 gone through all these talks by eminent speakers, it is perhaps a good exercise on our part to revisit the position of psychology in the contemporary Indian context. And it is our privilege to have a preservation mission here in our panel. In the book Psychology in India, he has contributed a chapter on psychology in India and retrospect and prospect. So I invite you sir for your opening remarks. The chapter that you are referring to is concluding chapter of the exercise of fifth survey of research in psychology in India. It was sponsored by ICSSR and it tries to recapitulate the developments in psychology in India and looks into the details of professional and academic developments. I think it is right time to examine and see how psychology has grown in India and what are the prospects for its future. Let me make it clear that psychology as a discipline was introduced in India in terms of a standard discipline with definite content and boundary and it was imported from the European tradition. As we know the kind of structure which was created by professor Burjandranath Seelat Calcutta who was asked to develop the program was largely based on European universities and it was accepted as it is and it transacted in the same manner. Now this kind of situation created a perspective that there is a definite kind of content and one should not make any effort to compromise with the details of that. And therefore this was a new discipline while psychology as a human phenomena deals with society and it has to be intrinsically cultural. The principles theories which were taken as constituents of psychology discipline were considered as separate and I think that many of the universities maintained that stance and they hardly referred to Indian ethos or problems of Indian society or the work which was done in the Indian context. So a kind of insularity was there and that provided a kind of research output, a kind of training which maintained a distance from the Indian ethos. So we wanted to maintain the issues, questions, methods which were very similar to what was considered as standard in terms of Euro American tradition and the academicians who were trying to provide leadership thought that it would be very appropriate to maintain that distance but after saying this I must mention that from the very beginning there were also certain attempts to look at the problems of society they were not very prominent but they did exist. For instance the initiative by Girindrasekar Bose at Calcutta University which seems to be the beginning of the psychological discourse in India was very much concerned with Indian ethos. His work on Odupa's complex, his work on repression and his analysis of many of the issues within psychoanalysis provided a perspective which was different from Freud and in fact Freud wrote that it's good to see my work is being taken seriously in a language which is very far from his own place, his own country but he was not very happy with the kind of analysis which was presented by Girindrasekar Bose. Bose also made a commentary on the work of Patanjali's Yoga Sutra, he also wrote a small book on scientific method so a critical position was also taken. I also remember that it was 1909 when there was a treatise about the science of effect and emotions by an Indian author Bhagwan Das, a philosopher so there has been an attempt to look at problems from Indian perspective they were not prominent so there was recognition but it did not influence the academic ethos and academic program of teaching so this kind of division was maintained so attention to the cultural processes was at a low key perhaps there was lack of familiarity with the kind of psychology which was developed in the Euro-American tradition so people thought that let us consider it without any kind of compromise in its principles, in its methods and I think that was a backdrop against which the courses started in different disciplines now with this beginning we find that psychology has gradually diversified the different domains like psychological testing, experimental psychology, clinical psychology, social psychology have grown in various areas, in various domains effort was made to examine theories and the received view of science which maintains hypothesis testing or examining critical predictions was considered to be the job of a psychologist and a cadmium and that provided the kind of orientation to organize teaching and research I think it was 70s that psychologists tried to change this perspective and they moved towards applied research where attention was paid to the problems of prejudice, problems of poverty, problems of mental health and I think the institutions like NIMHAS and similarly institutions where psychiatric training was introduced where professional training was introduced like IIMs and other training institutions they created a new agenda that psychology has to grow in the direction of attending to problems of emerging society as society which is growing in terms of technology which is trying to capture the new developments taking place at global level so this provided impetus for expansion of psychology at the same time the democratic aspirations of the country require opening of various academic centers, colleges, universities in various areas and at this juncture we find that this unplanned expansion has led to some compromise with the quality of teaching and research it is important that to consolidate a discipline and to help discipline grow as a knowledge enterprise it is crucial that there should be proper manpower planning it's unfortunate that in many university departments the recruitment process was delayed and gradually there is lack of people, experts in different areas and it's really a challenge how to address that at the same time you will recognize that in metropolitan cities there is high demand for psychologists working in the clinical domain we need counselors, we need clinical psychologists, we need people who work with various NGOs so I think this sector is emerging in a prominent way and students of psychology are attracted towards such jobs and they are going to those different areas where psychology has certain important application so this is another change which has taken place what I think is that with diversification the kind of training which was required has not grown with quality and I think the kind of teaching programs which are run at different departments and universities they are more academically oriented and the kind of connection or link which is required with other institutions in society like hospitals or schools I think that is missing it's very unfortunate that we don't see the reciprocity and various academic disciplines maintain their own identity and that has led to kind of research which requires collaboration across different disciplines and that has not happened so the study of poverty was done by psychologists or by political scientists or by sociologists and there is hardly any link across these various disciplines it's one example there are many issues which require inputs from different disciplines so lack of collaboration across disciplines is another problem so the kind of work which has been done by psychologists has attended to psychologization of various issues so the social problem is treated in terms of psychological variables and philosophies and we don't translate it into the mechanisms which are understandable by the society or which are very near to society and I think that is one reason why psychology is not receiving the attention by policy makers and others and it is important to develop some mechanisms of communication what psychologists do the kind of research which they publish even if it is good, it's not accessible to the people it's not available to the policy makers I think that is one important gap that has happened and I think that the professional bodies have not been able to succeed in creating that impact through their publications, through their journals, through their lobbying I think in a democratic set of it is important that we must showcase the work that has been done I hope that these ideas provide some impressions about the state of psychology in India with diversification there is an attempt to look at new developments and I must recognize that the contributions which are made in areas like defense research, in areas like health research, in areas like educational research I think these different areas pose a number of problems and there is growing interest in these areas and the need of society to provide inputs pertaining to the various social problems is increasing and psychology departments, psychologists and the professional bodies of psychologists have to attend to these needs seriously we had a completely elaborated description of the whole phenomena I would like to add couple of things and go to the other panelists same for example it has been observed that psychology usually is not the first preference of students when they come for their undergraduate admission in colleges and universities similarly the high rank holders in the system it has been observed that largely they go to other social sciences stream or other streams of education rather than opting for psychology this in itself could be detrimental for the overall level of undergraduate or post-graduate teaching subsequently two-three other important things like in the late 60s when the UGC started the new scheme of Centre for Advanced Studies and Centre for Special Assistance Psychology Departments at two universities Uthkal and Allahabad they were elevated to the status of Centre for Advanced Studies and this whole idea was to develop certain departments which would play some leading role in terms of giving research direction to the country simultaneously the departments of psychology at Deh-le-Gorakpur and Tirupati universities they were elevated to the status of Centre for Special Assistance and they were supposed to provide leadership in the areas of research teaching and professional activities now one can re-look at this whole development the way things were planned and try to find out that did psychology achieve the stipulated targets that was initially set up by the UGC or in the late 60s and what were the factors that led to whatever final outcome that we achieved one interesting thing perhaps in the Indian context also is that most of the departments they developed around single dominant scholar and therefore their interest, their training they decided the specializations of the department once they were out of the department there was a sudden and sharp decline in the level of academic achievement the level of academic orientation within those departments Prof. Ramadha Singh has been at one point associated with teaching at IIT Kanpur then at IAM Ramadabad then at National University Singapore and now at IAM Bangalore now that you have seen the two sites at two different point in time where do you see psychology in contemporary India? I look at psychology altogether differently and let me spend some time over the history psychology used to belong to philosophy so when we decided to become a science the first major challenge was can psychology be science? and philosopher can't say that psychology cannot rise to the level of natural science because it is not possible to treat its data mathematically to him mathematical treatment of data is the sign-quenan of science so if you look from this angle our initial challenge was to establish psychology as a science and in that I would like to make some observations so this challenge to quantify lead to psychological testing and assessment as one branch and second thing became that if something is science then you should be able to explain things you should be able to demonstrate some effects that lead to the experimentation part and we adopted or borrowed method from physics and chemistry in fact the father of experimental psychologist wouldn't say that consciousness is mental chemistry you see how we borrowed and many Indian psychologists claim psychology has a unique problem in this country or these I disagree with it in my view look at the history of science each discipline each borrowed from somewhere whether it is physics and chemistry they are also borrowed from somewhere else they did not emerge here automatically and the difficulty which biology faced that when Galileo questioned the existing theory and came with his heliocentric what was the suffering problem so we all have a notion and if you come up with something which can question the existing knowledge people would resist so biology came late, psychology came later because we question that look we are not rational being we are governed by unconsciousness so basically you are exposing human being and they would not like to accept something which can show their weakness so that was the history so the two challenges we have can we quantify and can we demonstrate something and explain it so assessment led to psychological testing idea which had wide applications right from the beginning world war gardener Murphy example professor Dalal mentioned in India in the minds of main question so we were concerned about application but the issue was whether we are ready to deliver it and in that context Indian Science Congress Association had a section of psychological and educational sciences because they expected that we are on par with other sciences they also accepted from that point even in American and British tradition if you go who bear the our subjects of history animals, rats and we used to say psychology of rats not human beings because the challenge was Egypt science and gradually then we shifted to social psychology organizational psychology so this is the natural evolution of any science that we start with it and then we said ok we can do experiments our experiments are applicable we can explain things, we can come up with a theory so basically we started with learning, memory, perception these were the things in psychology social psychology, organizational psychology these things came much later just like they are complaining they are not relevant for India in any society these questions are asked I don't agree to that they would become relevant at a different point of time so when we came that way psychologists who were not really trained they cannot really deliver the scientific out they started promising things or deliverables which they could not deliver for example, Utkal was the first centre of advanced study Allahabad, what was the name? national development and what is your social change social change and what is the outcome of it the policy makers are not so dumb that you give a big title and you don't deliver anything they would accept it so we actually demonstrated something which made us incredible this is my analysis of it now go to the other countries in spite of these IITs, IIMs institutes of medical sciences they started acknowledging psychology so by that time we had started human beings we had started developing different kinds of scales if you see to the testing what would be the market in this country just designing tests, examinations can be a big employment agency for psychologists in the country and I don't know my two other colleagues or three of you can tell me how many psychologists are actually involved in test construction, checking the reliability their validity, their psychometric properties how many consulting firms are doing it what is our involvement, very little so assessment part we ignored where can we demonstrate our competence let's come back to the scientific part when we come to the science part our training became weaker when we were not ready to train people as a scientist we started saying them to do applications so people started studying tribal groups puberty some of the things where we cannot actually deliver it so that exposed us untrained people high promises and we could not deliver it contrast it in 1986, Ajahn visited Singapore and Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew hosts a barbecue dinner for me and Ajahn said before that he could not allow teaching of psychologists in Singapore Ajahn recommended to him that you have all these problems because you don't teach psychology now Lee Kuan Yew calls the Prime Minister how come we do not have a psychology so somebody who had studied psychology in B.A. in Britain he was made in other department and it was started and then in 1988 I go there that department is now housed in department of social work so they did expect that it would have application part they did give me a consulting work can you help me how Singaporeans can be made better volunteers they spent some time it was a client problem then they said that ok we have to have a full-fledged psychology department and it should become a really good department so now think about it in 2005 we became a full-fledged department if you go to the website of the existing faculty members there is not a single who does not have publication in top rate journals in contrast what we did here we did send some people abroad for higher education we brought them and made them professor so soon that they stopped doing it so there is no challenge for you to demonstrate these are the expectations here so naturally there would be a decline another thing I noticed that once you have done PhD that becomes like there is nothing to be learned we did not spend time over self-renewal which is necessary professor Dalal is here the way we use to analyze data and how we are analyzing it the way we use to restore data and how we are doing it there have been revolutions so if the PhD I did in 73 with analysis of variance if I still use that one or if a student says that what note you have given then I feel assumed of myself that you did not upgrade yourself all those things have become redundant so this we did not concentrate either and that applies to all social sciences not in psychology not in psychology in particular all social sciences and about experimentation I would like to mention here that psychologists have made solid and basic contribution as experimentalists and our effects have been profound the best example you can see that economists who we are spending all the time in field naturalistic situations which our psychology colleagues are complaining that we have not been doing they have been very prominent in planning commission they are well respected by the government but what they have realized this is a science in which I can tell you tomorrow why did my prediction go wrong yesterday is this a science so economics is now coming back and establishing experimental economics so economics people are establishing lab and we are abandoning lab then some people say we don't deal with social problems no psychology is not to deal with social problems psychology is basically a study of an individual sociologist studies social institutions societies and groups and once we study individual then we look for generalization beyond one individual, two individuals three individuals then there is a natural extension to the group but our focus is not social systems our focus is individual then as Kretz and Karthik later on first he wrote problems and methods of social psychology later on say individual in society so this is another problem of the orientations so in some I would like to say that we got confused about whether psychology is something like a medical science where I can write a prescription and headache and stomach problem would be solved that was one the second issue it became that we ignored this part that first it has to develop like a science and once we do it science we train people we allow them to self renew themselves and then extend the knowledge so this became another issue here and because there was a big gap between what I promise and what I deliver we lost our credibility now look at the same Singapore now why is it famous go to their library go to their publications things have changed in 90s a Japanese would have a problem talking in English in a conference and as Professor Gisra the publication of Chinese you would see at that time and now in 2011 we have one article in the journal of social psychology I have a copy I can give you India used to be higher than Japan and China now it has come down so how come China and Japan went higher than us and we declined when we are 1.2 billion people here we have better institutions here better infrastructures here one problem is the social problem I say a global more it is happening at a more societal level what is true in psychology also true with IIT competition engineers what we used to publish at that time and what we are doing now so there is a general decline but within that in my opinion these are the things but still if we determine if we are willing things can be turned around it is not total hopelessness we can turn it around who takes psychology this is one question at Stanford University for undergraduate courses what are the courses which are in heavy demand psychology and economics at any US psychology and economics are in heavy demand most students would like to take psychology we cannot admit that and to me economics is also psychology because basically we deal with earning, saving and consumption which we have now and that is why economics is coming back psychologists are getting Nobel prize in economics we goofed fast in assessment we could have distinguished in making psychology as a science we could have distinguished both come to effect this is my analysis it is time for me to invite Prof. Ajit Dalal now so where do you see psychology in contemporary India sir you know they when I look at the cricket scenario of psychology in this country there are two things I see they are the same trends which are very positive very hard very encouraging and there may be another trend which shows that the bulk of psychology students at the teaching and research does not be at that point of view so there are two different extremes I say is emerging in this country and what we need to do is that our focus somehow on the quality of teaching quality of students quality of research I think that we have to really pay attention to at all three levels because you know if you look at the teaching the courses which we are teaching in different departments in different universities these courses need to be significantly radically revamped to make them more socially relevant to make them more challenging and to give students much more freedom openness and possibilities for creative pursuits because all these courses that I see have become the examination oriented the whole approach is that how they can get good marks in the examinations during the program and that becomes the end of the particular result of the end of the course I think that kind of exposure and that kind of opportunity where students can have the learning by doing themselves whether they are working in the laboratory whether they are working in the field that kind of experiential knowledge and then giving it back and putting in the academic format and structure and then learning from that kind of environment that kind of teaching and the kind of program, teaching program we really need to give places how another about even the faculty you know what I see happening in this country at different places most of the faculty are local to university system they come from the same city they come from the same region and they pass out from the same department so I think that is one of the point which is creative program that those who are from the same place they hardly any motivation to move out of that place to pull their excellence or their worth or their work their job they get a job and they become a job and they join their entire faculty I think that we have to really people just like IIT the students of the same department will not get the job in the same place at least for 5 years or 10 years or something like this so that they have to go out and pull their worth and one other thing is that once they join the job there is no challenge the kind of system which we have is that they will get a job they will automatically after 1 year or 2 years they will get confirmed and after that 6 years or 8 years they will get promotion and they will become leader they will become associate professor without doing anything and this is the kind of scenario which I see all over the factory they will become professors without even publishing because they have put in the service I think that thing we have to change I mean there has to be some system which encourages the talent, the work, the research and that is not happening if this is on publications as I see it is equally important now there is an emphasis one should publish but the emphasis is on the politics I would say what we have been publishing for 30 years back in the international we were competing about papers all over the world and that is shrinking increasing because the data shows that it does the publishing less and less in the prestigious international and we need to understand why we are talking about the motivation to publish what institutions care for is a number of publications not on the quality of the publication and I think that scenario has to change in some way that the quality has to be encouraged quality has to be promoted and another thing that I see in the faculty is that I see as I see in the university system particularly nobody goes to the field to collect data the research and in large number of research chains which are conducted by intense scholars in the university system they have no experience of the field they have no contact with the field they are working the travel these are the students who go collect data come back give data to the professor and they will write that and that kind of scenario it does not lead to any kind of growth of the part of the structure so this is what I mean I see as I think that teaching job has not very challenge competitive and rewarding in that sense that if you do good research you are rewarded there is no such system it will be same rewarding yes but system itself is not here to identify and really encourage this kind of another thing which I see but I see that there is a when I look at the new generation there is a lot of enthusiasm for doing something they really want to prove their worth and they want to really make some kind of contribution you know that kind of enthusiasm that kind of spirit I see and what we need to do is that we need to really make this program which is really which is their spirit another thing which is which is a paradox demand for psychology is growing in the society there is a kind of psychology that counts in industrial area or teaching the demand is much there but we the problem is not of jobs availability but the problem is availability of the proper competent and qualified people to join these jobs you look at the kind of teaching department the teaching faculty is in this position in the department every university has power of teaching faculty they are not finding and they are not finding and they are not they are not people available qualified people whether they are availability of jobs not availability of people who can be found suitable for this kind of jobs I think and that speaks about the quality of training the kind of we are providing in terms of education in terms of other kind of I think I think somehow somehow or the other we need to balance both in terms of research which uses diverse kind of methodologies I think we are doing good in some kind of methodologies but we are not able to pick up sociological methodologies sociological methodologies or methodologies which are maybe at a group level or at a larger level these kind of methodologies which are developed in great extent these we need to really think and educate our students so they are prepared to work at both the levels at the individual level at the societal level and they can work not only with psychology strongly but they prepare them to work with people, faculty and other disciplines that is very important as far as I see so they are both ways and they have hope obviously there is hope that there will be a kind of turning which is happening situations are going through something very good will come out I would like to just add one more to what professor Dalal said see we are producing so many Ph.D. students professor Misra here he edits our journal I think both of them can say honestly in front of the camera how many people actually know how to review the submitted article or examine a Ph.D. thesis when I look at the report or review it seems that the reviewer examiner has not read the thesis I would expect that reviewer examiner should say what the author wanted to do to what extent they have done whether they have succeeded whether they have failed they would say it is a good piece of work it means the quality requirement of it how do I know whether the examiner has read it or not this is the level of professionalism here so it is not just unique to psychology this is unique unique to Indian academia in general and if government and we are serious two points which professor Dalal mentioned I want to hammer here first in breeding has to stop a student of that institution cannot be immediately hired at that institution so a Delhi university student cannot be lecturer, assistant professor at Delhi Allahabad students should not be there they must go outside they can come back as a head and professor we have no objection but I don't want them to be assistant professor and lecturer under the same profession this is the one problem which has lead to this Guru Jalla service orientation so this is one second I don't think we should after two years confirm somebody we have to borrow this American tenured system six years after your Ph.D you demonstrate your competence stay with us in six years I make you assistant professor even in three years if you distinguish if not bye bye this we have to do because that would put pressure on people for self renewal no one should be allowed to teach any course more than three years because when you develop new course you have new challenges you would read new thing you would prepare and you grow see another thing should be done here sabbatical should be made compulsory every six years you must go out not stay home and write a book go out some other institutions some other countries recharge yourself and come back these are the challenges these are the solutions for us otherwise we are coming down I am coming back to the question of imparting quality education because we have studied increase in the number of situations we have shortage of faculties reported across universities I would like to quote two things very recently the president of India asked the universities and I quote him to identify one department in every university and transform it into center of excellence and second thing in the 2006 report of the national knowledge commission which describes the falling standards of higher education as and I again quote a quiet crisis that runs deep now this seems to be much more challenging because at one end you have all these problems that all three of you have been elaborating on the other end there is somebody who challenges you that within a short span of time you identify one department within university make it a center of excellence one commission of the government suggesting that fine a very quiet crisis that runs very deep and needs much more greater attention and earlier in the lectures and even today at some time we came to this point where we did talk about adopting this American model as you are suggesting right now or how Chinese and Japanese persuaded us in terms of quality of education in terms of publication and within India you have no Indian psychologists who are trained within India and those who are abroad get trained and then come back now there could be challenges of multiple level one is that if you have a poor quality at this end and then you have also Indians going abroad and coming back then how do you create a level trained at the time of intake one two if the quality of education has been much more deeper challenge for us and we all know that the PG teaching and research is the backbone of training of the prospective faculty members then the challenge becomes much more intense now if I ask the three panelists one by one that how big is the challenge of maintaining the academic standards of faculty members interval mid-carrier and again at the later stage of submission it's a tough question because there are three important features of the whole context within which the academic concerns operate one is the reward structure the other is the autonomy which is provided to the university departments to run the show in terms of recruiting in terms of training in terms of confirming or providing tenure things like that and third is the broader system which furnishes ground for taking initiators now we need to address these challenges in a big way when I'm using the word in a big way it means that it requires modification in the regulatory mechanisms for instance the departments at times have very little say in choosing the faculty that is the situation in most of the universities there is a committee and that committee many universities even head of the department is excluded from that committee because the structure which has been created by state governments they want a different setup so this has become a very crucial question and I think at the apex level at the level of ministry at HRD and other mechanisms they need to look at it that how this autonomy can be introduced and the department has a way in choosing that so and so is going to provide the right kind of person so we need to create this mechanism of autonomy for the departments to choose persons to teach they should not be imposed on the department and that they are there to do teaching or just sitting and not doing good work and I think there is a real need to create regulation in terms of evaluating the development of the person as processing used very eloquently the idea of self-redual so those teachers those faculty members think that they need to change themselves they need to upgrade themselves they need to learn about new methods new techniques new issues I think this desire has to be created and I think it should be made compulsory that the courses in a particular department have to be it should be made mentally that the courses are revised after 3 years or so and I think it will provide new you know agenda for the department and to re-examine that we have mentioned the two departments as Center for Excellence and the Center for Advanced Studies in Indian universities we know that the situation in both the departments is not satisfactory they are not moving in the right direction and we have provided all the inputs for that so there are systemic constraints which are there and unless we attempt to those systemic constraints things are not going to change that's a big challenge as far as students preference is concerned I must tell you at least the experience at Delhi is that best students come to psychology you see 94-95 percent only those students who get such score only they come to joint psychology so I think we really get very good students who are doing very well in academics and there is quite active participation in various activities and our experience is quite good at the level of students they do take initiative we have created arrangements where internship and training is also part of training at 100 digit as well as post weather level we are creating such mechanism I think the kind of challenge at the student level should also be made in a different way the usual teaching practice where you have to just respond to a set of questions is not enough so creativity in teaching learning is something which has been missing at many places we need to bring that that how learning can be an enjoyable activity and how one can invest the best that person has is at that point and finally I will mention that the kind of reward structure which has been promoted is one which is not which is quite asymmetrical and we often find that the reward is distributed on various other grounds rather than academic merit of the person so we need to address these issues in a big way in various universities and academic institutions one more component which requires revamping and reorganization is the PhD program it's good that UGC has created a mechanism that all PhD programs should be conducted by departments and there should be some work to be done that has to be implemented seriously and it should not be merely to keep a program in terms of providing some basic information or basic understanding it should be rigorous PhD program I think that will make the change if you look at the PhD program in American universities anywhere in the world where education is given you will see that they have to do so many activities the polyphony examination is very tough then they have to learn all the research methods and they have to clear so many courses and PhD dissertation is just a small part and here in most of the universities everything is just the dissertation and it is nothing and that dissertation can be of any kind I am sorry to note that the quantum of work which is required to grant a PhD varies tremendously across universities and even within the department different faculty members have different standards so it is very crucial if you want to improve the quality of education research and teaching program has to be strengthened and we need to create some kind of quality control finally I would like to bring home the point that so far we have not created any mechanism for accreditation the various courses which are run in different universities are so varied that what is taught at one university at undergraduate level is the course for the undergraduate level in some other university there is so much disparity you cannot compare the post grade education across different universities I think national bodies must take this initiative and the government should also support it that a course should be accredited and this is a mechanism which can help to bring in some degree of quality control these are some of the suggestions that I think would be relevant to promote healthy growth of the discipline in terms of application in terms of contribution of knowledge thank you I invite Professor Dalal for his comments well I think I will take the leap for the and I think this issue seems to be very critical to me autonomy of the university department I will take the issue of autonomy at different levels not just the department it should be the autonomy of the teachers within the department junior level senior level and it should be the autonomy of the students both levels I think but I think with the issue autonomy in the department autonomy cannot be absolute autonomy has to go always with accountability I think we need to develop a kind of mechanism where this accountability and autonomy can hold together because in the university system as we know that many times is the single person who is controlling the whole department is the professor that they have and his wish, his preferences, his priorities become priorities of the whole department that kind of you know has to be thought about in this way because the person goes away or beta has the whole department will call it this is what you said I think some kind of a democratic system accountability means the individual teacher is accountable what they are doing and I think the courses that they are not treating I know in my department so in the department some person is teaching the same course for the last 30 years same course they may be changing some component of it but the the course remains the same I think that kind of practice is very damaging for both the students as well as for the teaching and for the faculty as well there is no growth and that is very critical that a course should not be taught 30 years, 4 years, 5 years it should be changed other than that we have not thought about the department in terms of specialization because every department has to think that it should have a unique identity that really the department is known for this particular kind of work lover department is known for this kind of specialization of this kind of teaching research work or any other department so that kind of department if somebody wants to work in that particular area this is the place they need to go and that thing has not developed in this country it is becoming a kind of general department where people are doing different things different times given the opportunities and other considerations and that is to be taken into consideration another thing is that the courses I think of the course I have must have seen courses of many universities same thing with them teaching 10 years back or 15 years back same kind of course with nothing maybe adding something or new other thing but essentially these remain the same no, no, that is not I am interested in teaching learning these courses not necessarily interested in teaching these courses they are teaching from the north which they prepare 20 years back same north they keep on using I think that system has to change the courses have to be met more and more innovative and the elements both ways another thing is that it should be effort to encourage students to take courses from other disciplines if somebody is doing courses in psychology I think there should be one or two courses from other departments and that kind of system because without the explanation of the understanding and knowledge then it is going to be very important that that has to be considered another is kind of rigid structures with the examination and evaluation the university system is very ancient and antedated and I think obsolete and we are mind mindlessly following the same distribution system I think we have to pay serious attention to that how we can bring innovation creativity and openness and newness within the teaching program there should be students get the opportunity to experiment experience and move more I think that is not happening emotionally they are simply becoming degree institutions and there is a pressure from the government that you would increase the intake every time there is a pressure from the university from the government or from the student unions or from other sources that you take more students increase from 150 to 200 so we have a small lab for 30 or 40 students and now we are teaching 200 students and it has to happen but there has to be time I think within that kind of atmosphere if you think that students and teachers can really make some difference for these kind of structural changes have to be processing you from them basically I would elaborate on what they had about the examination part this end semester or end year exam is needed we should have to have a series of activities in which they have testing, they have reports they write a thesis, they write a paper at least independent study where we really say that this is a science you have to do and you have to report and this has to be done right at the undergraduate level so this is one second one the PhD one I am thinking that all good schools are known not so much by their professors as they are known by their PhD alumni most of the research of the famous professors are by their doctoral students, professors would give ideas do the final editing that is not happening we need to strengthen that culture now one reason maybe that the professor is not ready and I we have faced many institutions when I get the thesis or examiner you know they cannot understand the report they say I have no time to revise allow the thesis and then I will take up later PhD is a piece which students would show to other with great pride and delight this is what I have done so that part we have to strengthen and in fact the PhD examiners report should be made public what one has written about the thesis and PhD bhaiva should be in public oral audience where those reports should be shown to everyone so that they can see whether the examiner has actually read or not because I am thinking examiner is as gullible likely to be persecuted as the candidate because candidates I have done you have approved it so I am getting the title so this is at the PhD level now two things I learnt from China in 2011 we had a conference in Yunnan I think professor Rila Mati Krishnan from here while there and I requested her that we write a letter to our own rebel minister Mr. Sibal he should visit and see this campus the new campus of Yunnan university is built in 3200 hectares and it had every possible thing tip top a big campus like that I had seen only at Ohio State this is somewhere in Texas there is another big campus so look at how China is investing in education and how we are doing it so this is another point we did a second thing in China I learnt all the famous Chinese professors from different countries in summer they are appointed visiting guest faculty they come they are provided accommodation whether they pay on the radium I had no idea and their job is to share their knowledge with the PhD students they are doing it in our case we have the talent here I'll give an example here saying that we are no good I have difficulty believing it I'll give an example JP Das, Rabindra Kanungo of Patna University they go do their PhD, come back they feel dissatisfied, they go and they distinguish outside Nandini Ambarri of Delhi University Mahrabian Banaji of Bombay University both are now at Stanford University, was at Harvard so these are the young ones I am saying okay Krishna Samani who is at Stanford they can also make a mark but in our case the problem is we are not giving them environment or infrastructure conducive to creativity and one reason is that we have ignored we said take it for granted or what we say I am not comfortable with the word chalta as long as each one of us let us do our best not the chalta or this is what happens in India I said no then what is in your opinion best we should be doing it that we are not taking it unless we do these things our education cannot be turned around for to lose sight of it we have to give priority to education we have to spend time and psychology is as important as any other science it has become very powerful it is most useful question is how we train their students and the last point I would like to make we have been hearing about application when X-ray was invented what was invented with application purpose what is application now let us go back to psychology when B.F.S. Keener talked of operative conditioning in programed instruction or computer aided learning we have here aren't these good examples of application bandura social learning and its self-efficacy theory did it solve many problems or not so application should flow naturally if we establish ourselves as a science but without establishing ourselves as a science application would not come but this does not mean that I am opposed to this we can take two approach there is a social issue there is an applied problem with the existing knowledge if I can solve that problem and that helps us either to extend or revise the theory that is also a solid contribution or I can simply take a theoretical idea and say that I am going to apply elsewhere like the example I said operative conditioning or observational learning how they were applied we can do like so we are not really balancing it sometime there is no theory there is no idea we do something some research because I think in one of the lecture also I saw one word your inclusiveness your or I saw some word inclusiveness in one and I have not said there are two words in this country to become famous good governance and inclusiveness so sometime whether we can deliver or not we should be very very careful whose lecture had term inclusiveness somewhere your or my something like you see we don't have to go by the popular things first we convince and we can make a mark I actually developed respect for psychology because I had to teach psychology to engineering student here I had to teach psychology to management student here I had applied problem I did not know meaning of reliability and validity until VHEL gave us a project to come up with a test for their engineer training there I saw the utility when it came to the question of designing performance appraisal then I realized the importance of validity they said limited water we have how do we distribute among the fighting farmers in Gujarat then I learned the importance of serif social ordinate goal so applied problems make you think and apply your knowledge so that challenge should be there I am not saying that ignore them otherwise what kind of science ultimately science is for human welfare and happiness to solve the problem but premature application should be avoided premature application should be avoided and you remember like as I said Indian science congress thought we are a science but I think now we have been removed no we are still there but no so you see somebody wanted to respect us we did not command the respect so challenge it on us not on them so this is all I have to say yes we have been talking largely about the structural problems come to problems that basically pertains to individual two individuals or cluster of individuals I would like to quote professor Dalal from his writing a journey back to the roots psychology in India where he refers to my quoting that the professional bodies of psychological associations rarely took any stand on vital national issues they are more interested in holding animal entities where rarely substantive issues were passionately debated most of the conflicts that weekend these professional organizations were often interpersonal nature there was no larger vision of psychology to be and if you look at you know experience of oneself or others you find problem in terms of appreciation of colleagues and the type of collaborative studies that are usually performed that is one and two these professional bodies how do you elaborate their role in terms of teaching training creating resources and continuing education I will first go to professor Misha it's very sad to know that the way professional bodies are conducting themselves is really people don't have ownership people don't give the space to professional organizations in their activity in their academic agenda as it should be given so we don't take seriously this symposium at the National Academy of Psychology meet what we do is that we take it very loosely and we don't perform the way we should perform the professional bodies have this responsibility that they should motivate people they should create a platform to present ideas project various issues and relate to society create a dialogue with society develop certain policies and try to convince the policy makers that these are the key issues and this is the position of this professional body so I think this work has not been done and this requires rethinking how to connect with these organizations and how to run these organizations effectively as you have indicated earlier that there are individuals in departments and when the individual goes then the department collapses that's true and that has happened in many places so the kind of training which is there that requires a kind of authority and those people who are working with that authority find no idea and the group you know dismantles who like to use this phrase that there is no activity I think this kind of orientation to relate to others is a big problem there is a need to provide this input as Buddha said that you should look within yourself and try to become a leader to become an innovator to develop new ideas to go for creativity I think this element has to be introduced in teaching I will give you one example usually in practicals teachers provide one problem that class follows that problem and at times some students do the work and others copy I in my practical classes pose before them a challenge and ask them to design as many you know kinds of activities and it may be done individually or in a group I also give this freedom and I prefer that 3 or 4 students should work and you know take it as a challenge and go for broader issues so for instance I ask them to take up the problem of social representation and we use the theoretical framework developed by maskovicci and others so social representation pertains to so many things it may be old age or it may be democracy or it may be god or it may be education and they have to use different kinds of methods and activities and they are enjoying it so I think there is a possibility to create variety and instead of preparing one report and being copied by all the students I think there should be some opportunity to share ideas think in newer ways our teaching program has a space for this it requires effort and some innovative thinking on the part of faculty and instructors I think some new orientation is required in preparing our teachers I will again emphasize self renewal we have refresher courses which is such courses are done just to ensure that the promotion is there and it doesn't serve much purpose I think we need to reorganize that and every time new issues should be taken up new method should be taken up and it should be more inspiring and helping to identify new issues and new perspectives I remember in one of his interventions the need to think in different ways and he elaborated the point of teaching program and quality of teaching central to revamping higher education I think the intervention has to be done at that level only then we will be able to excel others and our own self quick comments about professional association whatever we had they all seem to have failed we had Indian science congress association we need to perform then we had Indian psychological association and I am like member of both then I also got crafted in NIO in public that I resigned because I thought it would be wasting my time there for any professional association to be hybrid there are some necessary requirements number one first it should have a home which our association does not have it should have an office and it should have a motto we should describe everything clearly we should monitor the quality also we are saying about journal we are saying about reviewer we are saying about PhD programs because we have no monitoring by the professional body similarly the testing you see if industry and other consulting firms are producing tests and selling without approval by a psychologist it is also our professional failure because we should be certifying whether that test is usable or not license from the association that we are not doing so we really in a bad condition about the professional association and my recommendation was that actually anyone who is older than 60 should be out from the association and everything should be given to the youngsters once but it seems that older ones do not want to leave so I gave example of leaving so this is my analysis but I will come for your comment once again at the end so your combustor well I think it is very unfortunate we do not have the very vibrant active natural body, natural result body in this country I think now was there even that time you were thinking that there will be some regional branches or even associations which will be catering to their particular region and I think that kind of thing has not caught up that there are associations and there are more regional associations and there is a network of associations within the country which are doing active professional activity in the field of psychology is really I would say unthinkable that there is kind of a body like now natural academic psychology there is a hospital house meeting body there are 200-300 people a country of 1.2 billion population and there are more than 20-30,000 psychologists who have passed out in psychology and there are only 200 and I have not seen more than that we have 200 now I do not know maximum 300 I have seen I think that is a there is this volumes about the kind of involvement and engagement with the professionals we have to learn what is another thing I will very much agree with professor saying that I think the the leadership of these organizations has to go to the actual organization it has to be because I think they have the enthusiasm they have a long way to go and they have more at stake in terms of the professional growth and I think the enthusiasm and the beauty and the I think these associations can be met more and more vibrant I see one thing very strange in these meetings and conferences that students only provide audience I really see that students are actively participating in the proceedings of the association maybe one or two sometimes they cover the student sessions block sessions the block for students but student has to play the learning experience experience of participating in the kind of body and that in that kind of professionalism I think what we lack in this country is that kind of professionalism that kind of reason that our responsibility is much larger larger than the teaching of a student we have responsibility to the discipline also and that is one thing I seriously that always these bodies actually now let's wrap up the discussion one interesting thing that came forward by all the three panelists was basically extending psychology to aligned areas when you went to the extent of saying let's say economics is now regressing back and coming to psychology I recently saw an interesting book by Mr. Mishra psychology for nurses along with three other authors I have seen a few work of psychologists very closely working with social work people very few but there are a few researchers in our country who have worked very closely with medical professionals so there are some examples not many but some examples of extending psychology beyond the thought dimensions when thinking of psychology for nurses would be a quantum jump from the defined aligned boundaries of psychology let me just add here one point most of the schools of nursing have psychologists faculty members Wisconsin I have seen in US we have a school of nursing now where we have had psychologists yes after all these difficulties that we have discussed there were several suggestions there were a raise of hopes reflected by all the three panelists so to conclude the way forward very quick comment how do we meet the global benchmark with respect to our teaching with respect to our research with respect to our professional conduct whatever we have recommended here if we implement now it would take us 10 years to reach the international now and which tomorrow it would take us 10 years just like what Japan situation I had seen in 90 by 2000 cultural editor is Japanese social psychology was editor was editor of personality and social bulletin they can come and become editor shouldn't we have a day that some Indians should be editing JPSP or experimental psychology or applied psychology academy of management journal was edited by a lady from Hong Kong University so it would take time if we take proactive actions now quick response professor Mishra I think there should be investment investment not only material but intellectual investment by the university community by the colleagues in terms of developing profession which is responsible accountable and which relates to the growth of discipline we need to do some serious thought yes it's right that the younger people should participate but I don't agree that the older people should leave it I think that is not the answer to the problem the older people should provide inputs they help the younger people to grow they should work as mentors we need to create maintain and sustain the dialogue between the younger and older colleagues I think that we need to create mechanisms to create more motivation to encourage people to participate these days communication is easy but we have not been able to communicate effectively we have not been able to convince people and ensure that the participation is going to help them to improve their standing as a psychologist as a learner as a faculty member we need to create possibilities and occasions and arrangements to attract more and more colleagues from the younger as well as the older generation and it's our joint responsibility we look forward to senior colleagues to contribute to this endeavor I hope we will be able to create a platform where there is a possibility to indulge in dialogue offering critique and learning from that critique I think that it's our responsibility as colleagues that we should help others to grow I think it's right time to think in this direction what are your comments the point I think I would like to make in this context improving the quality improving the standards and improving the teaching program I think it's a long term process I think what we need to do in that context is that one thing which professor I think I agree with we have to take this task of mentoring mentoring at different levels teachers training mentoring that kind of encourage he's already talked about it other thing is I think psychology has to open now psychology students I can see that many students who are really contributed are those who have come from other disciplines have come to psychology in the students maybe one medical students maybe they want to experience from other science students I think rather than restricting it to psychology which we are doing in university only psychology students can do PhD or other discipline students I think it has to be really widely open engineering students cannot join the PhD program we have a requisite qualification so that way I think that kind of that kind of breeding widening our net for PhD students I think that may help us really getting good in motivating faculty researchers so friends you had three eminent scholars of this country they have been fantastic teachers I must tell you those of you who have not been to their classes fantastic teachers you can read the general contributions from them fantastic research sustained effort it has been put over decades together you have a good number of books coming from them I must thank all three of you to help the audience understand and finally to guide them to position the state of psychology in India with respect to teaching with respect to research with respect to professional conduct and finally you also heard the way forward from our three panelists