Odisha HRD

Mathematics Education in Orissa: Dr. SriGopal Mohanty

January 20th, 2007

I was taking leave from Dr. Swadhin Pattanaik, Director, Institute of Mathematics and Applications (IMA) after finishing checking my e-mail, when we met a lady. She came to get comfort from Swadhin Babu who persuaded her daughter to join IISER, Kolkata this year, rather than going after usual craze of joining IIT. The girl was groomed by Swadhin Babu who used to voluntarily teach Mathematics on Sunday to those who show interest in learning beyond the usual school lessons (I attended one some years back). There are two Oriya students in Kolkata IISER and it seems they are doing well. Swadhin Babu in his mild natured manner assured the lady that the daughter?s future would be promising but would be certainly different from the IIT graduates. This was January 10 and I was finishing a preliminary discussion with Swadhin Babu assessing the impact of a three-day workshop conducted during Jan 7-9 on Stochastic Processes. The purpose of the workshop was to develop certain fields of research and training at IMA by exposing researchers and senior students to certain current fields like Stochastic Calculus, Financial Mathematics and Order Statistics. I happened to arrange the resource persons outside India. The expectation is to explore further possibility of training some young people from Orissa in these specific fields. (Some of you may recollect that at the initiative of Lalu Mansinha, there is a collaboration between IMA and University of Western Ontario towards this direction and at present one student is visiting the University for three months). Swadhin Babu is a visionary. He realized that soon Orissa could become an empty land without any good researchers and well-qualified teachers and the problem would be most acute in Mathematics. The sad part is that the Institute has 3-4 senior researchers who are retired and are approaching seventy and there are none in the age group of 35-60. This realization has come to National Board of Higher Mathematics of which Swadhin Babu is a member. One may wonder what is happening to the universities. In my selective observations I have never seen a strong sense of commitment to research, unlike what I knew about 20 years back. Earlier the finger pointing was to the meager salary. That was redressed, but the situation has gone down the hill. In the workshop, I found there was one from Math Department and none from Stat Dept from Utkal University, in spite of Swadhin Babu?s personal approach. Nevertheless, it was very encouraging to see quite a few teachers from colleges. However, some of them lack very basic understanding of probability theory. Now add salt to the injury by noting that the Government as a general rule has stopped any appointment. This has affected the education very severely. Even replacement appointments are not allowed and thus those rare individuals who have been doing some research have to stop it in order to shoulder the extra teaching load. That is killing the middle generation. It is a pity! The problem needs to be intervened at different levels. 1. Right at the very beginning: Rural Math Talent Search by IMA is designed to address that. This is the fourth year. I believe that ten years of the programme will bear fruits. The only thing to be done is to increase more participants in each further year as the programme is becoming popular. 2. Supply of good teachers. IMA at present is training Math teachers from SC/ST area. There are some 2000 schools, 264 high schools with only 190 math teachers for SC/ST, under the supervision of Deparment of SC/ST Development. The Dept. requested IMA to train the Math teachers. The training programme was concurrently held while our workshop was going on. Imagine the strain on the scanty resources. I am aware of M. Phil and PH.D programme for teachers. However, the Math teachers have to be updated at regular interval and the whole process has to be strengthened. 3. Training bright young researchers. They will be future trainers for training a new generation as well as maintain the quality research level. This is where the biggest lag occurs. One solution is to get some of them trained outside Orissa by identifying a few location/people which /who can help. I was involved in this endeavour in organizing the workshop and believe a small beginning is made ( Lalu Babu is part of this team). Our plan is to take students to be exposed/get trained at some outside universities and at the same time bring some experts who will conduct a crash course on a topic. We cannot but be optimistic. 4. The demographic gap can be narrowed down by creating visiting positions including short visits. (On Jan 26-27 I am attending a Math Training Camp.) All these very much require a very sympathetic understanding on the part of the Government, which must go beyond the political tenure or bureaucratic straight-jacket thinking. Professor Mahalanabis was a visionary who brought the prestigious ISI into existence and was able to maintain its quality. Thanks to PM Nehru who understood the long term role of ISI. ( I am told that even if the Tata?s architect proposed a 25-acre land for the desired structure, there was some reluctance to grant more than 15 acres and that too has been allotted in a far away area near Chandaka village. Well, think of many other allocations of land. In any case, something is better than nothing!) Still further another piece of good news! Govt of Orissa has just agreed to create 7 positions in the Institute which will be funded for initial five years by the National Board of Higher Mathematics. These positions are not bounded by the usual Govt reservation policy ( I think that?s my understanding.). IMA has started its degree course in Math under Utkal University and may soon start a Stat degree programme. I am not very comfortable without adequate faculty members. That Orissa was given NISER not IISER is somewhat a better decision for Orissa. While IISER is funded and administered by the HRD Ministry under Arjun Singh, NISER is under the ministry of Atomic Energy directly under the PM and will be administered by Institute of Physics initially.

Dr. SriGopal Mohanty.

Entry Filed under: Institute of Mathematics & App., Bhubaneswar