We can always say that this does not matter. Despite poor teacher salaries, the IITs, the IIMs and other institutions provide high quality education. This is true. But when we peel the onion, we discover matters that are astonishing and depressing. Because they get a high quality student intake and because there are still some good teachers left (far too few, sadly), the present situation is deceptively good. We cannot afford to be complacent. The quality and quantum of research in Indian universities leaves much to be desired. Our conceit is misplaced. The fact remains that the three Indian

Nobel-laureates in the hard sciences, Raman, Khurana and Chandrashekhar, were all products of the much-maligned British education system in India. Free India is yet to produce a single Nobel-laureate in the hard sciences. Our lone Nobel-laureate in economics, Amartya Sen, prefers to teach at Cambridge and Harvard. If he came to India, the UGC would probably offer him Rs 10 lakh which he must be paying to a part-time typist in the US.

Compensation is the basic problem, but by no means the only one. The working environment in Indian universities is hierarchical, bureaucratic and hemmed in by irrelevant and obsolete government diktats. As a starter, if we suddenly decided to increase compensation tenfold, the problem of attracting talent may start to get resolved. However, the UGC simply could not absorb this extra cost; besides we may end up with a situation where we increase pay not for those who produce good results but for incompetent or lazy teachers who may be in a sizable majority. And compensation changes alone will not change the academic eco-system.

... contd.