'India's top scientific community not above board in plagiarism'

MANGALORE: In a damning accusation, Padmashri Kasturi L Chopra, former director, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, said that the top echelon of India's scientific community are not above board on the issue of plagiarism. If the Chinese are known for copying from others, India stands second in the list and this current state of affairs in India's academics is worrisome.
Delivering the 34th Foundation Day Lecture of Mangalore University on nurturing innovation and entrepreneurship in academic institutions here on Wednesday, Kasturi Chopra said the irony of the situation is such that reputed scholars have plagiarized text while co-authoring book on intellectual property rights.
Even the country's top scientific brain conferred with Bharat Ratna was accused of plagiarism, he said without naming the person.
Chopra told reporters that when a person is credited with publishing 1,400-odd scientific papers in journals, such mistakes are bound to occur. "Even if the mistake is committed by a person's understudy, and if the material so produced is published against a person's number, the individual against whose name the material is so published is guilty," he said.
Earlier, on the Foundation Day lecture, Chopra said that the universities in India should provide higher education to nurture human capital. as an agent of growth of social good for a knowledge society."A close interaction with entrepreneurs, communities and industry needs to be mandated as an integral part of higher education institutions," he said. adding learn to create knowledge and innovations for the betterment of society, he said.
Creation of knowledge through human resources, innovations through research and development, creation of wealth through Intellectual Property Rights and entrepreneurship should be the priorities of Indian higher education.
Knowledge has the power to create, innovate usable and exploitable information to provide new solutions to human needs, Chopra exhorted.
New age universities have to be a place to learn, not to teach. It should be a place for self-learning through interaction and technology rather than broadcast learning, he said.
"Higher education must be a platform to learn what a student wants to learn, and learn to learn; learns to do and learn to work together," he said. There is very little academic autonomy in most universities, little or no administrative and financial autonomy, and zero accountability in learning, added Chopra.
Further, K Byrappa, vice-chancellor in his presidential remarks, said that future Foundation Day of the university will be more of a festival where the best performers, students and alumni, best athletes and other national and international level achievers will be honoured.
The university will also unravel its vision 2030 at the next Foundation Day celebration.