Developing a culture that supports research excellence

The case for investing in research universities in India is well made through its recent National Education Policy (NEP). While the NEP and many scholars rightly point to the structural reforms that are needed, including establishing a National Research Foundation to provide sustainable funding and developing comprehensive research institutions, the cultural norms and practices needed to support these reforms require further examination.

Often used interchangeably with terms such as “research environment”, research culture describes the rules, behaviours, processes and dynamics that give effect to a research setting.

The features of a research culture can be enabling, disabling and indeed distinctive. As my recent study conducted at the University of Oxford posits, the research culture in Indian higher education is also deeply linked with the wider political and social context of a region and nation.

In the case of a diverse country such as India, with all of its many configurations of universities, specialist institutes and other types of higher education institutions, research culture is not a uniform construct but one that is mediated by key differences.

Drawing on the experiences of academics across a range of higher education institutions in Delhi, from the highly research-active Indian Institute of Technology Delhi to the historically significant Jawaharlal Nehru University and anchor state institutions such as Ambedkar University Delhi and others, the study identifies the many dimensions that form a research culture.

These include features such as leadership, strategy, resources, recruitment and development of talent, information sharing, communication, measuring quality and excellence. Though these elements are differently applied across institutions and disciplines, they are all typical of the features that would be expected to be observed in most research environments across the world.

Of more interest, however, are the elements that appear to be distinctive to the Delhi environment and that likely hold meaning for other regions in India’s rich research system.

Plurality of languages

“Science is an elitist pursuit in this country … we must democratise science by ensuring it can be understood in regional languages.”*

Participants in the study described a research culture in which multilingualism has not been successfully fostered. This finding reinforces the aspirations of the NEP, which asserts that more needs to be done to promote multilingualism in teaching and learning, from schooling through to higher education.

The impact of not being able to equip students to learn in their regional languages and having English as the national language has flow-on effects to research, particularly among early career scholars who feel ill-equipped to undertake research activity.

It also emerged that research, as communicated through largely English, means that knowledge creation may exclude many communities that exist in India’s provinces. There is a risk that certain knowledge and perspectives are lost as a result.

Mechanisms to ensure that research can be pursued through multiple languages, as relevant to both regional provinces and at national level, will be key to realising the NEP’s aspirations to develop India’s intellectual wealth and contribution to new knowledge.

Decolonising knowledge

There is a common understanding across a range of disciplines and contexts that a research culture must support academic inquiry that is about making sense of India’s ancient past and not just from the time period of colonisation or that which is seen as important solely in global terms.

The study highlights some scepticism associated with India’s path to becoming a ‘global knowledge superpower’ through emulating Western models of research success and the unrelenting pursuit of international rankings.

While many participants recognise the undeniable influence of rankings and international metrics, they warn that they must not become the sole proxy for what constitutes excellence in research. Some see rankings as rewarding Western knowledge at the expense of developing capability in areas that are important to Indian life and need. Undoubtedly, these concerns are rooted in a fear of Indian knowledge and cultural life being supplanted.

Though particularly pronounced in humanities and social sciences disciplines, these perspectives were also highlighted by researchers working in natural sciences, who asserted, for example, the importance of studying indigenous agricultural processes. Balancing the tensions between the global and the local, India’s past with its future, is an ongoing issue for institutions and scholars.

In fulfilling its objective of “seed, grow and facilitate research at academic institutions”, the proposed National Research Foundation can play a helpful role in fostering a research culture that encourages the exploration of questions that are important to the futures of both India and the global community. After all, as observed by Professor Simon Marginson, national and global science have two-way effects, where success in the national domain provides the foundations and resources for the global one.

National-provincial relations

As highlighted consistently by scholars and policymakers, including in the NEP, this study reiterates the extent to which research was supported varied sharply along national and provincial lines, giving effect to pronounced differences in research culture.

Even when institutions were located within the same region, as was the case in the sample of Delhi institutions, the funding, infrastructure and support between provincial and nationally funded institutions varied greatly.

These observations reflect the general pattern of funding arrangements for Indian higher education, in which limited funding from central government is heavily concentrated in its national institutes of importance, such as the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi.

There also appeared to be differences in the class of nationally funded, public higher education institutions. Participants from Jawaharlal Nehru University spoke about the scarcity of resources and significant demands to supervise students, whereas those from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi highlighted an abundance of support available for researchers.

These inequities have a significant bearing on the research culture in higher education institutions across India, including the way researchers are able to collaborate between institutions and across various parts of the country to tackle common challenges and, indeed, their capacity to contribute to global science endeavours.

Secularism and autonomy

“We feel debarred to explore certain topics related to the political life of this country ...”*

Autonomy can mean many things in the research environment, including in the interactions between individual faculty and their peers and the faculty relationship with the institutional management and indeed the institution’s autonomy from government command and ideology.

Several researchers interviewed for this study highlighted a specific type of autonomy connected to the idea of freedom from religious ideology, which has been a challenge at institutional level.

While not shared by all, the consequences of engaging in research on certain cultural and religious topics were severe, including the fear of losing one’s job and risks to personal safety. This has been the subject of recent, high-profile cases reported by the Indian media.

It also emerged that researchers’ understanding and experiences of autonomy are moderated by a range of factors, including discipline, institutional and departmental leadership and personal expectations. In some environments, it was reported that researchers experienced “unrestricted autonomy” as compared with others where “freedom is more mediated”.

Nevertheless, the study makes clear that the experience of autonomy from religious and political ideology is a critical issue in understanding Indian research culture.

Through the framework of the NEP, there are valuable opportunities to tackle both the structural and the cultural levers that are needed to support India’s research ambitions, and in turn, its capacity to be a global knowledge superpower. While much of the focus has been directed towards the systems and policies needed to transform the country’s research output, understanding the cultural underpinnings of India’s research system is vital to achieving these desired reforms.

Minto Felix is a DPhil candidate in higher education and research at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom, and senior strategic advisor at Monash University, Australia. He is author of the study on which this article is based, which will be published in ecopy soon. *Both quotes are taken from the study.