ground of nasty chauvinistic self serving politics by politicians and their bootlicking academicians. And that is why our academic scenario especially at higher level today is in a pathetic state of affair. Excessive political interference at all levels especially in the appoints in the form of air-dropping of bootlicking academicians at the top posts along with self-indulgence in the running of academic business by academicians have spoiled out educational sector. What we see today in the form of plagiarism is just a tip of such a degenerated ice berg in Indian academics. For, education in general and research in particular is an intensive rigorous process to train the concerned. An intensive rigorous training requires features like patience, guest, commitment etc on the part of trainee and qualities like expertise, commitment, etc on the part of trainer. But, in our educational system especially in universities and colleges, you will find very few people with these straits. How can we expect patience, commitment or guest from a person who is out there for a degree to make him/her in effect qualified for a post in the offing to be offered by his/her political masters? The decay at the level of trainer is more serious and having far-reaching consequences than the filth at the level of trainee because trainer can willfully change the system as they are the provider. As we look at the ongoing degeneration in our higher education, in my view, it is the so called academicians who are solely responsible for the dismal state of our education today. Political pimps once appointed as faculty members of the higher learning centers would not have the requisite expertise to train or guide the researcher enrolled with him/her. In some other instances, due to erratic designing of academic system, academicians are sometimes forced to deal with areas in which they do not have expertise. Also, students are sometimes forced to chop their foot down to suite the size of foot-wear. However, I think, academician cannot pull their head out of such system excusing its false design as they are fully empowered today to change the system in a manner beneficial to the real stakeholders. But, fact of the matter is that they are not bothered to take up such issues.

It is through the prism just outlined above; we have to look at the on-going controversy over stolen theses. It manifests how tired we are all with this worn out, self-indulgent, air-dropping system. Incidentally, when the 2014 Global Innovation Index  published by Cornel university, INSEAD and World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) which ranks countries on the basis of quality education and thereby capacity to innovate new ideas through researches was published, India dropped 10 points compared to the last year. How come this would not happen in a country where universities are infested with anti-social elements and political bootlickers? This kind of issues also reminds us that our ethics is driven by technology today because in the absence modern software (trap) technologies to detect plagiarism, we would not have heard this hues and cries. Therefore, nobody should dream of wiping out rats solely with traps. Instead, develop a system conducive for proper training of cats and thereby get trained cats that are capable of training their wards to find out living properly without stealing others means of living.