THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Democratic Research Scholars’ Organisation (DRSO) here on Monday alleged that the Human Resources Development Ministry’s decision to scrap non-NET fellowships is part of government’s aim to privatise the research field.
Thousands of research students across many Central universities, not qualified with National Eligibility Test, will be kept away from the grants given by the government for carrying on with their PhDs and MPhils, said DRSO. “The decision will affect 70 per cent of 35,000 research scholars in 70 universities across the country,” said Vidya R Sekhar, state convener, DRSO, adding that the students’ unions in the state were not, however, interested in taking up the issue.
The University Grants Commission (UGC) recently has barred retired teachers from guiding for researches. According to DRSO estimates, it will disrupt over 1,200 researches and 200 doctoral degrees. The government, in fact, wanted to encourage only economically profitable researches, they added. “The government is planning to privatise well known public research organisations. The CSIR lab at Pappanamcode here has been included in the list.” said Vidya. It was part of the larger agenda of privatising the educational field, she said. The 10th session of the World Trade Organisation’s Ministerial Conference is starting on December 15 at Nairobi in Kenya.
The DRSO members alleged that the World Bank and the WTO will jointly on the occasion insist that education is to be seen more as a tradable private commodity than as a social product.
DRSO functionaries, however, added that they would conduct a convention here on Tuesday to protest against the Ministry’s decision.