Indian Academia Research Articles

CORPORATE GOVERNANCE DYNAMICS IN INDIAN ACADEMIA: CHALLENGES AND CASE STUDY EVALUATIONS

This paper delves into the complexities of corporate governance within Indian universities, shedding light on its implications for the academic and administrative landscape. It addresses key issues such as the absence of clear guidelines and regulations for governance structures, the lack of independence and autonomy of governing bodies, and the need for diversity and inclusivity in decision-making processes. accountability, and effectiveness within Indian educational institutions. It also discussed that corporate governance influences the leadership structure in Indian universities by promoting accountability, guiding decision-making processes, encouraging strategic planning, managing risks, facilitating stakeholder engagement, and fostering ethical leadership practices. Conclusion & Findings-The conclusion and findings of this paper highlight some of the key points like Challenges Identified in Indian universities, best practices advocated, the Importance of Ethical Principles, and call for improvement: Also, this paper highlights the critical role of corporate governance in shaping the effectiveness and credibility of Indian universities, emphasizing the importance of transparency, accountability, and inclusivity in governance practices to foster a culture of excellence and integrity within educational institutions. Through case studies and critical analysis, the paper underscores the significance of promoting ethical principles, academic integrity, and innovation to elevate the governance standards in Indian universities. KEYWORDS – Corporate Governance, Higher Education Governance Issue.

Are Indian Universities Decolonizing Their Curricula? Investigating Reasons for the Slow(er) Development of Decolonizing the Curriculum (DTC) in India

Abstract There is growing recognition that many university curricula are not necessarily fully fit for purpose in the twenty-first century, being elitist, narrow, and unrepresentative; lacking relevance to the students, lacking diversity, lacking inclusivity. However, ironically, given that Decolonizing the Curriculum (DTC) work is supposed to give prominence to othered knowledges, particularly that from the Global South, much DTC work is still being led from and by the West, by former empires/superpowers and former colonialists. In India, it appears universities have been slow to embrace DTC. This article therefore attempts to address this gap by turning our overdue attention to the situation in Indian academia, asking questions about universities’ and academics’ willingness to decolonize their curricula, and seeking to understand the current awareness and perceptions of and barriers to DTC in India.

Effects of Smartphone Addiction on the Physical and Mental Well-being of Indian Students

Objectives: The study aimed to investigate the influence of varying levels of addiction, ranging from no addiction to extremely high addiction, on the physical and mental well-being of Indian students. Methods: The study is descriptive and based on the survey method. The six constructs and 15 physical and mental well-being items were assessed on the 5-point Likert scale. The composite scores were computed and classified into five categories. Findings: The results revealed that students aged 18-22 and 23-27 heavily rely on smartphones to explore their identity, socialize, and engage in academic and professional endeavours; male and female students and 91% of Professional/vocational training students exhibit the highest frequency of moderate addiction. Students (39%) spend 2-4 hours on smartphones daily based on individual preferences, habits, and lifestyle factors. A positive correlation was found between age and addiction group as well as between addiction group and smartphone usage, and negative correlations were found between smartphone usage and age groups. A significant correlation exists between an inability to control carvings (ICC), dependency (D), Conflict (C), Over-Usage (OU) and Withdrawal and Escape (WE), and all these have the greatest contribution to the first variate. MANOVA Analysis Pillai's Trace (<0.001); Wilks' Lambda (<0.001); Hotelling's Trace (<0.001); Roy's Largest Root (<0.001) revealed substantial disparities among groups stratified by addiction severity spanning from no addiction to extremely high addiction across a spectrum of physical and mental well-being dimensions among Indian students. The discriminant function plot effectively illustrated the discernment achieved in varying levels of smartphone addiction, notably accentuating differences among moderate (0.370), high (1.091), and extremely high (1.803) addiction categories. Novelty: This study investigated how varying levels of addiction exert influence on both physical and mental well-being and shed new light on this multifaceted relationship, particularly among students within the context of Indian academia. Keywords: Smartphone Addiction, Physical and Mental Well­being, Usage Patterns, Smartphones, Indians, Students

The Jean Monnet action and the EU public diplomacy in India

ABSTRACT Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the frictions in the EU-China relations, India has acquired an apical position in the European foreign policy agenda. Since 2001, the Jean Monnet action has been transformed into a global instrument of EU public diplomacy. This study aims to provide a preliminary assessment of the Jean Monnet action in India. The objective is to identify the activities financed, the geographical distribution and the measures adopted by the European institutional actors to capitalize on the funds invested in Indian academia. The analysis is conducted by combining quantitative and qualitative approaches. The final goal is to provide an overview of the Jean Monnet implementation in India and to detect strategies that the European policymakers could adopt to enhance the effectiveness of the action in strengthening EU awareness in Indian society.

The future of academic publishing in India: Embracing innovations for quality and global recognition

Academic publishing in India has the potential to significantly impact the nation's progress and global standing. This paper explores the futuristic possibilities and challenges of the Indian academic publishing industry. As technological advancements continue to shape the world, the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and automation in publishing promises to revolutionize content development, distribution, and customer insights. However, the focus on quantity over quality and the proliferation of predatory journals remain pressing issues. To secure a prominent position in the global academic arena, Indian academia must prioritize quality research, adopt AI-driven publishing processes, and strengthen collaborations with international publishers and databases.

Everyday sexism in higher education: narratives of women in Indian academia

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to explore the experiences of different women in higher educational institutions in India. Through this piece the authors investigate how the prevalence of sexism is affecting women in academia in general and their everyday professional negotiations in particular. Furthermore, the article reviews the position of women in higher administrative responsibilities, and academic positions and also views the mundane everyday activities vis-a-vis their experiences of sexism in different universities across India. It is argued that sexism is pervasive in academic institutions in India, but often goes unnoticed and unaddressed in spite of various mechanisms and sensitization programs adopted by the Universities to address the prevailing issues of sexism across academic spaces. Gendered experiences of women have crippling and debilitating implications for women in general and more so it affects their career prospects in universities. in the process it perpetuates patriarchal power structures and hierarchies in the workplace

Guest Editor’s Introduction: Critical Philosophy of Caste and Race

Guest Editor’s Introduction: Critical Philosophy of Caste and Race

Academic Bioinformatics activities joining hands with Entrepreneurial Ventures: A way to go in Life Science Research (Case Studies from Indian academia, start-ups, and the life science sector)

Academic Bioinformatics activities joining hands with Entrepreneurial Ventures: A way to go in Life Science Research (Case Studies from Indian academia, start-ups, and the life science sector)

Academic bioinformatics activities joining hands with entrepreneurial ventures: a way to go in life science research (case studies from Indian academia, start-ups and the life science sector)

Academic bioinformatics activities joining hands with entrepreneurial ventures: a way to go in life science research (case studies from Indian academia, start-ups and the life science sector)

Does research performance explain the “leaky pipeline” in Indian academia? A study of agricultural and applied economics

AbstractThis article documents the existence of a leaky pipeline based on complete enumeration of faculty in two large public academic networks: state agricultural universities and institutions of the Indian Council of Social Science Research. We then examine if there are gender differences in the quantity and quality of research publications of women relative to men that can explain this. As proxies for quality and visibility, we use several metrics, including the number of citations, h‐index, i10 index, and Scimago rank of the journal in which the research is featured. A novel aspect of the analysis is the comparison of time paths of cumulative publications over career paths of men and women professors. Our analysis of research performance is based on scraping publicly‐available data sources, including faculty and institutional websites, and google scholar pages, and represents one‐third (and likely positively selected) of all faculty in these institutions. Our results suggest that women are disadvantaged in terms of number of publications during early career years, however, the disadvantage is mitigated with seniority and women perform equally well or even surpass men later in their careers. Women are more likely to write single‐authored articles and have fewer collaborators than men, indicating that they do not access collaborative spaces as much, and are less networked than men. In spite of this, there is suggestive evidence that women are more quality conscious than men. This nuanced look at research productivity suggests the source of the leaky pipeline does not arise from differences in performance.

Investigating Shame in the Age of Social Media

Shame is one of the feelings most commonly associated with sexual assault—whether it is shame felt by those who know the survivor or the shame the survivor often feels. The #MeToo movement allowed many survivors to confront this shame and recount their experiences on social media. In the same vein, the 2017 List of Sexual Harassers in Academia (LoSHA) set out to expose incidents of sexual assault within Indian academia. When the list came out, however, some discussions focused less on survivors’ experiences of shame and more on the potential shaming of the accused, leading to descriptions of the list as a “campaign to name and shame.” In this context, the word shame itself was associated with the perpetrator. This article looks at what associations of shame with sexual assault might mean in the era of social media movements and what it might mean for the word shame to be associated with perpetrators, critically or even defensively.

Doing Philosophy Comparatively in India: Classical Indian and Western Philosophical Traditions in Engagement

When Western philosophy was introduced to Indian academia in the late nineteenth century, there arose for Indian philosophers a two-fold need: the need to preserve the self-identity of Indian philosophy and the need to dialogue with Western philosophy. In their attempt to defend the distinctiveness of Indian philosophy, the philosophers of the first half of the twentieth century affirmed that classical Indian philosophy was essentially spiritual. The philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century, however, did not have a compulsion to defend Indian philosophy in the face of Western philosophy. Many of them critiqued the traditional view about classical Indian philosophy. For them classical Indian philosophy, too, was a rational discourse and it is equally capable to contribute to the enrichment of philosophy. Today the two traditions—Indian and Western—are known to each other fairly well and hence there is little need to pursue comparative philosophy as a distinct discipline in philosophy. Instead, what should be promoted is an open philosophizing—philosophizing that is characterized by our openness to diverse ways of thought.

Choreographing a Rebuttal: Thinking through Praxis in South Asian Dance Pedagogy

ABSTRACT As an artist/academic, I discuss my pedagogical interventions in teaching Odissi through studio, theory, and praxis courses to populations across university students and professional artists. Through interdisciplinary research, I work at the confluence of historical and contemporary forces. Casteist, fundamentalist, racist, sexist, ablist, and hierarchical modes of teaching and learning plague Odissi as part of the field popularly known as “Indian classical dance.” The appellation of “classical” is itself a byproduct of complex social and cultural forces across Hindu majoritarianism, historical nostalgia, and anti-colonial nationalist resistance. While dance scholars have unpacked this historical complexity to some extent, I apply contemporary trends in performance and pedagogy that have received little scholarly engagement. I ground my work in an ethos of community building creating through lines across the diasporic Indian community and academia. This way of working presents questions of access and ownership as it bumps up against historical entanglements.

Understanding the colonial roots of Indian management thought: An agenda to decolonise and theorise for Indian contexts

Despite several calls to develop indigenous theories to contribute to Indian management knowledge, there has been limited success. There is no well-developed alternate Indian paradigm in management that can sustain a rigorous research programme and be relevant to practice. We argue that the intellectual colonisation of Indian academia due to the prevailing Eurocentrism (and US-centrism) and the use of English as a language for research and dissemination of knowledge are two key reasons underlying this failure. We demonstrate this by illustrating the near absence of scholarly work on Kautilya’s Arthashastra despite its wide acceptance in popular writings in India and its use in management practice. Finally, we suggest strategies to achieve intellectual decolonisation or intellectual freedom to enable scholars to engage with Indian issues and phenomena using indigenous knowledge perspectives and to contribute to an indigenous paradigm that might provide unique insights into managing the Indian way.

The Plight of the Guest Faculties in Indian Academia

The Plight of the <i>Guest Faculties</i> in Indian Academia

SOUL: An Institutional Transformation Framework for Indian Higher Education

The Indian Higher Education sector has made remarkable progress in the last few years in terms of capacity expansion and improving the Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) significantly. Out of the three stated objectives of the national higher education policy, equity and access have been achieved to a large extent, while excellence remains confined to a few pockets. Quality concerns reiterated by reports from government agencies, studies by industry bodies and manifested in rapidly declining student enrolments persist. Therefore, there is an urgent need for institutions to transform themselves to create value for their stakeholders. It will help successfully navigate the challenges facing the higher education sector. We present SOUL (Strategy, Operations, Urgency, Leadership), a comprehensive institutional transformation framework customized for Indian academia, enabling leadership teams to introduce validated interventions and global best practices at their institutions in a phased manner. SOUL is novel, relevant and timely, especially in the Indian context considering that disruption and crisis create opportunities for institutional transformation.

The role of stress personalities: a comparative study between Indian Academia and industry

PurposeStress is the most common emotional or mental state that employees experience during their work. The employees in academics and industry are facing increased levels of stress as they progress through their work. The study aims to investigate the relationship between academic and industry employees’ stress personalities. West Coast psychological consultants Mary Dempcy and Rene Tihista distinguish between the seven various types of stress and offer suggestions to deal with it.Design/methodology/approachIn this study, the authors have built a survey questionnaire using a sample of 195 respondents from the industry and academic of North India and analysed their responses to find their stress personalities at work. The Independent sample t-test approach has been applied to analyse the employee stress personality.FindingsThe study finds out that stress is a sophisticated defence mechanism that is unique to each individual and varies depending on the environment. Using employee response of academic and industry, the study covers the essence of seven types of stress for individuals, and that lent good support to the framed hypothesis.Research limitations/implicationsThese seven types of stress have importance and different levels to knowing their appropriateness to the individuals and suggest to take necessary action of plan. It shows the individuals feel about stress, how the bodies react to it and how to cope with it are all indicators of the personalities, attitudes and adaptability.Originality/valueThe novelty of this study is to apply Mary Dempcy and Rene Tihista’s stress personalities compared with the two respective categories.

How collaborative is Indian academia? A case study of top three ranked institutions

The present study employs bibliometric methods to examine the pattern of existing collaboration in India’s top three ranked academic institutes using publications for the period 2000 to 2020 indexed in Web of Science. The results show although the number of collaborations and the degree of collaboration have increased over time. However, the collaboration coefficient remains almost the same in the three institutes. The lesser negative Pearson correlation between authors and articles with a higher positive Pearson correlation between articles and citations for JNU publications suggests that collaboration with a smaller group is more successful than a larger group for gaining citations. Collaborative publications of Banaras Hindu University (36%) and Indian Institute of Science (33%) are more inclined towards authors of the same department, while for Jawaharlal Nehru University, it is with other authors from different universities (41%). The foreign collaboration for all three institutes is almost the same. The network visualization of collaboration in three institutes suggests that the collaborative research in IISc is more diverse than JNU or BHU and in national collaboration,distance between two national organizations also play an important role for strong collaboration. Overall, theoretical aspects of physics lead in collaborative publications followed by chemical sciences. Agricultural biotechnology, clinical medicine, polymer sciences and nanoscience are some emerging disciplines where organizations are increasing their participation through collaborative research.

University-Industry Technology Transfer in India: a Plausible Model Based on Success Stories from the USA, Japan, and Israel

AbstractPatenting and technology commercialization activities are rapidly gaining momentum in Indian academia. Currently, there is paucity of data suggesting technology commercialization activities among Indian academia. This study aims to examine issues regarding technology commercialization among Indian academics. The objectives of this study are to (1) understand the policy implications of university-industry technology transfer and (2) propose a conceptual model for technology transfer suitable for Indian scenario. The data included for our analysis is drawn from our previous study of 25 Indian Universities. The orientation of the paper is as follows: “Literature Review” is subdivided into two sub-sections — “Policies Implemented for Leveraging Successful Academic Research Commercialization in the USA, Japan, and Israel” and “University Research Commercialization — Case Studies of Universities in the USA, Japan, and Israel” are presented. “Methodology” deals with the methodology used for the study. “Discussion” is further subdivided into three sections — “Analysis and Comparisons of Policy Implications on University-Industry Technology Transfer,” “Practice of Academic Technology Transfer in Indian Universities/Institutes,” and “Conceptual Model Recommended for University-Industry Tech Commercialization in India.” “Conclusion” concludes the topic. The current practices of academia-industry knowledge commercialization in India are limited, and the paper is an attempt to propose a suitable model to encourage commercialization activities by Indian universities.

SOUL searching: a theoretical framework for change initiation and institutional transformation for Indian higher education institutions

The Indian higher education sector is at an inflection point. Declining student enrolments, non-conformance to quality standards and industry disconnect have raised serious existential concerns for a large number of institutions. Therefore, there is an urgent need for institutions to transform themselves to create value and successfully navigate the challenges confronting them. We present strategy, operations, urgency, leadership (SOUL), a comprehensive theoretical framework for institutional transformation, customised for Indian academia, enabling leadership teams to introduce validated interventions and global best-practices at their institutions in a phased manner. SOUL is novel, relevant and timely, especially in the Indian context considering that disruption and crisis create opportunities for initiating change and undertaking institutional transformation.