1. . In the recent past ICAR is nurturing many ghost science writers who do not do research but write others work and put their name to improve their CV. They have forgotten that “science is nothing but man in search for truth and unfolding the secret of nature”. But these ghost writers have taken it as fiction writing and as result plagiarism has become the way of life and ICAR’s publication is gradually increasing with these crimes.
2. Culture of bribe giving and taking is becoming a normal phenomenon in ICAR. No-No, I am not talking of money, it is much more poisonous than money in scientific society. A director or head of the division joins in a new institute. Within a month or two some scientist put up their research manuscript for publication including these new incumbent as one of the authors or some time senior author. These guys coolly accept this bribe not even raising a voice in their conscious that when work was carried out they were not in the institute even what to talk about their intellectual contribution. Giving bribe and taking bribe is a crime in the law of the land. ICAR Hqs does not have a monitoring system to uproot this menace rather encouraging it by various means.
3. You are a hard core bio-technologist and my reminding on what kind of research is going on will be a kind of childish act. However, I would like to tell you that in some of the institutes, in the name of this branch, money is being dumped to the Pvt companies. Some scientists just sending the leaves and everything upto research paper writing is done by the company. If this kind of outsourcing is needed, labs should be closed. We started our bio-technology research keeping in mind for capacity building. But in present scenario, it looks like that we are dumping money to foreign companies only. You should initiate a serious review on bio-technology research, institute-wise. Every young scientist is jumping on RAPD, ISSR marker analysis without even knowing the chromosome number and having the knowledge of genome mapping.
4. I find that manipulation has become the synonyms of the management. Ethics and morals have least respect. It has increased over past few years because of, to my understanding, due to score card requirements of ASRB. Can you believe, a young scientist lists his/her each experiments as technology developed. Awards are being purchased to get the number for assessment. According to ASRB, minimum 250-page publication to be considered as book, therefore, printing is done in double space, small photographs are printed as full page, unnecessary space are left to reach the target of 250 pages. These publications do not add to the credit of ICAR, rather invite criticism. Bulletin publications are mostly copy and paste. Young scientists are engaged in such activities. Credit goes to ASRB. All publications in ICAR institutes must be critically reviewed and a system should be kept in place.
5. Variety identification and release is another area that needs your attention. In crop sciences it is more or less very organized. But in Horticulture sciences, especially in vegetables, fruits, flowers, etc needs total revamping. I would suggest that there should be a uniform criteria for annual crops (horticulture included), perennials and trees.
6. I would like to raise another issue of ISO certification of ICAR institutes which is nothing but wastage of public money. Certification (organic, wild-fire, GMP, ISO, BIS etc) are the requirements of trade for assuring the quality to improve the confidence of the consumer for safe product. These certifications add to the credibility and profitability of the company or producer. But in ICAR we don’t need it, because we are not a commercial organization, nor our product needs additional credibility. Hence, the money we are spending on this certification is an additional burden and an unproductive expenditure. Let’s have a public debate on this issue.
7. ICAR has so far not defined its institutional ethics and punishment that one would get when violet these. This is needed and also examplenary punishment also need to be initiated in the system so that everyone respects these ethics.
8. ICAR give lot of money to societies for organizing symposium and seminars. What feedback, in terms of policy intervention ICAR gets to address certain policy issues? How many policy papers ICAR gets from these societies and what are their quality? Who monitors these?
9. Kindly also monitors the Directors’ movement as per the existing rules. Many directors when they are keeping their families in other location than their posting, majority of their tours are via the spouse place. Not only that, they manipulate the days. These are being observed by the juniors and gradually they develop disrespect for the law abiding.
10. I will not increase the list but would like to add one last issue which is bothering too much. The ICAR is a research organization and should restrict its activities to its core area of competence. The dumping of extension activities by the ministers on the shoulder of ICAR should be shaded. It is a total flop. Recent “mera gaon, mera gaurav” activity by ICAR institutions will add defame than fame, since scientists are specialized and cannot give the extension advice that a farmer needs on variety of subjects. [A recent enquiry from a farmer about Kali-haldi was answered that there is no such plant]. The ICAR should be out of these political slogans if they want to do serious contribution in research. Of course some scientists will be in favour of it because it gives them soft option for assessments.
There are still many issues but with these I just want to impress upon that ICAR needs a reform. And I suggest that the reform should start in the mind of the scientists
