Associated blog post date: 15th Sept. 2015, link: https://eklavyasai.blogspot.com/2015/09/how-mhrd-director-iit-disposed-of-my.html , short link: http://bit.ly/how-mhrd
I had put up my complaint as a grievance in Nov. 2011 at the following portal, http://pgportal.gov.in/, whose description is as follows:
PORTAL FOR PUBLIC GRIEVANCES, Brought to you by Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances, Government of India
I received an email (and SMS) today (15th Sept. 2015) that my grievance has been DISPOSED. The status of the grievance could be checked at the portal by (mainly) giving the registration number. [No login is required; so anybody can do it.] I have given below the Grievance Status. [BTW MHRD stands for (Union/Federal) Ministry of Human Resource Development, http://mhrd.gov.in/, which is the main ministry handling education policy and public (tax payer) funds disbursement to UGC/AICTE and other such institutions which disburse it to suitable educational institutions across the country.]
Registration Number : DSEHE/E/2011/01988
Name Of Complainant : Ravi S. Iyer
Date of Receipt : 10 Nov 2011
Received by : Department of Higher Education
Forwarded to : DIRECTOR IIT
Contact Address : ROOM NO 516 C
SHASTRI BHWAN
NEW DELHI110001
Contact Number : 23073241
Grievance Description : Dear sir/madam, I had sent a mail on Oct. 28th 2011 to Hon'ble ministers, MHRD and others on "Serious Systemic Problems in Indian CS IT Academia" (see attached document) but have not received any response so far. I have written another post on the issue with some concrete suggestions for a solution, entitled "CS IT Academia: How To Relieve Suffering of Students, Parents and Employers" here: http://eklavyasai.blogspot.com/2011/11/cs-it-academia-suffering-students.html I would be very happy to receive some acknowledgement of receipt of this grievance suggested solution, and your esteemed ministry's views on the matter. I also offer my services, in case your esteemed ministry is interested, in a part-time, free Seva capacity to help arrive at some solution to this serious problem for the entire country. Regards Ravi Iyer Software Consultant Puttaparthi, Andhra Pradesh e-mail: ravi@raviiyer.org web: raviiyer.org - Individual Capacity, Not-For-Profit Effort Service to Society is Service to God
Current Status : CASE CLOSED
Date of Action : 15 Sep 2015
Details : The matter does not pertain to MHRD. Even otherwise it is not a grievance.
--The following were provided by me (Ravi S. Iyer) today (15th Sept. 2015) on the status page --
Feedback Rating: Poor [Lowest rating]
Feedback comments: [The website accepted the comments below but does not show it on the status window. It does show the above feedback rating though. Also note that a lakh is an Indian term for one hundred thousand. So 'lakhs of students' means 'hundreds of thousands of students'.]
As explained in the doc. attached to my grievance (and available on the net here: http://eklavyasai.blogspot.in/2011/09/cs-it-academia-serious-systemic.html), "The unfortunate reality of the vast number of CS & IT departments of universities & colleges in the country is that the Professors of these departments are strong in theory and research publications but not so strong in practical areas like Software Design and Programming or Coding. Naturally the students graduating out of CS & IT academia also end up having somewhat strong theoretical and research-oriented skills but being weak in Software Design and Programming."
The doc. also explains that AICTE/UGC policies do NOT encourage CS/IT academics to know programming well, and that these policies need to be changed. Further, as explained in the same document, MHRD is the govt. agency that gives TAX PAYER money to AICTE/UGC, and so MHRD is answerable to the Indian public for AICTE/UGC policy failures affecting lakhs of students & parents in the country.
So I completely disagree with MHRD's reasons for closing this grievance. Not only is my grievance a valid grievance, it also pertains to MHRD.
The grievance status states that it was forwarded to DIRECTOR IIT. What response did MHRD get from him/her? Why has that response not been shared on this status? Is the DIRECTOR IIT not answerable or accountable for AICTE/UGC policies that he/she may have been instrumental in formulating, and that affects the lives of lakhs of students & parents in the country?
--- end Feedback comments ---
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I sent the above blog post contents as an email to the Hon'ble minister for Human Resources Development, Smt. Smriti Irani (on 15th Sept. 2015).
This post is based on part of my blog post: http://eklavyasai.blogspot.com/2016/08/about-me-not-being-phd-and-yet-teaching.html (short link: http://bit.ly/about-me-not ), first posted on 20th Aug. 2016 and last updated on 24th Feb. 2020.
I thought some readers who are not knowledgeable about Indian Computer Science academia may wonder why I was teaching lab. courses in the Indian deemed university (DU) though I am not a Ph.D. in Computer Science or otherwise educationally qualified in Computer Science. So I thought of putting up this post explaining the situation.
Well, I did not join the DU for an academic career. I retired from commercial work in Aug. 2002 and moved to a spiritual town in Oct. 2002 with an objective of focusing on my "spiritual career" there if the spiritual master there was willing to accept me for such a role. To cut a long story short, in January 2003 my offer to provide Seva (free service offered with a spiritual mindset) to Dept. of Mathematics & Computer Science in the DU was accepted, based on my industry experience of 18 years in international software industry (and not based on my educational qualification). Note that Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, Late Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, and Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook, all three of these iconic software industry figures did not complete their graduation (forget about PhD). So I am more qualified than them educationally as I am a graduate!!! What matters is their industry achievements/experience. Academia is not the only place one can learn software development. The software industry is a superb place to learn and practise software development, perhaps far better than Indian Computer Science academia as it is now.
Educational qualification wise, I am B.Sc. (Physics) from Bombay University (passed out in 1983). I had joined M.Sc. (Physics) in Bombay University but due to money problems decided to drop out of my M.Sc. after around six months. A few months after dropping out of M.Sc., in March 1984 I was into the software industry as a trainee programmer in my first software company, Datamatics, Mumbai. My biodata is given in an Appendix of this book and can also be viewed here: https://ravisiyer.files.wordpress.com/2020/02/202002-ravisiyerbiodata.pdf (short link: http://bit.ly/rsi-biodata ), and details about my software industry experience is also given in an Appendix of this book, and can also be viewed here: https://ravisiyer.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/raviiyerindustryworkexperience.pdf (short link: http://bit.ly/rsi-workexp ).
At the time I joined the DU I had no demands whatsoever about designation. But I think the official designations provided by Principal, of the DU campus, to me of Honorary Staff, Honorary Faculty and Visiting Faculty over my nine year stint, were fair. Later, as I studied UGC norms for such matters, I realized that the right designation for me from UGC norms point of view would be "Visiting Faculty". [In fact, in that DU campus, they used to use a term "Regular Visiting Faculty" to describe people like me who were staff doing teaching function (for FREE typically) for the whole academic year, to differentiate us from other Visiting Faculty who would visit the university for a few weeks in a year, typically (for FREE).]
Now, I could have chosen to do Computer Science research and publish academic papers on it, which would have made me PhD equivalent in Computer Science (5 published papers of certain degree of standing is considered equivalent to Ph.D. as per UGC norms, if I recall correctly). As part of my Seva, I used to act as technical consultant for M.Tech. projects and have published two conference papers as a co-author along with the student and another Visiting Faculty from the USA who was a regular academic Professor. I did that work only to help the student and the department (as it counts towards the department research profile).
If I wanted to publish these 5 papers to meet UGC requirement mentioned above for PhD equivalence, I surely could have done it. Please excuse me about blowing my own bugle, but I have to say that it would not have been a problem for me at all. But I had NOT moved to the spiritual town for an academic career in Computer Science! I had come for a "spiritual career". So I consciously chose not to spend time on doing Computer Science academic research and publishing papers in it (except in the above mentioned two cases to help the students & dept.) My expertise was on software development side - implementation side. I preferred to limit myself to that role which was perfectly OK for my role of teaching software development lab. courses and being technical consultant on software development aspects of M.Tech. (Computer Science) projects. [I also played a part-role of Software Lab. Manager for the first 5 years of my free service (Seva) stint in the DU.]
My main interest in using my spare time after my teaching and technical consultant free service in the DU, was in spirituality & religion. I preferred to do a lot of reading in that area instead of doing Computer Science research. I think I have read far more books from the DU campus library on spirituality & religion, than I have read books from that library on Computer Science or any other subject/field!!!