Surinder Sud: Research under threat

FARM VIEW

In his very first press conference, Agriculture and Food Minister Sharad Pawar stressed the need to debureaucratise and professionalise agricultural research. These reforms are, indeed, badly needed.

For, the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) that controls, directly or indirectly, the entire public sector agricultural research and education network is not only slipping into the hands of bureaucrats but its professionalism is also under threat.

The number of posts held by the IAS cadre has been on the rise. The secretary of the ICAR society has been made additional secretary in the Department of Agricultural Research and Education (DARE), which links the ICAR with the government.

Although the ICAR director-general continues to be secretary at DARE, the presence of a bureaucrat as additional secretary has created two centres of power, leading to the usual problems.

However, the bigger issue is the assault on the professionalism and transparency in the procedure of filling up senior posts that has demoralised the scientists and caused widespread resentment.

The selection procedure is sought to be changed to make it amenable for favouritism. The process of appointments at the senior level has been put on hold. At least a dozen major research institutes lack regular directors. The real victim is agricultural research.

Indeed, eyebrows have been raised over the ICAR's personnel policies in the past as well. The Council, in fact, has a history of controversies dotted with suicides of scientists and appointments of commissions and committees to suggest ways and means of reorganising its set up.

It was finally the Jai Raj committee that came out with a "scorecard system" for selecting candidates for scientific posts in an impartial and transparent manner. This system, introduced in June 2002 and implemented from July 2003, has been hailed as a foolproof method under which the candidate is assessed on his documented past performance. But now this temper-proof system is sought to be altered because it disallows favouritism.

The matter came to light during the final stages of the selection of a candidate for the post of deputy director-general (crop sciences) in April. When, at the end of the interview, some selectors found that the person who was likely to be selected on merit was not the one they actually had in mind, they walked out, without signing the final selection order.

What is even more appalling is that following this incident, interviews for several other senior posts for which the process was already on were postponed.

In fact, the interview for the post of director of the Nagpur-based Central Institute for Cotton Research was disrupted midway when, through a fax message, the representatives of the Department of Agriculture and the ICAR were advised from Delhi to withdraw from the meeting. The interviews for the post of director of the National Academy of Agricultural Research and Management (NAARM), scheduled for April 20, were postponed through an order issued on April 19.

Not content to leave things at that, the ICAR management was quick to set up a committee to suggest amendments in the existing scorecard system and screening mechanism for senior appointments. This move seems to have upset the scientists who do not want this merit-based appointment system to be abandoned or replaced with another one with loopholes.

The existing scorecard system has set apart 75 per cent marks for the candidate's past performance measured in terms of qualification, experience, research publications, awards and medals, institution building activities, special achievements in terms of technology development and the like.

Only 25 per cent has been kept for the interview. Thus, there is no scope for any subjective marking or other kind of manipulation at least in the 75-mark component. The scope for discretion is limited to only to 25 per cent component.

The main advantage of the current system is that it keeps the scientists on their toes all the time because they know that every achievement will be counted objectively when it comes to appointments to higher posts. This has led to improved work culture, besides generating a spirit of competition to show better output.

Pawar needs to examine these aspects without any loss of time. The scientists need the right kind of environment for creative pursuits. Only then can one expect the scientific organisations to deliver what is expected of them.