Sociological Research in India: The State of Crisis Author(s): Veena Das Source: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol.

28, No. 23 (Jun. 5, 1993), pp. 1159-1161 Published by: Economic and Political Weekly Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4399815 Accessed: 22/10/2008 17:57
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PERSPECTIVES
such topics as "Attitude of working women to marriage",or "Prevalence of drug addiction among youth". The questionnaire is administered to 100 or 150 respondentssdected according to the conVeena Das venience of the researcher.Each chapjer is then organised around the specific responses received around a cluster of The crisisin sociological researchin India has to be located in questions presented in the format of threeinstitutionalstructures-the universities,the UGC and the tables. This is followed by a description of these responses. The students are not professionalbodies such as the Indian Sociological Society. The required to learn how to use primary or frameworkwithin which the role of each of these overarching secondary sources; they have no experihowever,is provided by the practices bodies may be understood, ence of library research; they conduct of politics. neither intensive fieldwork nor welldesigned surwy research;and despite the RESEARCH in any field is sustained over expected to readany books systematically. appearanceof tables they do not learn the a period of time not by the brilliance of To the question whether the candidate has elements of statistical reasoning. a few outstanding scholars but by the pa- ever read a book in the social sciences (5) Some of this research is published. tient building up of competence in the from cover to cover, the answer is usually Normally it is published in departmental average researcher. What Thomas Kuhn in the negative. The level of competence journals or magazines in which there are called 'normal science' provides the in sociology is so poor that candidates no procedures for referringa paper.Some backbone of research in any subject. with doctoral degrees have assured me of the research also gets published in the While students cannot be trained to do that Malinowski conducted his fieldwork form of a book usually by small pubbrilliant research they can and must be in India; that Max Weber'sthesis on the lishers on thegrant of a subsidy. In some trained to do competent research. One Protestant ethic was based on his study cases, as for instance in the case of UGC cannot plan for paradigmatic shifts in a of American society; that Calvin was the ResearchScientists, there is an individual discipline. When these occur they are, by name of a place in Europe; that there was contingency grant of the magnitude ot definition, unpredictable. A result of the not a single ethnographic study of any Rs 2 lakh available to each incumbent. I imaginative flights taken by unfettered tribe in India: and that they had tem- have come across cases in which a subsidy minds these paradigmatic shifts are to be porarily forgctten the name of the theory of about Rs 80,000 has been given to a celebratedbut they cannot be methodical- associated with Darwin. publisher. In one case, I found that the ly replicated. What is a cause for dismay (2) The ignorance of elementary facts is book published on the basis of a subsidy in the field of sociological research in matched by an eloquence on generalities. consistedentirelyof materialscopied from India is not so much the lack of brilliance For example, the same candidates who District Gazetteers. The reason why such as the lack of competence. could speak for 15 minutes on the imporpublications escape all academic scrutiny is that a vicious cycle is built through I base my comments on my experience tance of class conflict in MarxianTheory and the urgencyof social justice for the availability of research funds leading to as a teacher in the University of Delhi for downtrodden, was unable to distinguish subsidy for publications and publications the last 25 years when I have had the opbetween use value and exchange,value or leading to moregrants for research.Many portunity to interview students from to tell me the meaning of the word publishershaw now come into being who several universities and for the past few Brumairein TheEighteenth Brumaire of survivesolely because there are bodies like years to act as an expert menber in selecLouis Bonajrte. the UGC and various Research Councils tion committees for the positions of lec(3) Every dissertation has a long list of which provide financial support for turers and research associates, both in references.However,candidatesare unable substandardpublications.Clearly,it is not universities and the UGC. to remember the argument of a research my claim that all researh published The number of students registered in paper or a book although they have them- through these schemes is substandardbut the doctoral pogrammes in sociology has selves referredto it in the body of the text. it is noticeable that very little of such increasedpheromenally in the last decade. Some candidates make a candid admisresearchis published in national or interFor a position of Lecturer or Research sion that they did not feel the need to national journals of reputeand very little Associate anything up to 100 applications actually read the books and papers cited receivesany critical attention in the book may be recei%ed which 40 may be of of in the text or included in the list of review sections of good journals. candidates who have obtained their docreferences. Others state that they have (6) One consequenceof this configuration toral degrees from any of the Central or forgotten what they have read. I want to of factors is that books are published State Universities. Another 40 may have emphasise that this ignorance or forget- which are plagiarised, bringing disrepute an M Phil degree. It is on the basis of my fulness is with regardto books and papers to Indian universities. About a year ago experience of interviews with these canthat they have themselvesquoted, not with Anthropology Today carried a letter by didates that I have found the following regard to sociological works that I may Gustaff Houtman of the University of characteristics among several candidates consider important. Manchester which stated that he had who possess the highest research degree (4) The standard format of PhD disser- come across an astonishingvolume called in sociology. tations in many universitiesnow is for the Monastic Buddhism among the Khamtis (1) In most universities students are not candidate to prepare a questionnaire on of Arunachal by one Dr Kondinya,

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published by the National Publishing House of Delhi in 1986 "of which".to put it politely, "a substantial part seems to duplicate Mdford E Spiro's Buddhism and Society"The letter went on to state, that, "There is no bibliography and no reference to Professor Spiro but a considerable number of paragraphs would appear to differ from Spiro's text only in the most minor particulars such as the substitution of 'Khamti' for 'Bunnese. Yet the author apparently has a doctorate from Delhi, has worked as a post-doctoral Fellow for the Ministry of Home Affairs of Indian Government" (See Anthropology Today, Vol 8, No 3, June 1992.) Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case and only a systematic survey of books publishedin recent years can reveal the extent of the malpractice This tendency to plagiarisation can be directly traced to the proliferation of publishers, subsidies for substandard research, and the refusal to apply academic judgment with honesty on the part of those who recommend these for subsidies. Before I discuss the factors responsible for the crisis, let me also add that a small number of students, located in different universities and research institutes continue to produce professionally competent research. The evidence for this is available in the act that while in the 60s, reputedpublishers were able to find only a few senior scholars whose monographs were con,sidered worthy of publication, now there are young scholars whose monographs find a place in the list of books of the most reputed national and international publishers. What the cumulative work of these young scholars has done is to provide a plurality of perspectives on the understandingof Indian society. Clearly traditions of sound research need to be built up with care. Where certain departments and institutes have nourishedsound research through their efforts at regular teaching, departmental seminars and involvement of senior faculty with the building of library resources, the institutional framework must be protected. Where talentedyoung persons are located in institutionswhere such facilities are not availablethey must be providedthe means to participatein the researchprogrammes of such cent res of advanced studies. However,the trend in policy-making is to treat all institutions equally without any regardto their academic reord leading to the situation in which the profession is swamped with substandardresearch. I do not use the word crisis easily to apply to any kind of situation. In this case, however, I do believe that we are in a state of crisis requirinxg immedia-te the application

of sound judgnent. Borrowingan analogy from medicine, the patient is in a critical state and there is every reason to believe that if critical interventionsare not made, we will face the death of social science in India. What are the factors responsiblefor this crisis? One would have to locate the crisis in three institutional structures-the universities, the UGC and the professional bodies such as the Indian Sociological Society. The overarching framework within which these may be understood, however, is provided by the practices of politics. At the level of the universities, the proliferation of the subject has simply not been matched by the will to ensure competence in teaching and research. In severaluniversities, textbooks such as that of McIver and Page, written almost 50 years ago, continue to be taught. These textbooks are available in translations in several regional languages. The combination of commercial interestsand academic apathy leads to the dismal situation in which students are completely unawareof what has happened in the subject in the last 50 years. Second, were teaching and research iis conducted in regional languages, students do not acquireproficiency even in reading in the English language. I am afraid that rhetorical statements about national selfrespect notwithstanding, neither th,e translations of competent sociological works in the regional languages no r original contributions add up to a suffi cient body of literature that may be available in these languages. Thus a stu dent fails to acquire competence in her subject on the basis of this literature. I may add that proficiency in readingin the English language for graduate students is considered necessary in most universities in the world now, even in countries which were known for their linguisticchauvinism a decade ago, such as Germany, France and Japan. Third, the policies for recruitmentand promotion of teachers increasinglysacrifice academic competence for political expediency.Even in the best of cases, universities find themselves caught in a double bind. Due to the fact that recruitmentan( promotion of teachersis increasinglysutbjected to political pressures, those wh,o come to be in positions of responsibility are rarelymen and women of toweringi,ntellectual stature. Unable' to receive academic legitimacy through either th,eir teaching or research, they seek selfconfidence and legitimacy through eit her political patronage or through a mes:hanical routinisat of academinproceduJres. ion

The fear of populist pressures which represent the other side of mechanised bureaucracieshas increased in the university campuses to such an extent that decision-makers internalise the imagined responses of populist, trade union bodies and direct their own actions accordingly. Most scholars of repute either withdraw in the face of this combination of bureaucraticand populist assault on theirdignity, or they simply succumb. Even vicechancellors and pro-vice-chancellors whose own academic stature and reputation for integrity are unquestioned And, that in their efforts to tame the power of unscrupulous heads of institutions or departmentsthey end up by discardingthe idea of academic judgment itself. Fourth, the examination of PhD dissertations is managed within a small coterie of scholars. There is real dearth of competent examiners within the country but a search for examiners from the international field is regarded with suspicion as a sign of a colonial subjugation of the mind-. We are now in a situation when dissertations are approved on the basis of reciprocity ratherthan the application of academic standards. While differences in academic judgment can happen and even the best of uriversitiesonce in a while produces a doctoral student whose dissertation does not meet high professional standards, it is the frequency with which this is happening in our universities that is a cause of concern. Where dissertations are written in regional languages, the availability of examiners is further limited. If the universitiesare to take a share of the blame for the falling standards for research, the UGC cannot escape its major responsibilityeither. The decisionmaking bodies in the UGC seem to have completely misguided notions about the state of social science researchin the country. Among the reasons for the proliferation of substandarddoctoraldegreesis the premium attached to a PhD for teaching posts at the level of Lecturer and Research Associate, regardless of the quality of research.The pressureto obtain a PhD on the part of the student is matched by the pressure on supervisors to accumulate credits for producing large nuiber of students with doctorates obtain=d under' his or her supervision. Such 'objective' (read mechanical) factors as-the number of doctoral students enhance the prestige df the supervisor. This has led to the paradoxical situation in which the efforts to improve the quality of teachers has led ro a further deterioration in standards of teaching and research. The plain fact is that no amount of introduction of national testing schemes will

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solvethe problem. Every objective typeof test introducedat the national level, producesits own corresponding tutorial schools and kunji type texts.Unlessthe UGC squarelyfaces up to the fact that with the exceptionof five or six departments in the country,others are simply not competent or equipped to provide facilities for advanced research and withdraws any accreditationfrom these departments,the problem will assume The dinmnsions. need is to conalarming solidate resourcesand see that good students are providedopportunitiesto study and conduct researchunder the guidanceof competentscholars. Hence while undergraduate and postgraduate teaching shouldbe strengthened acrossthe facilitiesfor research country, supervision must be limited to a small numberof places with provencompeence and reasonable resources provided for these departments to maintain a national character. The UGCseemsto work with a vision of of a floatingpopulation brilliant young scholarswho are to be directlyrecruited byexperts appointed the UGC.As conby ceived,the schemesof the UGC seek to give supportto young scholarswho are seen as crushed by the faction-ridden While politicsof university departments. it is true that manydepartments ridare den with factionalismand also that not all deservingyoung scholarsget opportunitiesfor reearch,it is equallytruethat in theoverall context deteriorating of standards, the ?JGC ends up by recruiting scholars with rather poor skills in research.Once money is availablefor a Associscheme,suchas thatof Research the ateships, Research on Scientists, UGC seems hesitantto discontinue In this, it. it receives supportof seniorscholars the who are awarethat resources social for scientistsare shrinkingand who do not wantto contribute further this decline. to I do not wishto suggest that the problemof decliringresources does not pose a seriousthreatto the survivalof young scholars.Hovwver, therecan be no quick fix solution bDr kind of problemsI the have describedhere While it is very important to nourish taknted young scholars,the search for such talentcannot be through mechanised the procedures evolvedby the UGC and the universities. It may be necessaryto appoint search committees whichwouldsed professional opinions on the sample of the research workof a youngscholarand to drawup a listof accredited journalsto whichsuch to scholarsare encouraged submittheir work. All of this can be accomplished

much better if the UGC takes a supportive role towards the well recognised departments and charges them with the task of fulfilling national responsibilities rather than taking the indifferent or even adversarialapproach that it has been taking vis-a-vis established universities in recent years. Finally, the professional bodies have done little to salvage the situation. The interests of the profession lie not only in producing greater number of jobs for sociologists but in ensuring that ethical practices in the discipline ame maintained. The Indian Sociological Society should take upon itself the task of preparing a serious report on the state of sociological researchin the country so that we can face the situation squarely. A discipline that has been nourished by such eminent scholars as Radhakamal Mukherjee, G S Ghurye, N K Bose, D) N Mazumdar and M N Srinivas now stands in a position where there nay not be a next generation.

parties. One has to only consider the phenomenal amounts of money poured into students' and teachers' elections to realise that university politics provides a far quicker route to social and economic mobility for many students than the laborious task of attending lectures and tutorialsand jeadingbooks. It would only be fair to add that there are several teachers who also find it easier to build a reputation through participation in university politics rather than their teaching and research. When we further consider the money poured into sponsored agitations, crowd management, and instigation of violence in the campuses, we get to understand the night battles for control of universities waged by political parties all over India.

How can universities stand up to such moral corruption?It seems to me that the first thing to realise is that the so-called representativesof students and teachers are the ones who in the name of representation are devouring those they claim to In the general clamour of voices that represent. Research can only flourish in are calling for universities to act more an academic environmentin which acaderesponsibly, I want to state as strongly as mic honesty is not discounted. But I can that this can only be done if prac- academic honesty first requires that we tices of politics become mome responsible. face up to our predicament, to curtail the It cuts little ice to speak of financial rhetoricof academic brillianceand restore responsibility on the part of universities a dignity to dull, honest, plodding when the government itself sets rather research.It also requiresthat we recognise high standards financialirresponsibility. the enormity of our responsibility in savof New universitiesare announced in a game ing what little is left of critical reflection of political one-upmanship committing in our society. major resources towards infrastructure One may question my whole argument while existing universities are kept on that in order to save critical reflection we tenterhooks even about availability of salaries. Universities are urged to raise need to save the traditionof professionally their own resources but the minimal competent research despite its incapacity to suggest paradigm shifts. I shall conchanges in budgetary practices and bureaucratic control that would enable clude with two observations on the releuniversities to retain these resources are vance of such work within the accepted paradigms of a discipline. First, it is imnot permitted A case in point is the insistence of the UGC that all extra portant to build up a critical mass of empirical data on the society on the basis of resources raised by a university would be deducted from the overall budgetary which alone does it become possible to pursue arguments within a rational disallocations, despite the fact that detailed evidence of the impossibility of retaining course. Second, as I stated at the beginthe minimum infrastructuralfacilities for ning, paradigmatic shifts cannot be teaching and research under present methodologically replicated. Most of us are intensely aware of the mediocrity of allocations has been provided to all our own efforts. Speaking on a personal decision-making bodies. note, if I find it necessary to continue at Once we consider the practices of my efforts with writing despite my disappolitical parties that are not transparent, pointment with myself, it is because I am the situation appearseven more alarming. aware that I am simply doing a holding Everypoliticalparty aspires to control and operation till someone comes along one use the uni%ersityas its experimental day and transformsthe understanding of ground. Thereis not only the effort to use those sociological problems that I find so the university as a recruiting ground for intractable.MeanwhileI can only transmit political parties (which may be legitimate) certain skills to my students so that when but also to recruit students who can help that person arrives, she does not find a in the conduct of the night life of political complete vacuum of thought.

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