In the second week of February 2023, Shirley M. Malcom and Sudip Parikh from the publishing group of Science magazine wrote an editorial titled, ‘Students and postdocs deserve more’ highlighting issues related to their salary and career options in the United States (US). Though they discuss and propose solutions in the US context, it is comparable and expandable with our scenario.
Unlike many countries, regular distribution fellowship is a long-time dream for organizations and students. Promises made at several occasions, but nothing reflects in bank account. On average, Junior Research Fellows must wait 4-6 months for their first-month fellowship.
Release of contingency grant is another issue. It is aimed to meet the expenses on support elements for research, registration fee for conferences, field visits, and analytical charges for experiments. At present, registration fees for international conferences range from 3-5 thousand rupees leading to the inadequacy of grant for other activities. Each year scholars wait with bills and fear that, as in the past, they may not get it.
Research fellowships are revised every four years, every four years after protests. In 2019, Dr. Ashutosh Sharma, who headed the fellowship revision committee, told The Hindu that there would be a system to ensure annual revision of fellowships.(click here) Now, it’s more than four years, and on 17th February, scholars demonstrated a peaceful protest within their campus. (AIRSA India Profile - Please check the tweets of 17th February ) While the research fellowships are in the country's top 10% of the monthly income scale, what makes them protest for increment?
Firstly, not all enter into research without a career break. First graduates, students without economic or social capital enter with family responsibilities or dependents with ailments need to find a balance between both. Not all institutes have all facilities, fee concessions, health/accidental insurance, or support system for the female workforce. Majority of research fellows in the age group 23-30 are not entitled to any other employee benefits as seen in other sectors. Importantly, due to irregular disbursement, research scholars are ineligible for availing term insurance. Hence one needs to manage the fellowship for social security schemes, savings, and investments.
Secondly, the process of knowledge creation and research communication is not limited to working hours. Overwork or underpaid is an international status of researchers. One needs to spend hours in a stretch for an experiment, some specially done at night; 12-hour work is common here, labs remain open throughout the year, and they take fewer excuses as Sunday/public holiday. Pandemic-induced lockdowns and inadequate access to research facilities put many to work without fellowships post-tenure. Fee hikes dissolve emergency funds.
Recently, the Academy of Science Innovative Research (AcSIR), having more than 6000 students from 52 research institutes, increased the thesis submission fee to 200%. Such a long jump is never seen in the past of AcSIR or any other research institute with better infrastructure. In addition, unlike fellowships, a gradual increase of the semester fee of Rs.500 for each new batch admission now reached up to Rs.11000. Requests to administration remains unanswered as usual. Due to decreased career opportunities and competitive environment, career instability is their nightmare.
Coming to the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), many schemes vanished after 2020. Direct Senior Research Fellowship (SRF), given to research assistants to continue as doctoral candidates, is one of them. It’s a beneficial program for those interested in research and financially deprived to enroll in coaching classes to train for national-level eligibility test(s). Along with SRF, Research Associateship has been a support to many individuals, especially women who couldn’t leave the country for postdoctoral research is also dropped off. Very recently, Maulana Azad National Fellowship given to six religious minorities in the country has also stopped. Since then, not only have many individuals lost opportunities, but our institutes have also lost many trained individuals, leaving our human resource development index affected.
Scholars are looking for regularisation and restart of fellowships, introduction of physical and mental support systems with a woman-centric approach. Authorities should come forward to have an interactive culture with students. Questions and criticism are essential in research or any organization, but many remain one-way communication from the top. Students are scared of raising concerns expecting disciplinary action from supervisors and administration, which is the worrying state of all the above.