Who Rewards Good Teaching?

The Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), Mumbai, is, as the name suggests, a research institute with a special emphasis on applied and policy related research. It also has a vibrant Ph.D. and M.Phil. programme in place with students undergoing two years of intensive course work and training prior to the initiation of thesis research and writing. So far approximately 25 M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees have been awarded by the institute, and if the comments of external examiners are anything to go by, theses written by IGIDR students are of a reasonably high standard. So the IGIDR is a deemed university. It is, thus, both, a research institute and an institute of higher education. Consequently, comparisons with organisations such as the NCAER, NIPFP, ICRIER, etc, are not only inappropriate but rather dangerous as well. An institute of higher education, particularly one built around a doctoral programme, must deliver three distinct services: good teaching, good supervision of student theses, and good research. Of these, it is the last that tends to garner the most attention externally, from without the institution. In Ashok Desai