Research fund crunch, real or created, is hitting India’s academia on the wrong side

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It has become a common experience in recent times that any meeting with young investigators or even senior established scientists, irrespective of their being from better endowed research and/or academic institutions or from the less endowed universities/colleges, ends up in sharing anguish at the state of governmental support for research. A general impression is that an increasing number of research project proposals are being declined to be funded by the different governmental agencies. In the cases of approved project proposals, the initial or the subsequent continuing grant does not get released for months or sometimes even for one or more years after the approval letter has been received by the investigators. More depressingly, when the grant is indeed released, it is often a fraction of what would be due on basis of the approved budget.

 

A higher rate of proposals not being approved for funding may reflect either poor quality of proposals or a higher competitive situation. However, discussions with various stake holders seem to provide a consensus view that the total funds being available for disbursement for extra-mural research project proposals are getting limited. This view also finds credence when members of the various committees, who formally approve or reject financial support for a research proposal, indicate that the funding agency itself directly or indirectly lets it be known that fewer projects should be approved because of constraints on the available funds. While rejection of a poorly planned proposal is necessary, rejection of a reasonably planned proposal has long-term adverse consequences, especially if this happens to be proposals by young investigators or by investigators from less-endowed institutions who are trying to initiate themselves into active research. It would of course also be a setback to more established researchers if they are denied the opportunity to continue on what has been built up over the years. More serious is the situation when funds are not timely released for a new or for an ongoing project. A standard reply in response to queries about the delay is that the budgeted amount is not yet made available to the given agency or the allotted funds are already exhausted. Such delays obviously disrupt the research work leading to demoralization of the investigators and the staff involved in research. Delay in progress of projects in fast moving fields can be self defeating. The net result in all cases is negative, since an opportunity lost is lost. The reduced possibility of getting funded, and the inordinate delays in receipt of actual funds for approved projects have led to a high level of frustration. This prevailing situation has also disillusioned an increasing number of young scientists who go abroad on their own merit or are funded by the government to go abroad in the hope that they could come back to the country and engage themselves in futuristic cutting-edge research. In view of this state of disillusionment, we need to ask if the substantial money spent by the government on fellowships for doctoral or post-doctoral research abroad is doing any good to the country or is actually promoting ‘brain drain’? Expenditure on training abroad does reduce the kitty available for supporting S&T activities within the country.

 

The inevitable slow-down on new recruitment in better endowed institutions adds to the worries of young aspirants.  Although a large number of vacancies exist in many universities and colleges across the country, these positions are either not being permitted or planned to be filled. When these do get advertised, positions in most of the universities and colleges across the country fail to attract applications from competent and committed persons because the infrastructure and the working atmosphere are not attractive and conducive enough to start one’s career at these institutions. Consequently, the overall competence in these academic institutions continues on the downward spiral.

 

Research is an integral part of higher education. As expected, a relative measure of the state of development of a nation is determined by the quality of research that leads to new knowledge, which directly or indirectly helps in improving the quality of life of its citizens. Despite the large number of universities and colleges, and the dedicated research institutions in the country, the overall quality of research contributions emanating from India has remained much below the satisfactory level. Reasons for such disappointing performance of research and development (R&D) activities in a large and hugely populated country are multiple. Besides the limitations imposed by organizational bottlenecks and unhealthy ecosystem, grossly sub-critical funding remains the major root cause for the generally poor quality of R&D activities in the country.

 

The present condition is particularly disturbing because the overall quality of research from India showed some improvement during the past 10-15 years, thanks to a large number of young investigators who started their labs in many of the newly established institutions of higher learning, like the IISERs (Indian Institute of Science Education and Research), new IITs (Indian Institute of Technology), central and private universities and also in the earlier established research institutions. The major funding bodies such as DBT, DST, SERB etc had also introduced new initiatives to promote and fund individual as well as institutions (including universities and colleges) to encourage high-quality research. The general synergy of young and enthusiastic researchers, the good initial funding and congenial administrative setup at many of these institutions helped them kick-start relatively better research output within a short span of their establishment. At the same time, several programmes initiated by different governmental agencies and the UGC indicated that the established universities and colleges in the country can also expect to receive a little better attention in terms of funding for research and infrastructure, although this continued to be much less than the minimally required quantum. However, several of these enabling programmes appear to have been discontinued or put on hold. The recent announcement of six institutions of eminence in the country is welcome, although the criteria for identifying them has raised some issues. The more serious concern, however, is that unless there is an overall improvement in the higher education across the country, the few liberally funded institutions of eminence would remain starved of appropriately-trained and competent young researchers.

 

It is a sad commentary that during the past two decades, the governmental R&D funding in India has remained static at about 0.7% of GDP; disappointingly the private sector in the country spends less than 0.2% of GDP on R&D activities. Together, this is much less than the >2% of GDP spent on R&D activities by developed countries across the globe. In terms of the total amount, there would have been some increase in funds available for R&D in India because the GDP is increasing with improved economy. However, this marginal increase is offset not only by the increase in numbers of researchers and institutions, but also by the inflation and several other new initiatives that do not contribute to the real R&D activities in the country. The net result is that in real terms the per capita funds available for R&D activities have not increased but, in fact, may be less. This seems to be primarily responsible for the depressing scenario noted above. Such self-defeating static or even diminishing (in real terms) allocation for R&D activities is indeed unjustified, especially when one considers that substantial collections are made by the government through the 2% education cess since 2004 .

 

The young researchers who started their academic careers with great optimism, feel disillusioned, and are worried if support, even at the minimal threshold level required to sustain the momentum would continue. Since the strategic sectors take up the major share of the R&D budget, the pool of governmental funding for research projects proposed by investigators in diverse research and academic institutions gets reduced to a minuscule. Undue emphasis on translational or applied research has also affected the scenario of research funding in the country. Agreeably, the country needs greater emphasis on translational research to address issues of relevance to the country. However, to promote translational research at the cost of support for basic research is a short-sighted policy which will, in the long-term, adversely impact the country’s R&D activities. Country needs a policy that ensures a good balance between ‘blue sky’ and applied research. Researchers who like to engage in basic science also need to engage in more challenging areas and develop new paradigms around novel indigenous issues and problems. The private sector also needs to actively involve itself in this direction. Although recent years have witnessed some impressive philanthropic as well as commercial acts by some of the industrial houses in country in supporting higher education and research, the volume of industry-academia partnerships remains minuscule, considering the size and demography of the country. Industry should support not only translational research but also basic research which alone would lead to innovative and sustainable technologies. The ‘Make in India’ mission cannot succeed only on imported technologies, which often may even be outdated in the countries of their origin.

 

The new programmes initiated to validate the ancient Indian science and technologies are also eating into the limited funds for research. Although no one would deny the importance of examining and learning from the ancient knowledge, the general, and disturbing, impression is that such enquiries are initiated with a bias to ‘prove’ them, an approach which is inherently damaging on every count. Research is not undertaken to prove the hypothesis but to see if the hypothesis can be falsified. Unless the studies on ancient Indian science and technologies are undertaken in a truly rational and unbiased manner, the money spent on such ‘directed research’ would indeed be counter-productive.

 

The current situation is greatly alarming since it is slowing down the momentum of resurgence in research output from various academic institutions. At this critical time, instead of making them disillusioned, the country actually needs to strengthen and expand the system so that the young manpower is encouraged and facilitated to use their competence and capability at more than optimal levels. This of course needs a massive exercise to improve the infrastructure at the large number of existing and coming up academic institutions. The government has to have a comprehensive policy plan for the urgently needed liberal and uninterrupted support  required to revamp the poor infrastructure at the existing universities and colleges. Ad-hoc proposals like the replacement of the University Grants Commission with the Higher Education Commission of India (HECI) by itself would not catalyze resurgence of higher education in the country. Rather, given the proposed constitution and unilateral powers of the proposed HECI, the outcome may indeed be more damaging. Likewise, imposing unplanned and second-rate translational research, while neglecting basic research, cannot take the country to the desired strong position of leadership.

 

These and related issues have been discussed many a times, including in these columns. Yet, even at the cost of repetition, it is incumbent upon us to keep reminding the policy-makers and the researchers’ pool at large, about the long-term adverse effects of policies that are focused mostly on short-term goals.

 

Subhash C. Lakhotia is INSA Senior Scientist and Distinguished Professor at Banaras Hindu Univerisity. Views expressed here are author’s personal. These do not in any way reflect opinion of the Indian National Science Academy or Confluence.

This article first appeared as an editorial in the Proceedings of Indian National Science Academy.

Issues across Science, Journalism and Media: Plagiarism, Scientists and the Media

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This is the fourth in a series of notes in connection with the workshop on “Science, Journalism, Media: Communicating Science in a Changing India”, held at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai. The first of these outlines the aims of this series. It is available here.

 

Prasad Ravindranath (The Hindu) raised an important issue for a science journalist covering instances of scientific plagiarism. He said that he often found it difficult to get scientists to place their views on public record in these matters. In some cases, these scientists were from the same institutions where the alleged plagiarist occupied a position of some power and may have thus felt constrained. But even scientists elsewhere, when contacted, often declined to go on record in similar cases.

The decision of an individual scientist to go on record or not depends on multiple factors. Some scientists might not want to be associated with an issue that could be thought of as controversial, even if they agreed with the substance of the allegations. Others might have other reasons, for example professional associations with the alleged plagiarist. Some might fear retribution, while others could be motivated simply by a desire to wait for any official investigation to play out.

My own view? Plagiarism is the easiest thing to prove. Unlike cases of harassment, there is no “He said, she said”. The evidence is documented. Plagiarised documents can be compared to their originals. There is sometimes supporting evidence of unethical conduct from lab-members or colleagues of the scientist involved.

In some other cases, for example checking whether a Western blot has been duplicated in a publication at two separate points or simply copied across publications, more analytic methods are required. These are of course cases of actual scientific fraud and misrepresentation.

In one famous case, my colleague Rahul Siddharthan (IMSc, Chennai) made an animated gif file illustrating the similarity between two sets of Western blots. These were supposed to be different according to the corresponding author of the papers in question, but the issue was easily answered at a visual level by simply toggling between them. The Society for Scientific Values (SSV) had flagged the similarities in images earlier but Rahul’s demonstration was particularly graphic.

But in many other cases, involving the cutting-and-pasting of text wholesale, the otherwise untrained eye can see what an expert can see too. (The Wikipedia page on “Scientific plagiarism in India” is a useful resource of past cases.)

So scientists can and should be able to comment in public if their attention is drawn to such cases. The ethical responsibility of being a scientist is too central to let issues like this slide. Also, students must be alerted to the consequences of professional misconduct. This is no substitute, of course, for an investigative procedure that helps to establish what happened. Was it bad oversight, did a student send off the paper without showing it to an advisor, did a collaborator provide text for incorporation that was inadequately verified and so on?

But the fact of plagiarism itself is, as I said, easy to establish in most cases and the willingness of scientists to come on record to say so would indicate that the science enterprise in India is robust and well.

All that said, let me point out some shades of grey. In my mind, there are a hierarchy of offences against the practice of science. The worst of these, if we exclude cases of harassment, corruption etc, all of which have a social component, is the deliberate falsification and misrepresentation of data. Copying a Western blot from one paper to another ranks with these, because it misrepresents data. Producing a fake graph, or representing data measured in one case as being measured in another are all examples. Making up the results of large cohort studies in biomedicine, as in a recent Japanese case, is another example.

These attack the foundation of science as a body of trusted work that is further built on by the efforts of many. We think of the next step because we trust the work that has led us to the present step. A foundation of lies is impermanent.

But not all is necessarily entirely black-and-white in the issue of plagiarism: To deliberately pass off large swathes of another’s text, whole chapters and entire sections as one’s own is the worst form of plagiarism and one that deserves to be called out loudly and clearly. Stealing someone else’s idea and passing it off as one’s own, equally so.

Copying a line or two from another text? Well, reprehensible but perhaps less so and perhaps just the result of carelessness. Much would depend on whether there is a pattern of similar behaviour. Of course, the probability of this being an accident decreases exponentially with the length of text that is identical between articles.

I personally see the question of self-plagiarism as less important than plagiarism of another scientist’s work. At least the original version was that of the author and, especially if these are a small number of lines of boilerplate text from the introduction, usually part of a general description of prior work and background. So, journalists should call attention to such instances by all means, but should take it less seriously. This would be my own view. (I should point out that this particular view is not shared by all.)

There is also be the question of pattern. A one-off case would really be ignorable. A pattern of papers where lines of central text are repeated, much less so. This would be even more reprehensible if these lines are from a methods, data or conclusions part of the text, rather than from an introductory paragraph, in the case of self-plagiarism. Copying at a larger scale from other authors who are not acknowledged, credited or referenced appropriately is a serious matter indeed.

As was pointed out in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal: “It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up”. This is certainly true. In some cases, efforts have been made to shift the blame to the student author or authors on the paper. This won’t wash. The responsibility for a paper rests on all authors, but more particularly so on the so-called “corresponding author”, the one who takes overall responsibility for the paper, who corresponds with editors, coordinates the response to the referees and so on. So journalists should be alert to any move to dodge responsibility by the senior author.

Equally, science journalists should be positive in their coverage of situations where the authors seem to have made a genuine effort to set things right, accepting responsibility, withdrawing the paper if required or certainly publishing a correction, as well as responding honestly to press queries.

We all make mistakes. We might remember a nicely written line from a paper that we’ve read but when it comes to writing our own, what enters our mind unbidden might be traces of that memory. We trust a student to write their own text so that they get experience in writing – in fact we encourage it – but we might miss the line stolen from Wikipedia, especially if we’re in a hurry. We trust the integrity of collaborators who contribute text or sections to our paper. We hope that our collaborators will not send a paper off with our name on it without telling us and before we have had a chance to review our contributions. And journals are often reluctant to amend the published record.

All of this also points to the complexity of doing science in the modern world, where numbers of publications and impact factors of journals matter in terms of professional recognition, grants and public profile. There are certainly temptations to take the short cut, perhaps more in some fields than in others.

The culture of the field matters too in this respect. A culture of writing a large number of inconsequential papers is more likely to encourage ethical lapses. Misconduct seems to correlate to more hierarchical organizations, not just in India, where willingness to call out unethical behaviour can be tempered by a feeling of general powerlessness.

What is irreducible, however, is scientific honesty, coupled to the willingness to set things right. And here, there’s no question that we should all be on the same page.

 

Gautam Menon is a Professor at The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai. He can be reached at menon@imsc.res.in.

Issues across Science, Journalism and Media: Sexual harassment and the moral role of scientists, journalists and institutions

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This is the third in a series of notes in connection with the workshop on “Science, Journalism, Media: Communicating Science in a Changing India”, held at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai.  The first of these outlines the aims of this series. It is available here.

Here, I address some questions that have traditionally been hardest to deal with at the science-journalism interface. These have to do with problems of sexual harassment at the scientific workplace, with unethical academic conduct such as plagiarism, and with academic forms of corruption ranging from accepting money to ghost-write a thesis to getting students to perform personal favours. They also include forms of caste, gender and other types of discrimination at scientific workplaces.

The list of such topics is large. These are uncomfortable questions and, even if one removed the journalism aspect entirely, hard enough to address at a personal level. There is no “right way” to deal with them. What I can do is to describe my own position on these matters and hope it stimulates discussion.  For concreteness, I confine myself here to discussing sexual harassment at the academic workplace and how it should be covered by journalists. Some of the points I make are general enough to cover related situations.

I draw on discussions with Rahul Siddharthan (IMSc, Chennai) and Sandhya Koushika (TIFR, Mumbai)  in particular, but also several others. These discussions have helped to clarify the way I think about these issues.

A central concern with how institutions deal with sexual harassment is whether due and fair process has been followed. This involves respecting the victim’s account while also allowing the presumption of “innocent unless proven guilty” on the other side. Such concerns are usually shared by many scientists who might be asked to comment about such issues.

The problem is that usually such cases fall into two extremes by the time one gets to hear about them. More often the victim’s account is downplayed, because existing power structures ensure that those guilty will face no consequences or strictures. But, on the flip side, guilt on the part of those accused is often automatically assumed, even if the investigation is yet to be completed or if revealed facts of the case suggest that the accusation might be motivated.

To tell which is which is hard and takes time.

This is often the reason why scientists, even those who are unlikely to face professional repercussions for doing so, might choose not to comment on such issues. That apart,  both institutional loyalty as well as loyalty towards people one knows, whether well or superficially, could often be involved. Finally there could be a desire not to interfere with processes that are in the process of playing out. Of course, a whole range of greys exist in-between.

My own view of what institutions should do, and this also relates to how journalists should present these issues, is the following: The possible victim of such harassment should be taken seriously and their right to privacy maintained, the alleged perpetrator should step down from any supervisory role while the investigation is conducted and indeed from any post or position where he/she might influence the course of investigation, the examination of the case should be done to ensure fairness (perhaps even by an externally constituted committee, although rules might not permit this), and what is done should be done fast, so that a clean resolution is reached.

This is actually, but in more concise form, largely what institutions are supposed to do anyway, given the mandate  of the institutional cells that deal with such issues. Rahul Siddharthan has drawn my attention to the  “University Grants Commission (Prevention, prohibition and redressal of sexual harassment of women employees and students in higher educational institutions) Regulations, 2015” gazette notification. This is a clear and sensibly written document that deserves to be studied carefully and its recommendations acted on. It certainly addresses my own view provided in summary form in the previous paragraph, but fleshes out many specific details  in addition.

As an scientist external to the scene of events, if asked by a journalist to comment on issues of sexual harassment elsewhere, I’m not sure what else I could say apart from what I say above.

Perhaps, if I spent a week or more examining a case in detail,  I might arrive at some understanding of what might have happened.  But the investigations required to establish which of a set of contested facts is true or not requires skills I don’t think of myself as possessing. Plus, the actual committees that investigated would be best placed to figure out the truth underlying multiple narratives.

What should I or similarly placed scientists do if the incident involves my own institution? I would apply the same standard. The need for fairness to both sides and the protection of privacy is central and this is often lost in the noise that surrounds such events.

What is sometimes more dismaying is what does the social media rounds, usually in the form of mass-circulated emails. The desire to take the accuser seriously is complicated by the automatic assumption that “the committee that did not take my side has ulterior motives and is in the wrong”.

This is where good reporting would make a difference to understanding whether due process was followed and fairness ensured. The point I want to make is that where the press can make a difference is in assessing the rigour and fairness of the process, sans specifics of a particular case. This is where institutions should support them.

As Sandhya Koushika points out to me, there is also a genuine need for what is called bystander training, roughly the development of strategies for bystanders to intervene to prevent sexual harassment. This includes understanding the signs of harassment, the ability and agency to call it out, the understanding of the responsibility of the bystander – to the victim, to the investigating committee, to a police or legal complaint as well as to society as a whole. This also includes understanding what can and cannot be said to the press if the guidelines above are to be respected.

What should the attitude of scientific or academic institutions be if journalists enquire about a reported case? If they could show that they took the steps I mentioned above, and were at least open enough to make the process, but not the individual-specific details, transparent, that would increase trust that institutional systems work and are fair to all sides.

To ask for more would enter the more delicate ground of the right of the stated victim to their own privacy and to control the narrative about them as well as the right of the alleged perpetrator to receive a fair hearing. It would also include the right of institutions to ensure both of these, in addition to fulfilling their obligations under law.

It would be fully appropriate for journalists to hold science institutions to such standards and to point out when and how the guidelines I’ve drawn attention to are violated.

I have excluded, from the discussion above, actual unethical behaviour, such as when a scientist turns a blind eye to ongoing harassment that they become aware of or when an administration ignores or glosses over related complaints.

In cases of actual misconduct, on the part of a scientific administration and/or scientists who connive in a cover-up, the moral lines are clear. Scientists should not enable unethical behaviour and should speak out with conviction and clarity wherever they see it. Scientific institutions should protect whistle-blowers, ensure that official  machinery (show cause notices, conduct rules etc.) is not employed to discredit their narratives, and set up unbiased, possibly fully external committees to examine their allegations. There can be no space for equivocation here.

Issues across Science, Journalism and Media: Conduct rules, the need for institutional openness and the journalist-scientist interaction

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This is the second in a series of notes in connection with the workshop on “Science, Journalism, Media: Communicating Science in a Changing India”, held at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai.  The first of these is available here.

I hope that by describing some of the questions that arose, providing my own view, and illustrating where opinions might legitimately differ between scientists or between scientists and journalists, a better understanding of these will result.

 

The issue I discuss here concerns difficulties faced by journalists in getting scientists to let themselves to be quoted. Such quotes would normally be attributed to the scientist by name. However, in some cases, scientists did not want to be quoted at all, referring the journalist to an administrator or director. The journalists who highlighted this mentioned that they sometimes encountered such problems even when it was the scientist’s own work that was being written about.

A scientist could also be asked for a quote or an attributed comment on a non-scientific matter. This might be, for example, their views on a case of reported harassment at their institution, a case of scientifically unethical behaviour or a specific institutional failure. Here, issues of privacy and due process during an ongoing investigation are relevant, if they indeed exist. However, they must be balanced by public interest in a relevant and unfolding story.

I will deal with this in a later discussion of how institutions should deal with coverage of sexual harassment cases. I confine myself here to the more straightforward issue of scientists asked to comment about science.

Pallava Bagla (NDTV) and T V Venkateswaran (Vigyan Prasar), highlighted sections in the government conduct rules that limit the ability of employees to criticize current or past government policy. These rules are similar across multiple organizations supported by the government, even if they are technically autonomous.

Such conduct rules have been used in the past to constrain interactions between scientists and journalists. As a consequence, the voices of a number of scientists have simply not been heard on a number of  issues of relevance both to them as well as to the public.

Both journalists stressed that the wording of the conduct rules did not rule out comments on scientific work, being restricted to commentary criticizing government policy. This is, of course, absolutely true and deserves to be more widely understood.

At a larger level, we  must ask whether conduct rules that prohibit any sort of criticism of public policy, whether well-founded or not, should exist in the first place in a democracy. This indicates a lack of faith in the ability of our institutions to deal with criticism. Also, should nominally autonomous institutions face the same restrictions as government employees that are specifically charged with implementing government policy?

The most powerful way of dealing with this issue, in my opinion, is for scientific institutions to set an example from the top. Certainly clarity in institutional purpose and a fundamental understanding of what science communication is about are components of good scientific leadership. Junior scientists could, of course, also  choose to rebel against such rules, if they are prepared to deal with the potential consequences of doing so. However, lasting changes in scientific culture are achieved most speedily when scientific leaders make their own vision clear – and  it is a positive vision.

As long as leaders of Indian institutions do not see it as being a very large part of their responsibility to educate the public about how their tax money is being spent, and to do this in ways they (the public) can understand, we will face such problems.  A scientific organization that gives its members the green light to interact with journalists and the public, without insisting that every such interaction be filtered through an administrative layer or otherwise controlled, is doing things right.

It is our responsibility, when we spend government money on science, to explain what we do, in a way that the ordinary lay citizen can understand. And this is best done in collaboration with science journalists, for whom increasing the public understanding of science is a professional responsibility.

 

Gautam Menon is a Professor at The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai. He can be reached at menon@imsc.res.in

Issues across Science, Journalism and Media: Should journalists write about preprints?

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A workshop on “Science, Journalism, Media: Communicating Science in a Changing India”,  was held recently at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, across August 20th and 21st, 2018.   Video recordings of the workshop proceedings are publicly accessible and  linked at:https://www.imsc.res.in/~scimedia/

While the workshop itself covered many topics, a number of questions were asked during the discussions that could not be addressed in sufficient detail at the time. Some of these were later debated extensively on social media.

I’d like to provide a personal perspective on these questions. My hope is that they might add a measure of clarity, both for fellow scientists as well as science journalists. I will emphasize grey areas wherever I can. There is no “right “ approach to these issues. I hope that by providing my own views, explaining them, and showing where opinions might legitimately differ between scientists or between scientists and journalists, an in-depth  discussion can be initiated.

A number of follow-up pieces are planned, each covering one such question.

 

 

Prasad Ravindranath of the Hindu raised the question of whether science journalists  should write on archived pre-prints. He had received some flak for his choice to do so in one case.

My view, as a scientist, is the following. By posting my submitted/to-be-submitted paper on a public archive I submit my work to the scrutiny of a far larger number of scientists in my area than will actually encounter the same paper by turning the pages of a journal or even accessing the journal online.

My name on the paper in preprint form counts, for me, as much or perhaps even more, as seeing its final version in print.

My reputation as a scientist is on the line when I post my work on accepted and popular preprint archiving forums, such as the condensed matter preprint archive (condmat) or the biology preprint archive (bioarxiv) or a host of others as well, some more popular in their respective communities than those I have mentioned. Its the implicit understanding of those who read my preprint that it represents work which I am prepared to defend professionally.

My own memory of when I first understood the importance of archived preprints is an early one, of seeing TIFR graduate students in string theory, anxiously checking to see if anyone, anywhere in the world, might be working on projects related to theirs. There is also a later memory, of seeing similar graduate students in a western country, dashing to their computer terminals in time for the morning posting of the previous days condensed matter preprint submissions, to identify the latest advances in their field as well as to see if their PhD project had been scooped. Different countries, similar worries.

These students knew that others in their field took preprints seriously. Even now for me, as for many other scientists, checking the preprint archive is a daily ritual.

A  paper submitted to a journal might be revised before publication, one or more times,  depending on input from those who review it. Referees usually have independent and often valuable comments on submitted manuscripts.  These are reflected in each rewriting of the paper as it proceeds to acceptance at a journal, or is resubmitted to another journal. However, referees are not infallible and referee comments are occasionally thinly disguised versions of “Refer to my own papers, list provided below, or else …”. The changes a referee might require are often cosmetic.

As an author of a preprint, I am encouraged to submit a newer version to an archive when the manuscript is updated with the journal, especially if I feel that the changes are substantial enough. All current archives keep older versions of preprints intact and accessible, so that any reader can choose to compare older and more recent versions to check for consistency. Even if a paper is withdrawn or otherwise retracted, the archived record remains. This maintains both the historical record as well as provides a disincentive against uploading research of questionable quality.

In biology, in particular, but also in parts of the social sciences, the gap between initial submission and final journal publication can be large. To postpone the viewing and discussion of a paper till it appears in a journal, thus denying access to it altogether to those not in a position to attend the scientific conferences where it might be discussed, is a formidable and ultimately exclusionary barrier to scientific progress.

The culture of preprints is very strong in mathematics, in theoretical physics and in computer science. It is gaining strength in biology. Chemists have been slow to catch up.

Interestingly, in mathematics, Grigori Perelman’s proof of the Poincare conjecture remains in preprint form. The proof of this conjecture qualified Perelman for the Clay Millennium Prize of 1 million dollars. (Very unusually, Perelman declined this award, as also the award of a Fields medal, the highest award in Mathematics.) It’s interesting to note that these awards were solely based on the recognition by fellow mathematicians that Perelman has solved the outstanding problem in his field, even though his papers had undergone no formal journal peer review.

A grey area is whether one should consider preprints towards promotions and related scientific advancement. The interests of large commercial publishers are not always in tune with a culture of preprints. By allowing authors to share their work and permit commentary in advance of publication, such publishers feel that their primacy is being usurped. My own view is that it would be in their own interest to get on board with this as soon as possible, since they risk being left behind by the ultimately inexorable advance towards a more open and egalitarian scientific culture.

Finally, and I cannot emphasise this enough, preprints level the playing field for scientists from the developing world. They may simply be the most innovative method we know of that enables such access to the best of science from all round the world.

So my answer would be: Preprints are absolutely fair game for science journalists!

 

Gautam Menon is a Professor at The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai. He can be reached at menon@imsc.res.in

On the proposed rise of the HECI from the ashes of the UGC

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The future of our children is under grave threat if the current Govt. of our country has its way and passes the draft Higher Education Committee of India (HECI), 2018 Act which will hand over the control of their education from our academics to our bureaucrats. This draft Act reads more like a set of procedures required to be followed for changing your name which has been mis-spelt in your passport (almost surely due to some clerical error), than like anything that has to do with education. As it stands, the ‘Commission’ is capable of and authorised to giving higher priority to include ‘fuzzy logic’ than ‘free probability’ as an elective course! (This jargon is merely to underline the fact that many people, who may not even know the meanings of these terms, might well be making such horrific decisions while framing the syllabus for advanced courses!)

 

As for the constitution of this commission, nine of the twelve members of the proposed Commission are either directly officers of the Union government or ex-officio members who serve at the government’s pleasure. Only two of the twelve members are teachers, and there is space for a “doyen of industry” as well. I seriously doubt the existence of twelve people who would satisfy conditions 3(3), 3(5) and 3(8) of the draft Act, and be likely to be hired as faculty at institutes of excellence like IIT(Bombay) or Indian Institute of Science (IISc) purely on the basis of their academic credentials.

 

3(3) says: The Commission shall consist of a Chairperson, Vice Chairperson and twelve other Members to be appointed by the Central Government. The Secretary of the Commission will act as the Member-Secretary;

3(5) says: The Chairperson, Vice-Chairperson and Members shall be scholars, being persons of eminence and standing in the field of academics and research possessing leadership abilities, proven capacity for institution building, governance of institutions of higher learning and research and deep understanding in issues of higher education policy and practice;

3(8) shows that only two members need to be serving Professors of Universities, reputed for research and knowledge creation.

An ingenious feature of this HECI is the requirement of a yearly evaluation of academic performance of the Higher Educational Institutions (HEI) – no doubt on a doc file in a prescribed proforma! The preparation of the necessary reports will eat into the precious little time available to faculty for research. As it is, faculty at HEIs spend increasing amounts of their time filing reports rather than doing research!

This suggestion/fait accompli is yet another instance of our government’s strategy to give a new name to an existing concept or scheme, and not really doing anything with it later, except pointing to the creation of this scheme as one of their achievements. Disability activists are familiar with PwD being rechristened as Divyangjan, Accessible India Campaign becoming Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan. I, for one, am totally opposed to this proposed ‘draft act’. As the Tamil saying goes, leaving education in the care of our govt. is like a case of korangu kaila poo malai (a flower garland in the hands of a monkey).

 

Already this govt. has changed the existing method of direct payment of the paltry wages ‘paid’ to research students in elite institutions to their favourite toy, the Aadhar route (resulting in the ‘monthly stipend’ typically coming in several months late!). The tension that our young research scholars are being subjected is in stark contrast to the enthusiasm with which several of our aspiring scientists joined the ‘March for Science‘ held in major cities of India on April 14, 2018.

 

It may not be out of place here to quote from the appeal made by the organizers of those marches:

In India the concerted efforts by some interest groups to undermine science continues unabated. Unscientific ideas and superstitious beliefs are being propagated with accelerated pace. Ridiculous claims are being made about an imaginary glorious past ignoring the true contributions based on historical evidence. These are acting against the propagation of scientific temper among the people. Opposing them is a responsibility of all citizens as per Article 51A of the Indian Constitution.

Support for education in general and for scientific research in particular remains unbelievably low in India. While most countries spend over 6% of their GDP on education and 3% of their GDP on scientific and technological research, in India the figures are below 3% and 0.85% respectively. As a result, a large section of the country’s population has remained illiterate or semi-literate even after 70 years of independence. Our college and university system is reeling under acute shortages of infrastructure, teaching and non-teaching staff, and funds for carrying out research. Science-funding agencies like CSIR and DST, pushed into acute fund crisis, are unable to disburse even committed support to students and research projects.

 

Let me conclude this rambling rant with three not unrelated observations/comments:

  • Compare the scrutiny undergone by the credentials of one nominated for possible fellowship of any of our science academies with those of any minister of MHRD; Does it make any sense to: (a) have the latter group decide on matters affecting the study of the former? or for (b) the president of the academies to plead with a minister to leave education to people who have been educating generations for decades rather than to party loyalists?
  • Ayesha Kidwai has this to say in her scathing critique on this draft Act: In its Press Release, the government has cited the bill as “downsizing the scope of the Regulator”, “removing interference in the management issues of the educational institutions”, and “improving academic standards”, but a reading of the Bill, actually reveals the opposite intention, that will have a disastrous effect on the access that India’s young people will have to higher education, as well as the creation of jobs in the education sector.
  • And the track record of our Govt. in translating a passed Bill into ground reality is not too reassuring! For example, India’s Rights of Persons with Disability was passed in 2016, while we became a signatory in 2007 to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability (UNCRPD), the purpose of which Bill is to promote, protect and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities, and to promote respect for their inherent dignity. We are still in the state, where a child with a locomotor disability is unable to go unaided to her school just a few blocks away in Delhi or Pune, for that matter, and attend classes on the third floor of a school without elevators. What price our Right to Education Act – which made education a fundamental right of every child aptly on April Fool’s Day of 2010!
V. S. Sunder is a mathematician and a disability rights activist based in Chennai. This article originally appeared on Groundxero.

War against Automation

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The Education system is going or will go through a war against automation. This appears like a zero-sum game for now, while it doesn’t have to be. This post aims at explaining why I think our educational institutions are highly under prepared for this war and why millions could be rendered unemployed unless proper reforms are brought in.

 

The post is definitely not anti-technology, technology can never replace human beings or human intervention, technology only adds value to human time. If one accountant can do the work of 10 accountants with the help of a computer, one perspective is that tech has killed 9 jobs, while another perspective is that it has empowered one person to do 9 times more work. This is good for the economy, with the cost of doing business dropping down, more businesses coming up, money changing more hands and wealth gets distributed more evenly.

 

However, we see that our education system is very slow to respond to any new technological waves. This is probably due to the fact that adaptability, life-skills, problem solving, learnability find no place in our education system. However, the AI wave is very different from any of the other waves which mankind has ever seen. AI is replacing white collared workers, while most tech waves ended up killing blue-collar jobs. So the question is whether AI undermine the already not so economically viable higher education?

 

Think about it, those jobs which do not require too much of thought, with some patterns can actually be automated. I had got 5th graders to draw decision trees for automating basic activities like that of a call center executive. Secondly, the entry barriers for soft-robots are lot lower than that of hard-robots. Once the software is developed, several use-cases can be explored and companies would effortlessly automate , using soft-robots. However, a hard-robot might actually require lot more physical infrastructure and so human labor may have an edge there. It is like your classic mechanization versus cottage industries debate. So your physical labor may still be valued but not low grade white collar jobs like telecalling, accountancy, HR etc.

 

So if you’re educated, you better know how to think, how to solve problems. If you can’t do what an AI can’t, you are adding no value to the company, unless you can chop some wood or put in some other form of physical labor. So, how do you add value? Well, look at the post digital workplace! People use computers to improve productivity, this could probably understood using the Japanese concept of autonomation (automation with human involvement). But there is a difference between the computer tools like MS Office, Adobe Design suite and concepts like AI, ML. We need people who can operate dynamically, take decisions and achieve lot more productivity by leveraging the power of AI. AI acting on Adobe Suite can empower a designer a lot more, but can a designer leverage this to either produce better designs or faster designs? We need to produce thinkers who can design new models- technology models and sustainable business models over these tech models.

 

So here’s the question bucket

1- Do our graduates understand what a model is? Do they understand what a concept is? Do they understand abstraction? Do they understand how abstract ideas can be extrapolated for problem solving? Do our teachers understand what extrapolation is?

 

2- Which subjects teach us about models? Do we give enough importance to Philosophy and Mathematics (not the robotic one, but the artistic Mathematics)?

 

3- Can these graduates brainstorm enough? Do we have space for questions, counter-questions, cross-questioning? Why is that all our school level competitions- debates, MUNs, quizzes do not allow cross-questioning (not more than 1-2 typically)? Where does depth come from if you don’t allow cross-questioning?

 

4- Do our graduates understand the difference between information and insights? Why is it that all our exams are based on Knowledge and not wisdom? Is it knowledge even relevant when you couple your Google with AI and voice recognition?

 

5- Do our graduates understand problem solving? Do they see enough case studies? Do they get an opportunity to solve new problems? Do they understand the process of introspection, after every problem solving experience, to be able to derive insights out of 10 experience, which could be extrapolated to the 11th problem?

 

6- Why do most our graduates understand “theory” to be rote-learning? Is it because all their learning is centered around questions/answer mode? Do they even understand what conceptual clarity means? Do they even understand how theorizers, researchers, visionaries think or is it just magic to them?

 

7- How do we move our graduates from content/output to processes? Do they even understand the output centrism/ process centrism dichotomy? Well, most of them don’t even understand what a dichotomy and why such a distinction is even important?

 

8- Do our graduates understand the power of iterations? How would they realize the power of “iterate and evolve” when they lack real life problem solving experience? Even if they do possess some experience, does our anti-intellectual stance help here?

 

9- Do our educational institutional value intellect? Why is that our graduates do not listen or read insights of people like Dr Raghuram Rajan, Prof V.S.Ramachandran or Prof. Richard Dawkins? Do they understand the difference between a student growing up with the stories of these great men versus your filmstars and sports stars?

 

10- Why is that critical thinking, interpersonal communication, soft-skills and other important career skills are not given enough time during school time? Do we even understand the right time to pick up the right skills? Do we even have a vision for education? Can this ignorance (on the part of both institutions and parents) help?

 

I just wanted to point out that our education system needs a massive transformation, if our schools and colleges have to stay relevant. Otherwise, education may not add any value to these output centric parents/students who see job as the only purpose for pursuit of education/degrees.

 

The author Tarun is the founder of Sciensation.tv. Sciensation is an edumedia organization which is into research based learning, which gets school students into process centric paradigms of education.

This article originally appeared here on the author’s LinkedIn page.

ISRO scientist exit: Text of Letter to the Honorable President of India

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The disturbing news about the unceremonious exit of a senior scientist from the position of Director, Space Application Centre, published and widely covered in newspapers, motivated a few scientists to write a letter to the President of India, seeking his intervention. What stirred the scientists was the accusation that the action was taken against him, not for technical or scientific reasons, but was based on his views about ‘privatization of ISRO’ and ‘delay in certain projects’.  The scientists also expressed their concern about some ‘anti-scientific’ statements, made in public, by those who hold constitutional positions and have taken pledged to spread scientific temper in the country. After the letter was signed by 28 scientists and sent to the Honourable President of India, it was circulated for endorsement by the concern the citizens. Subsequently, the letter was endorsed by more than four hundred citizens, which included scientists, doctors, lawyers, teachers, social workers, science communicators, writers, poets from all over the country.

 

Here, we post the letter to the Honourable President, and names of those who have endorsed the letter.

=====================================================

 

The Hon’ble President of India
Dear Sir,
We have read the report of a motivated and politically engineered transfer of Tapan Misra, an ISRO scientist, in a section of media, with utmost concern. One of the newspapers reported that ‘officials said his appointment as an adviser to the present chairman practically edges him out of the race to head the space agency. “It is a consultative post, not an executive one. The chairman has always been selected from the pool of executive directors. Besides, such a post never existed in the organisation before,”. Neither Government of India nor ISRO has responded to these reports. Considering the importance of excellence that we have achieve in space research, the nation awaits an official clarification.

The media also reported that Misra has been transferred to ISRO Headquarters, for two reasons: first, because he had opposed delay in a project, and second, because of he opposes the move to privatize ISRO. If this is true, then the act of transferring Misra will cause widespread demotivation among scientific community as it constitutes a strong signal to scientists to either align their views with the political powers of the day, or else be prepared to migrate elsewhere if they want to practice independent scientific enquiry. Scientific excellence would seem not to matter any more.

We do not view this as an isolated incident. We as a nation have built, ISRO, Atomic Energy Commission, CSIR, DRDO, IARI, and a galaxy of other applied research establishments with a culture of stability, freedom to pursue research and to participate in international collaborations. The nation has looked at these great scientific institutions, created during the past 70 years, with hope and respect. The people of India are convinced that these scientific institutions have been the bedrock of much development and have brought laurels to the nation.

We believe that these institutions have contributed significantly to nation building precisely because they were largely kept insulated from narrow and constricted political interference and manipulations. History all around the world has shown that science progresses through freedom of thought, freedom of expression and freedom to fearlessly explore uncharted terrain.
Moreover, the progress of science also requires an environment of scientific temperament. Science cannot be conducted successfully in a society that does not respect science or the scientific community. It is our constitutional duty as citizens of India to”develop and promote the scientific temper”, as per Article 51 A(h) of our Constitution, which is, of course, also binding on your government.
In the recent past, we have witnessed not only interference in scientific institutions but also a sustained series of attacks on scientific temper. Many who hold positions of constitutional responsibility in your government, have issued unscientific statements based on personal beliefs. We strongly feel that between acts of interference, punitive actions and motivated appointments on the one hand, and creating a hostile atmosphere against spreading scientific temper among the public at large, on the other, will have far reaching consequences detrimental to the national progress.

We solicit your urgent intervention.

 

Name of the scientist Designation and Affliation
1 Prof. Mewa Singh Distinguished Professor (for Life), and J.C. Bose Fellow University of Mysore
2 Prof. Shyamal Chakarvarti, Professor, Calcutta of University
3 Prof. Wasi Haider Former, Chairman, Department of Physics, AMU, Aligarh
4 Prof. E Harbabu Former, Pro VC, University of Hyderabad
5 Prof. Irfan Habib Former Professor and Scientist, NUPA
6 Dr. Subodh Mahanti Former Director, Vigyan Prasar
7 Prof. Gauhar Raza Former Chief Scientist, CSIR, India,
8 Dr. PVS Kumar Former Senior Scientist, CSIR
9 Dinesh Abrol Former Chief Scientist, CSIR
10 Prof. Amitabh Joshi Evolutionary Biologist, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research
11 Prof K Kannan Retired Professor (Biotechnology), Former Vice Chancellor, Nagaland University
12 Jay Prakash Convener, Bopal Gas Tragedy Movement, Delhi Science Forum
13 Dr. Aniket Sule, Reader, Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, Mumbai
14 Dr RD Rikhari Former, Editor Invention Intelligence, NRDC
15 Amitabh Pandey Armature Astronomer, Consultant Vigyan Prasar
16 Prof. Parthiv Basu, Professor, University of Calcutta
17 Dr Ahmar Raza Former Adviser, Ministry of Alternative Energy
18 Prof. Gautam Gangopadhya Professor, University of Calcutta
19 Dr Surjit Singh Expert Public Understanding of Science, NISTADS, CSIR
20 Dr Kausar Wizarat Former Asst. Prof. NUEPA
21 Dr. Ashok Jain Former Director, NISTADS, CSIR
22 Dr R.S.Dahiya Retd Senior Professor Surgery University of Hissar, Rohtak
23 Deepak Verma Science Documentary Producer
24 Rakesh Andania Science Documentary Producer
25 Dr.A.K.Arun, Public Health Activist, Health Education Art Life Foundation

 

Names of those who endorsed the letter after it was sent to the President

 

Name of the scientist Designation and Affliation
26 Er Anuj Sinha Former Director, NCSTC
27 Ravinder pandey, Sr. Engineer Civil, Bathinda Punjab
28 Man Mohan Social worker, Breakthrough Science Society, Bangalore
29 Mayank jain, Student, IPTA, Ashoknagar
30 Ashish Kumar Dey, Social Scientist and Environmentalist, GHAROA Assam. Wildlife Warden(Hony).
31 Ashok Lal. M.Sc. (Physics), Freelance poet and playwright. Former Professor (communication), MDI Gurgaon
32 Subodh Lal Director, Creativity Training Group, Chairman AKS Media Pvt Ltd
33 Ashok Choudhary General Secretary, All India Union of Forest Working People (AIUFWP)
34 Dr. Vijay Vishal, Freelance Writer & Educationist, Himachal Pradesh
35 Dr Sunilam Samajwadi Former MLA, On behalf behalf of Kisan Sangharsh Samiti, Samajwadi Samagam ,Dr lohia samata Adiwasi Kendra
36 Divya kaushik Theatre artist, member of the Indian civil society, Delhi
37 R.S.Bajpai, President, CITU, Uttar pradesh.
38 Shahid Akhtar Journalist, Ghaziabad
39 Vijay Bhatt Doon Science Forum Dehradun, Uttrakhand
40 Shubha. Poet , Social Activist, Govt. College, Rohtak
41 Mahendra Nath Mishra, Funding Editor, Janchowk, Noida
42 B Thakur CEO, XcelVations, Hyderabad
43 Vineeta Singh, Development Professional, ex Director, Transparency International India
44 Sudhanshi Vasudev LPI Travels, Owner
45 Zulaikha Jabeen President (social Activist),FSSFCTC
46 Ishteyaque Ahmad, Theatre Activist, Patna
47 Mahabir singh Section officer, Audit Haryana, Hisar
48 Abhinav Founding Member, PinkCuckoo.Com
49 Husan Ahmad Former Prof and Chairperson Deptt of Paediatrics, AMU Aligarh
50 Mahavir Sharma Principal (retired), Rohtak 124001
51 Dinesh Asthana, Journalist and Translator.
52 Mangalesh Dabral, Poet, journalist and translator.
53 Lalima Singh Teacher, Springdales school, New Delhi
54 Dilip Dave retired from public sector bank, Pune
55 Seema Muralidhara TV Director-Science Communicator, Trivandrum
56 G.Biju Mohan, Documentary Film Maker, Trivandrum
57 Dasgupta, Retd Associate Professor in Economics, Herambachandra College, Kolkata,
58 Dr. Arjun Singh Advocate. Prof.&Head Econ. Retd. HAU.Hisar.
59 Yasin khan. Child_Protection, coordinater
60 Komal, Member at Jodo Gyan, Delhi
61 palvinder singh Proprieter Khoobsurat Collection, Rohtak
62 Ajay Sinha, Vigilant Citizen.
63 Naiyar Azam, Co-Founder and Director, EmCom Media Private Limited
64 Hashim Raza Retired teacher, Jaipur
65 Chandra Prakash Jha Former Retired Special Correspondent at United News of India
66 Tanmaya Tyagi Political Cartoonist
67 Satyavir Singh, Teacher Hisar.
68 Uzair Ahmad Senior Accountant Lucknow.
69 Rajinder Arora A concerned citizen.
70 Ram Nath, Rtd. Scientific Officer, DAE,
71 Runu Chakraborty Concern Citizen, Delhi
72 Vijay Shanker Singh Indian Police Service at Govt of Uttar Pradesh
73 Tausif A. Siddiqui Academician & Writer
74 Nina Rao Prof. Delhi university
75 Maimoona Mollah AIDWA
76 Fazal Raza Photographer
77 Sumbul Khan School teacher. Delhi
78 Fazal Imam Mallick, Journalist
79 Intekhab Alam, Business Owner.
80 Manish Kumar Gautam, M.Tech student, Defence Institute of Technology
81 Dr H N Patwari, Former Dy Director ; Social activist,Jammu.
82 Sandeep Meel, Janwadi Lekhak Sangh, Jaipur
83 Rohit Roosia IPTA, Chhinwada
84 Sandhya Pandey Pysician, Gorakhpur
85 Suman Singh Asst. Manager at Sahara India Pariwar
86 Naran B Gadhavi Kheti vikas seva trust, Kutch Gujarat
87 Prabhat Maduri Student,Bandhawgadh, MP
88 Digamber Translator, Editor Social worker
89 Rajni B Arora. Concern citizen
90 Pradeep Bhattacharya Retired Engineer of Delhi Development Authority
91 Gopal G Pradhan Prof. Hindi, Ambedkar University, Convener Delhi Teachers Association
92 Nandita Narain, Associate Professor, St Stephen’s College, Delhi University, Delhi.
93 Vinod Kuma Dutt Rtd. Lecturer, Botany, Sahid Bhagat Singh Colony, Chandausi, UP
94 Vijay Mehta Consultant Anaesthetist, Rajkot -Gujarat
95 Sanjay Kumar Kundan, Retd Deputy Director, Education, Patna, Bihar
96 Ram Mohan Rai Advocate, Gen Secy , Gandhi Global Family
97 Kavita Krishnapallavi Social Worker, Poet, Dehradoon, UK
98 Dr.Raminder Singh Professor,Punjabi University, Patiala
99 Charul Joshi Social Activist,Sankalp Charitable Trust.
100  Surya Narayan Prof. Hindi Allahabad university
101 Gaurav Saxena Special Educator, Kothari international School, Noida
102 Dr Viwapriya Concern Citizen, CPIML, Muzaffarpur, Bihar
103 Deepak Vohra Teacher, Poet, Janwadi Lekhak Sangh, Karnal, Haryana
104 Sanjay Verma Writer, Ggorakhpur, UP
105 Kalwant Singh, Writer and Science  communicator, SANGRUR (PB).
106 Mohan Kumawat, Documentary film maker, Anhad Films
107 Shivani Kamlesh Jha Odissi dancer and Government teacher
108 Nazim Mahmood Web Designer,Sikandrabad, U.P
109 Ahad Umar Khan, Film Maker, Writer, Delhi
110 Dr Dharamraj Assistant Professor, Secretary, Janwadi Lekhak Manch, Matura, UP
111 Adv Sanjeev Kumar Punjab and Haryana high court Chandigarh
112 Juhi Jain, feminist activist, Concern Citizen
113  Sania Hashmi, Anhad Films, Delhi
114 Dr Irfan khan Hasanpur District amroha up
115 Dharm Prakash ‘Manto’ Research Scholar, JNU, New Delhi.
116 Anil Pannikker Consultant Psychologist 188 lajpat nagar Hisar
117 Arun Khote, PMARC /Dalit Media Watch
118 Jay prakash Students Federation Of India (SFI), Allahabad university
119 Mohandas Nagwani, Principal Chicago Public School, Katni
120 Rajesh Yagyik President Bandhua Mukti Morcha,Alwar,Rajasthan
121 Bharti Saarang lecturer Haryana Education Department, Rohtak, Haryana
122 JagvinderBisht, CONCOP Colony, Ranchi, Jharkhand
123 Dr Navdeep Kumar Retd. Medical Officer, Krishna Nagar, Jammu, Kashmir
124 Pawan Birohar Sahmat Athilent Technology
125 Veera Sathidaar Film Director, Indian Film Theater, Nagpur
126 Shraddha Mehta Principal, Mother Teresa School and Junior College
127 Suneel Yadav Kendriye Bhandaar, Ghatkopar, Mumbai
128 Kashif Noon Siddique Film Director, Mumbai
129 Ramjee Singh Yadav Theatre Activist, Raniganj, West Bengal
130 Rahul Verma Advocate,Former Additional Standing Counsel of Union of India. Panel Lawyer: Delhi Transport Corporation, Revenue Department, GNCT of Delhi
131 Bhartendu Kashyap The Mocking Birds Lucknow
132 Pankaj Pushkar MLA, Teemarpur, Delhi
133 Achyut Thakur Member, CPIM, Taunk, Rajasthan
134 Manoj Singh Gautam Editor, Daily Graph, Laucknow
135 Digamber Translator, Social worker
136 Geeta Shri Journalist, Delhi
137 Zaheer Rahmati Assistant Prof. ZHDCE Delhi
138 Obaid Nasir Qaumi Aawaz, Lucknow, UP
139 Mukesh Aseem IT expert, Mumbai
140 Pradeep KAsni Concern Citizen, Haryana
141 Dilip Khan Jouranlist, Delhi
142 Krishna Kant Journalist, Deli
143 Sunil Sinha Concern Citizen
144 Dr Kashmir Sing Uppal Retd. Proffesor, Itarsi
145 Anand Malviya Chief Statics Officer, Allahabad
146 Pradeep Bhattacharya  Filmmaker, Writer, Delhi
147 Mahesh Kumar RTI Activist , Kanpur
148  Anwar Suhail, Anuppur, MP
149 Jitendra Narayan Development officer, LICm Samastipur, Bihar
150 Mrityunjay Prabhakar, Secretary, SEHAR
151 प्Prakash Bandhu Cinematographer/ theatre activist
152 Rakesh Vishvakarma Research Scholar, MGIHU, Vardha, Maharashtra
153 Shalinee Tripathi, Teacher
154 Farhat Rizvi , Journalist, Noida UP
155 Samir Anand Professor, S P M Law College, Madhepura
156  Rajesh Seopuri Advocate, Haridwar. Uttrakhand
157 Mohit Khan IT Professional, Delhi NCR
158 Rashid Ali  Faculty, Central University of Jammu
159 Deepti Theatre Artist, Haryana
160 Gaurav Saxena Noida Uttar Pradesh
161 Digamber singh, District President, Kisan Sabha, Mathura
162 Dildar Rizvi Professional, MNC, Mumbai.
163 Lokesh Kalal Peace Center, Udaipur
164 Nishi Verma National Vice President, Kisan Manch
165  Kaushal Pant, Janvadi, ALMORA ( UTTRAKHAND)
166 Shubhra Mishra Student, Lucknow
167 Satish Kumar Electrical Forman, Chini Mill Ltd., Haryana
168  Md Anzar Hussain Reseach scholar,JNU
169 Akhtar Ali Research Scholar, Delhi University
170 Sumant Poet Journalist, Ajay Bhawan, Patna
171 Abdul Daiyan, Activist, Anhad, Bihar
172 Rajesh Chandra Editor/Theater Activist, Delhi
173 Sumit Mahar Social Activist/Cinematographer, Himachal Pradesh
174 Sandhya Pandey Doctor, Gorakhpur
175 Rajesh Kumar Haryana Public science committee member, Jind
176 Pawan Panwar A concern citizen
177 Agastya Arunachal Translator/Freelance Journalist, Delhi
178 Vijay Shankar Singh Retired IPS, Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh
179 Amit Kumar Shukla Human right activist, Chitrakoot
180 Vishal Vikram Singh Student, Jaipur
181 Sayeed Ayyub Teacher/Writer, Delhi
182 Arun Pandey Vivechana Theater, Jabalpur
183 Rani Rajesh Social Activist, Jabalpur
184 Amit Niraw Journalist/ Story Writer, Indore
185 Naveen Kumar Inquilabi Naujawan Sabha, Bihar
186 Vibhawari Professor, Gautam Buddha University
187 Komal Shrivastava BGVS
188 Rubi Arun Journalist, Delhi
189 Suresh Kumar Haryana Public science committee, Jind
190 Parag Verma Activist, Hyderabad
191 Shasikant Associate Professor, Political science, Agra
192 Pragya Student, Delhi University
193 Parmanada Joint Director, Gov. of India, Delhi
194 Dev Desai A concerned citizen, Gujarat
195 Nilesh Kumar Journalist, Bhagalpur
196 Pallav Hindu College, Delhi
197 Niranjan Sahay Professor, Mahatma Gandhi Kashi Vidyapith, Varanasi
198 Navneet Bedar Azim Premji Foundation, Chhattisgarh
199 Dr. Lakhan Singh President, PUCL Chhattisgarh
200 Dheeresh Saini Reporter/Journalist
201 Sachiv Sarokar NGO, Madhya Pradesh
202 Firoj Khan Poet/Journalist, Mumbai
203 Neel Kalam Social Activist
204 Satya Veer Singh Retired Bank Employee
205 Ajit Sahni Theater Artist, Uttarakhand
206 Pramod Beria Poet/Editor
207 Sadaf Jafar A concerned citizen
208 Iis Mishra Student, Delhi University
209 Viveknanda Singh Journalist, Ranchi
210 Bhanwar Lal Kothari A Concerned Citizen, Rajasthan
211 Santosh Jha Concerned Citizen, Bhagalpur, Bihar
212 Dr. Manish kumar Soni Hindi Officer, Central Bank, Keka
213 Mahendra Pal Theater Artist, Mockingbird Organization, Lucknow
214 Rohit Rusia IPTA, Chhindwara
215 Neena Sharma AIDWA, Madhya Pradesh
216 Surinder Pal Singh A concerned citizen, Panchkula
217 Vibha Rani Writer/Poet/Theater Artist
218 Ashutosh Teacher, Kolkata
219 Yusuf Ansari Journalist, Delhi
220 Shamim Ahmed Income Tax Officer, Dehradun
221 Ravi Kant Chandan Assistant Professor, Lucknow University
222 Hari Om Rajoria IPTA, Madhya Pradesh
223 Pratyush Prashant Freelance Journalist, Delhi
224 Rafique Quadri Businessman, Mumbai
225 Sarojini Bisht Freelance Journalist, AIPWA, Siliguri
226 Santosh Chaturvedi Editor, Anhad, Allahabad, UP
227 Priyabhanshu Ranjan Journalist, Delhi
228 Manoj Chhabra Cartoonist/Teacher, Hisar
229 B K Srivastava Vigyan Manch, Lucknow
230 Anoop Aakash Verma News Anchor, Delhi
231 Virendra Jain Janwadi Lekhak Sangh, Bhopal, MP
232 Vikash Kaushal Journalsit, Bathinda, Panjab
233 Harpal Singh Arush Writer, Muzaffarnagar
234 Manish Joshi Concerned citizen, Hishar
235 Raghvendra Singh Theater Artist, Lucknow
236 Sanuj Yadav A concerned citizen, Delhi
237 Satyendra Raghuvanshi Concerned citizen, Guna, Madhya Pradesh
238 Er. K K Malik General Secretary, Haryana Gyan Vigyan Samiti
239 Nisha Haryana Gyan Vigyan Samiti, Panipat
240 Chandrika Editor Hindi, Oxford University Press
241 Jaishankar Gupta Journalist, Delhi
242 Amit Nagar Social Activist, Meerut
243 Vijay Singh A concerned citizen, Delhi
244 Abhishek Kumar Teacher, Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh
245 Ankit Journalist, Allahabad
246 Abdul Kalam Azim Premji Foundation, Dhamtari, Chhattisgarh
247 Balli Singh Cheema Poet/ Social Activist
248 Mukesh Kumar A concerned citizen
249 Gauri Nath Editor, Ghaziabad
250 Virendra Yadav Writer/Critic, Lucknow
251 Upendra Shankar Environmental Activist, Jaipur
252 Digambar Singh District President, Kishan Sabha, Mathura
253 Aman Gupta Journalist, Delhi
254 Vinod Pandya A concern citizen, Ahmedabad
255 Subhneet Kaushik Teacher, Balia
256 Shekhar Mallik Writer, Ghatshila, Jharkhand
257 Sudha Arora Writer, Mumbai
258 Deepak Vohra Janvadi Lekhak Sangh, Karnal Haryana
259 Ajay K Sharma Concerned citizen, Kurukshetra
260 Nisar Ahmad A concerned citizen, Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh
261 Naran B Gadhavi Kheti vikas seva trust, Kutch, Gujarat
262 Shiva Wavalkar Associate Professor, NSDT, Pune
263 Vishal Jaiswal Journalist, Amar Ujala, Noida
264 Jaleshwar Upadhyay Journalist, Varanasi
265 Ramjan Chaudhary Secretary, All India Mewati Samaj
266 Sudhir Suman Writer/Cultural Activist, Arrah, Bihar
267 Kumar Mukul Poet/Writer
268 Satnaam Singh Convener, Jan Sawstha Abhiyan Haryana, Rohtak
269 Masaud Akhtar A concerned citizen
270 Virendra Sharma Bharat Jan Vigyan Samiti, Panipat
271 Mukul Saral Poet/Journalist, Greater Noida
272 Jagmohan Singh Trend Union Volunteer
273 Anil Saini A concerned citizen, Hisar
274 Kishan Kaljayi Editor-‘Sublog’
275 Pushker Prakash A concern citizen, Samastipur, Bihar
276 Mukesh Maanas A concerned citizen
277 Sandeep Mil A concerned citizen. Jaipur
278 Anil Dubey IPTA, Guna, Madhya Pradesh
279 Narendra Maurya Journalist, Noida
280 Dev Sharma Graphic Designer
281 Priyanshu Journalist, Noida
282 Mahendra Singh Secretary, Haryana Gyan Vigyan Samiti, Bhivani
283 Vikash Pandey Freelance Journalist/Translator, Ghaziabad
284 Arpana Chandail A concerned citizen, Jammu Kashmir
285 Umesh Singh Journalist, Delhi
286 Govind Desai Urjaghar, Gujarat
287 Darshan Kumar Advocate, Betul, MP
288 S P Neelam A concerned citizen
289 Richa Sakalley Journalist/Writer, Noida
290 Tejee Isha Researcher, Kolkata
291 Anil Goswami A concerned citizen, Delhi
292 Harpal Singh Arush Writer, Muzaffarnagar
293 Gaurav Aggarwal Concerned citizen, Rampur, UP
294  Omprakash Sharma Retired. Teacher, Shivpuri, MP
295 Ramnaresh Yadav Journalist, Jhansi
296 Rajendra Singh Concerned citizen, Panipat, Haryana
297 Saqib Khan Journalist, Patna
298 Shresh Chandra Social Activist, Lucknow
299 Brij Prajapat Poet/Clerk, Rohtak
300 Dharamvir Singh Journalist, Ambala, Haryana
301 Aashish Pushkar Businessman, Gajraula, UP
302 Rajesh Joshi Poet, Jaipur
303 Murari Kumar Jaha A concerned citizen
304 Anil Mishra Assistant Professor, University of Rajasthan, Jaipur
305 Mahesh Soni CITU, Chhindwara, MP
306 Jadil Ali Journalist, Delhi
307 Nissar Jatu A concerned citizen
308 Katyayani Lko Poet/Writer, Lucknow
309 Akhilesh Dixit A concerned citizen
310 Krishnarjun Social Activist, Indore
311 Dr. Dharmendra Kumar Mall A concerned citizen, Gorakhpur
312 Tarkeshwar Kadian A concerned citizen, Bhopal
313 Abhay Kumar Jha Azim Premji Foundation, Raipur, Chhattisgarh
314 Kaleem Zafar Artist Mathura
315 Abhas Kumar Journalist, Nagpur
316 Deepak Vidrohi Freelance Journalist, Bhopal, MP
317 Kapil Sangwari, Delhi
318 Dr. Fakhir Abbasi Urdu Linguist
319 Nitish Kumar Teacher, Dehradun
320 Amar Pal Assistant, Municipal Corporation, Delhi
321 Bindu Singh Mahila Sawsthya Adhikar Manch, Chandauli, UP
322 Sanjay Sharma Street Artist/Social Activist
323 Sachidanand Sachu Journalist/ Writer
324 Shubnum Gill Artist, Delhi
325 Azhar Modood Siddiqui A concerned citizen
326 Kamaal Khan A concerned citizen
327 Abhay Kumar Pandey Teacher, Buxar, Bihar
328 Prabhat Madhuri A concerned citizen, Madhya Pradesh
329 Vijay Agra Teacher, Agra
330 Abhishek Goswami A concerned citizen
331 Sanjeev Chandan A concerned citizen
332 Ravi Kant Chandan Assistant Professor University of Lucknow
333 Dr. M. A. Ansari Professor Communication, Pantnagar University
334 Suman Singh A concerned citizen
335 Manish Joshi A concerned citizen, Nainital
336 Vinod Kumar Datta A concerned citizen
337 Santosh Kumar Arya A concerned citizen
338 Arshia A concerned citizen
339 Sanjay Kumar A concerned citizen
340 Ayt Khan A concerned citizen
341 Hariom Divedi Journalist, Rajasthan Patrika, Lucknow
342 Shaheen Ansari Architect, Delhi
343 Azad Ansari Journalist, Bathinda, Punjab
344 Satyanarayan Patel Writer, Indore
345 Seema Chauhan Haryana Gyan Vigyan Samiti, Shimla
346 Kali Ram Khatri Retd. Lect. In  Economics, Haryana
347 Rajpal Dahiya Science Activist, Panipat
348 Prakash Singh A concerned citizen, Chhattisgarh
349 Ramniwas Verma Social Activist, Barabanki, UP
350 Arti Advocate, Chandigarh
351 Avinash Barman Event Director, Delhi
352 Kabir A concerned citizen
353 Avadhesh Mishra Department of Hindi,Christ Church college, Kanpur
354 Kailash Gehlot Secretary, Rajasthan Kishan Sabha, Jaipur
355 Jitendra Bharti Researcher, Allahabad
356 Toshi Shankar A concerned citizen
357 Devendra K Utkarsh Student, Allahabad University
358 Mahavir Singh A concerned citizen
359 Vipin Uniyal A concerned citizen, Uttarakhand
360 Mahavir Goriya A concerned citizen
361 Ajit Singh Executive Editor, Dainik Bhaskar, Jabalpur
362 Sandhya Kulkarni Concerned citizen, Bhopal, MP
363 Nutan Prakash District Secretary, Janvadi Mahila Samiti, Haryana
364 Seema Rana AIDWA, Lucknow
365 Narendra Kumar Writer, Political Activist
366 Chittajeet R Mishra Student, Allahabad University
367 Kameshwar Prasad Theater Artist/Social Activist, Muzaffarpur, Bihar
368 Lalu Tiwari Balia
369 Pramod Kumar Poet, Gorakhpur
370 Saleem Khan Farid Poet/Writer, Rajasthan
371 Vijay Kumar Nonhare Member, Jan Mukti Morcha, Chhattisgarh
372 Sanjeev Kumar Bharti Advocate, Patna
373 Surendra Kumar Dubey A concerned citizen, Indore
374 Girish Mathpal Concerned citizen, Uttarakhand
375 Om Prakash Researcher, Jaipur
376 Vivek Sharma Activist, Bastar, Chhattisgarh
377 Vikash Tiwari A concerned citizen
378 Muhammad Aadil Concerned citizen, Moradabad
379 Binod Yadav Actor
380 Shakuntala Singh Teacher, Dehradun
381 Virendra Malik State Secretary, CSTU, Haryana
382  Meenakshi Dehelvi Concerned citizen, Lucknow
383 Anil Chamadia Journalist, Delhi
384 Narendra Kumar Concerned citizen
385 Manzoor Aalam Concerned citizen
386 Nirmal Devi Concerned citizen
387 Tika Singh President, Jan Sarokar Samiti, Haldwani
388 Anil Kaithal Concerned citizen, Haryana
389 Mukul Editor
390 Sumaira Sharma A concerned citizen
391 Ankit Haryana Gyan Vigyan Samiti, Jind
392 Ramesh Chandra Secretary, Haryana Gyan Vigyan Samiti, Hisar
393 Dharmpal Sharma State Secretary, Haryana College Teacher Association
394 Ravi Kiran Jain National President, PUCL
395 Richa Srishti Asst. Professor, G D Goenka University
396 Arif Kapadia Concerned citizen, Mumbai
397 Tara Pillai Sr Lead Engineer, Bechtel
398 Akramul Jabbar Khan Retd Chief Commissioner Income Tax, Pune
399 Akshat Gaur Advocate at State Commission, Jaipur
400 Jarnail Singh Sangwan Ex. Principal.convenor Jan Shiksha Adhikar Manch, Haryana
401 Rahul Shakya Student
402 Satpal Aanand Haryana Jan Vigyan Samiti, Kaithal
403 Ghanshyam Shah Social researcher, Ahmedabad
404 Koytur Chandra Pratap Singh Concerned citizen, Chhattisgarh
405 Naheed Taban Concerned citizen, Delhi
406 D. N. Diwakar Concerned citizen, Patna
407 Iqbal Akhtar Registrar at Vastu Kala Academy, Delhi
408 Asifur Rahman Assistant Teacher, Purnea, Bihar
409 Raj N. Jha  IFS, State Climate Change Centre
410 Brijendra Kumar Tiwari Concerned citizen, Bhilai, Chhattisgarh
411 Arun Tiwari Social Activist, UP
412 Pavan Satyarthi Social Activist, Anuppur, MP
413 D M Diwakar Professor, A N Sinha Institute of Social Studies, Patna