One of the key reasons behind this appalling health-care situation of our country is the public systems having been increasingly privatized. Health is supposed to be a human right, to be made equally available to the rich as well as poor (at least, when it comes to children). That’s one of the major arenas the taxpayers’ money should be directed to. But, today, health is up for sale, and we are made to feel happy about it under the disguise of globalization and the whole corporates-bringing-in-more-accountability crap. Here is a link to a world-wide movement working for health as a right - http://phm-india.org/.

That is very interesting….

The anonymous comment is very enlightening, given that research is still a kind of “new” thing for Indian students very often finding the real way to access how well things are going is difficult.
I had a similar opinion that publications should be secondary and the work should be the primary goal for research but the general trend is that your research’s value is only evaluated from your publications more or less. People get interested in your work once they see you have some top-notch publication.

@Sukesh: I agree quite a bit with you on ur observations, but frankly being there and done that I assume 3/4 year in BTECH should probably be a right time to think about life’s calling. If that doesn’t happen one should be sure about taking a year in Master’s degree extra is as much a risk are not taking it. Because you are not even sure that Industry experience would be anything better. But yeah the confusion does exist and most of my colleagues had it too.

This is one aspect which young researchers at IIIT-H must pay attention to (particularly those who have been around for a while, invested lot of time and effort but havent met their own expectations). May be a continuous monitoring/feedback mechanism which indicates ones progress towards the solution will help students avoid thinking that they have been wasting time on the particular problem. From my experience, I feel better advisor-student interaction is also a factor that can be improved here. With increasing number of graduate students, this has become a serious issue, I guess.

The only way to assess your research work is whether you can understand the problem, formulate it, solve it and show better results. It this understanding of issues that will make you a top-notch researcher, rather than few publications in top-notch conferences.

Students publish in top-notch places hoping that it will give them admission in top-notch place. You should show substantial understanding of the problem you are addressing to convey that you can think beyond the box, and have a systematic way of addressing the problem. If this comes out in your SOP, and letters by recommender’s, then you are through.

If the motivation (for you, and your adviser) for doing research is to just publish in top-notch conference - then your goal is very difficult to meet it. If the goal is to solve a problem, come up with a nice approach, understand nuances of the problem and show it.This is possible and will make you lot tense in doing the work. If a good conference accepts this reasoning then you have a winner.

So, one should get our motivation for doing research is right. Getting paper in top-notch conference should not be only aim, it can be in my life time I will get few there. But my aim is to enjoy doing research and solve problems, and people will appreciate the amount of understanding of a given area I have.

One should really ask how many have been publishing in top-notch conferences, and how many have real good understanding of an area. And which do you value more! This should not mean you should not try publishing in top-notch place, but if it gets rejected that is fine, but you should check have I got better understanding of the problem I am addressing, and a reasonable solution.
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Hey Dude!! long time. Yeah.. the WW series idea sounds good but thats tons of material to write. Besides, any account of that long story will surely have a bias owing to the very nature of my investigation and the order in which I am reading the material.

Regarding the apologies thing.. I never broke ties with you :P. Have you forgotten all the pizza parties!!.

Don’t apologise to me. I always knew that your were a jerk !

Overqualified. Come to IIIT! Long time no Age :((