Month: November 2012

An Economics Sūtra

Professor Jayati Ghosh of the Centre for Economics Studies and Planning (CESP) of the Jawaharlal Nehru University has been very appreciative of the new book by our colleague G. Omkarnath of the School of Economics (as well as the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy), Economics: A Primer for India, recently brought out by Orient Blackswan. In a review in Frontline she says: This book should be required reading not just for the average person who wants to know more about how the economy and economic policies affects her own life, but also for media persons, government officials and legislators who determine economic policy, and even those regularly engaged in pursuing the profession in different ways. This may be a sad commentary on the state of public knowledge about economics. But the unfortunate truth of that statement shows how important it is for books like this one to have very wide readership and dissemination.

The fact of the matter is that there are few books that are written with sufficiently clarity in most fields, and especially on matters in the social sciences, where examples and instances from a local context can make the immediate connection. Prof. Omkarnath’s book is therefore quite unusual. The review has this more to say: … a new book by G. Omkarnath, Economics: A Primer for India (Orient Blackswan, Hyderabad, 2012) comes as a welcome addition. It is usually an act of great courage to write an introductory book on anything, and it is probably even more courageous to do so for a subject like economics. This book is nothing if not ambitious: it attempts “to bridge the gulf between the real world and introductory economics”, by introducing the subject through the medium of the Indian economy.

Given the grand nature of this task, the author has done a surprisingly good job, presenting the basic ideas of the economic structure of society and of change through time in a logical, clear and consistent manner. Omkarnath concisely discusses issues of production, distribution and growth; of market functioning and how it can be socially embedded; of the significance of macroeconomic variables like savings and investment and how they are measured; of various government policies and their effects on economies, including both state intervention and liberalization; of the challenges of economic diversification and industrialization in affecting both productive structures and employment; of the significance of petty production as well as the persistence of informality; and other issues directly relevant to the Indian economy.

There was a formal release at the University a few weeks ago, in collaboration with the publishers, Orient Blackswan. As the blurb on their website says, “Economics: A Primer for India is tailor-made for foundation courses in undergraduate programmes. Its pedagogic standpoint is based on two convictions. First, a foundation course need not invoke formal economic theory which is a contested terrain, especially at the present time. Second, such a course should be grounded on the empirical reality of the economy in which students live.

Context. As I remarked in an earlier post, some things are better taught with local references, and keeping the local backgrounds in mind.

Jayati Ghosh adds: Another significant feature of the book is its recognition of distributive issues – of how different economic processes and policies have different distributive outcomes, and that nothing is “neutral” in that sense. This enables a better understanding of the political dynamics that are closely associated with economics, within national economies and well as in international economic relations.

Obviously, in a book that attempts to deal with so many important concepts and to cover such a large ground in a relatively short space, there can be quibbles about the weight given to different ideas or about the degree of explanation provided for particular concepts or processes. But these are really no more than quibbles, because the overall result is an impressive one.

We need many more such books: local reference points are a great help in effectively internalizing universal subjects, and their value in pedagogy cannot be underestimated.

Inspiration Transfer

We had an unusual treat last Sunday, 11 November. Professor Rudolph A Marcus of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry (1992) was conferred the degree of Doctor of Science (honoris causa) of the University of Hyderabad.

Marcus, a theoretical chemist, was awarded the prize in 1992 for work that he essentially carried out in the 1950’s, on an explanation of how electrons are transferred from one species to another. Electron transfer is, arguably, the simplest form of a chemical reaction, characterised by the fact that no “bonds are made or broken”. Because charges move around though, there is considerable reorganization of the environment. As has been gradually recognized over the years, electron transfer plays an important role in phenomena ranging from photosynthesis to corrosion. It is not an exaggeration to state, as has often been done, that without it life cannot exist.

The event on Sunday was structured around a formal scientific talk entitled Electron Transfer Reaction Theory in Chemistry – from the Isotopic Exchange Reactions of the 1940s and 1950s to the Modern Solar Energy Conversion Era (see the abstract below). In a discursive introduction to the history of the field, Marcus explained the various different experiments that were necessary to validate the theory and just why the gap between the original theory and the award was so long.The talk was riveting, and not just because Marcus is a Nobelist: the vibrancy and enthusiasm in the delivery belied the speaker’s 89 years. He still teaches and guides students, he finds himself getting interested in current experiments, and is always out to test his theories of which there are several. From the time of his Ph D, which dates to 1946 or thereabouts, to now, it has very much been a life in science and a life of science…

But the true value of his presence came through in his subsequent interaction with students both outside the auditorium (see the picture above) as well as in the Conversation with Rudy Marcus, a free-flowing exchange when anyone could (and did) ask him questions on any aspect of his work and life. As a colleague wrote to me the next day: Two hours with Rudy was like a two semester course!

There was much to learn from him- mainly his passion for science and his approach, that combined a deep appreciation of mathematics with a respect for experiments, and the knowledge that theory cannot be applied if it is not “simple” to do so. And it was difficult not to be enthused- he has been an inspiration to generations of theoretical chemists !- by his continuing curiosity, his enthusiasm, and his intensity.
In his long career, starting at the Brooklyn Polytechnic, then at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and now at the California Institute of Technology, Rudy has taught generations of students, though he has not had a very large research group- four or five students and a couple of postdocs most of the time. The problems he has attacked typically focus on experimentally observable effects. Speaking earlier in Bangalore, on the need for research that solved practical problems, Rudy stressed the importance of universities in enabling the creative process, namely the freedom to think. I have not found it said better or more economically: “In an university, you will be subjected to a regimen of methodological thinking, intellectual labour and structured intellectual activity. At the end of this, one earns cognitive freedom. Such freedom cannot be claimed as a right.”
He has used this freedom rather well.
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Continue reading “Inspiration Transfer”

The h-index and all that

The UoH has benefited greatly in the past few years by the Department of Science and Technology’s PURSE (PROMOTION OF UNIVERSITY RESEARCH AND SCIENTIFIC EXCELLENCE) programme.

What was also unusual about how the grant was given to the 14 Universities first chosen was that it was based on the h-index, a recently introduced scientometric tool that has now gone viral. For those not familiar with it, the h-index of an academic is a number h such that h of her or his scholarly papers has been cited or quoted (formally, i.e. in a peer reviewed journal) at least h times. First introduced by Jorge Hirsch, the h-index (which has inspired any number of similar indices) captures both the longevity as well as the contribution of contemporary academic lives. On average, that is. A person who has written only 1 scientific paper that was cited once would have an h-index of 1. So would a person who wrote only 1 paper but had 1000 citations, say. Although the index cannot decrease with time, the largest h indices are typically associated with the famous and influential- Nobel laureates typically have indices between 60 and 100 (with the all time high being around 120 or so).

A related measure in the scholarly publishing arena is the impact factor of a journal which measures the average numbers of citations to recent articles in it. Discussing that could take up another post in itself, but the connection with the h-index is clear. Publishing in high impact factor journals is generally good for your h-index. Of course, doing great work is even better.

The DST decided to use the productivity and citability of the scholarly output of a university by calculating the h-index of the institution, namely aggregating papers by university (rather than by author). The hope is that this would reflect the carrying capacity of the institution to support research in a range of disciplines, and would therefore reflect the extent of the scholarly base.

By that token we did very well.  Three Universities were classified as A class, Delhi, Panjab, and UoH, with indices above 50. Give the huge disparity is sizes its pretty clear that in general we punch significantly above our weight.

Anyhow, the PURSE grant (parenthetically one should note that the DST has a way with acronyms, and PURSE is just one in a list that includes FIST, BOYSCAST & INSPIRE…) was used to support research in the University, and somewhat narrowly, just science research. One can make the argument that it is the entire academic climate of an institution that matters. Perhaps when we get the second phase of the grant, PURSE-2, we can have a wider discussion on it and enlarge the beneficiaries as well.

Which brings me to the real point of this post, that many colleagues are doing particularly well on the matter of research, both in terms of its volume as well as its significance, and the PURSE award is just one recognition of that. So many have been elected to professional bodies, others are invited time and again to advise on issues related to research and academics. And several have got the India Citation Award organised by Thomson-Reuters in this as well as previous years. Some of the highest cited published work in the country- and thus some of the most influential ideas- have come out of UoH. By any yardstick, this is very impressive for so young an institution. Our collective thanks to all who contributed to this- You know who you are!

One way to continue that, to keep up the good work so to speak, would be to keep our standards high! Publishing in high impact journals, or in high quality journals that set a significant bar is one way.  Doing work that is important is another. But staying active, not settling for less, and having academic longevity…  That would probably be the best way of all…