C. Disappearance of the book

C. Disappearance of the book

Indian universities need to address the issue of the purported disappearance of the book as they determine whether and how to increase availability of books for research and teaching or to shift to digital sources.

The Wall Street Journal reported in early 2013:

…pundits have assumed that the future of book publishing is digital. Opinions about the speed of the shift from page to screen have varied. But the consensus has been that digitization, having had its way with music and photographs and maps, would in due course have its way with books as well. By 2015, one media maven predicted a few years back, traditional books would be gone.

Half a decade into the e-book revolution, though, the prognosis for traditional books is suddenly looking brighter. Hardcover books are displaying surprising resiliency. The growth in e-book sales is slowing markedly. And purchases of e-readers are actually shrinking, as consumers opt instead for multipurpose tablets. It may be that e-books, rather than replacing printed books, will ultimately serve a role more like that of audio books—a complement to traditional reading, not a substitute. … Having survived 500 years of technological upheaval, Gutenberg's invention may withstand the digital onslaught as well. There's something about a crisply printed, tightly bound book that we don't seem eager to let go of.⁷²

Books continue to be printed, of course. The number of new titles per year, per country, as of the latest year available:

United States (2010) 328,259 (new titles and editions)


United Kingdom (2005) 206,000 


China (2010) 189,295 (328,387 total)


Russian Federation (2008) 123,336 


Germany (2009) 93,124


Spain (2008) 86,300 


Japan (2009) 78,555 


Iran (2010) 65,000 


France (2010) 63,690 (67,278 total) 


South Korea (2011) 44,036 


Taiwan (2010) 43,309 


Turkey (2011) 43,100

…

TOTAL: approximately 2,200,00073

This resilience should not cloud the reality of internet-based research, where printed materials are not as important as immediate access to million of journals and articles and books and petabytes of data. And yet some libraries are entirely electronic. The challenge for the university is to have the bandwidth, stable grid, infrastructure, and trained staff as well as affordable data plans so that ICT will become an instrument of rather than an obstacle to knowledge creation.

IV. Conclusion

In March 2013, on the first day of a weeklong visit to Asia, Harvard President Drew Faust called knowledge ‘the most important currency of the 21st century,’ highlighting faculty research, student engagement, and online learning as central to Harvard’s global strategy.⁷⁵ During that visit, ‘[t]he local leaders told Faust that the continued evolution of Hong Kong’s economy from manufacturing-based to knowledge-based was creating a need for new thinking in higher education, including curriculum reform shifting from three-year to four-year undergraduate degrees, along with a greater emphasis on international issues, service-oriented learning, and the liberal arts’.⁷⁶ This shift is exactly what has been proposed for India. If change is called for, it is appropriate to reflect here on what model best fits India’s needs.

Two Models of change

Hazelkorn, in her study for UNESCO on the ‘Impact of Global Rankings on Higher Education Research and the Production of Knowledge’ identified two models to achieve excellence in knowledge creation. Before examining her two models, it is important to stipulate a reservation regarding the obsession with rankings. Professor Shiv Visvanathan insightfully told the March Conference that ‘autonomy and playfulness’ are more meaningful than rankings.⁷⁷ Nevertheless, although Indian universities will probably continue to attach importance to rankings,⁷⁸ the value of the models proposed is that they seek to enhance the university’s potential for excellence regardless of the motivation for striving towards excellence.

1. The neo-liberal model aims to create greater reputational (vertical) differentiation using rankings as a free market mechanism to drive the concentration of ‘excellence’ in a small number of research-intensive universities in order to compete globally. China, France, Germany, Japan, Korea and Russia prefer to create a small number of world-class universities, focusing on research performance via competitions for Centres of Excellence (CE) and Graduate Schools. This model has two main forms: Model A, which jettisons traditional equity values (e.g. Germany), and Model B (e.g. Japan), which upholds traditional status/hierarchical values. The United Kingdom (UK) attempted another variation of this model by formally distinguishing between teaching and research institutions, but abandoned this by relying on the impact of performance measurement, e.g. the UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE).

2. The social-democratic model aims to build a system of horizontally differentiated high performing, globally-focused institutions and student experiences. In contrast to an emphasis on competition as a driver of excellence, Australia, Ireland and Norway, aim to support ‘excellence wherever it occurs’ by supporting ‘good quality universities’ across the country, using institutional compacts to drive clearer mission differentiation.⁷⁹

Although her examples were based on the experience of advanced economies plus China, the basic options for India are not very different.

What works for India?

The lessons from the application of the two models challenge India to decide which one fits best with its aspirations. Professor Ved Prakash, Chairperson, University Grants Commission (UGC), gave a partial answer when he told the March Conference about the Government’s commitment to ‘expansion, equity and excellence’ and its duty to be inclusive and cater to children of diverse backgrounds.⁸⁰

The immediate future will be a test for the social-democratic model to bring India up to the level of knowledge creation and quality of research consistent with their extraordinary contribution to global civilization. Political shifts may lead a different government to consider the neo-liberal model. India is diverse enough to pursue both, with government sponsored centres of excellence along with numerous high quality universities, where outstanding contributions to knowledge emerge from intellectual curiosity and perseverance of scholars rather than focused funding of research aimed at competing with world class research institutions in other parts of the world.

The essential change Indian universities will need to make in order to differentiate the future of knowledge creation from its past is to develop an environment conducive to research such that the finest minds of the nation will prefer to advance knowledge at home rather than abroad. The requirements for such an environment, as described in this chapter, relate to the aims of knowledge creation, the institutional setting, selection among fragmented fields of knowledge and levels of degrees, inculcation and enforcement of ethical standards, responses to politicisation and commodification of knowledge, and adaptation to new technologies. In sum, Indian universities face special challenges in cultivating knowledge as an end in itself through education that should take account of the various forms of knowledge and types of intelligence. They must have an institutional design (human and financial resources, governance, affiliations, networks, etc.) adequate to provide a solid structural foundation for research and learning and apply an instructional design that both educates citizens of the global community and prepares career pathways that draw on a sufficiently wide range of disciplines and opportunities for cross-disciplinary reflection and applications. At the same time, the conditions for research must ensure academic integrity and freedom and remove perverse incentives that result from the politicisation of knowledge and conflicts of interest. Finally, given that Indian universities cannot provide classroom and library structures adequate to meet the growing demand, they must be at the forefront of developments in ICT, without succumbing to fashionable trends that in the long run may not be conducive to sustained knowledge creation. Such are the challenges of knowledge creation in Indian universities as they approach an era of unprecedented expansion.

1^ Kumar, C Raj. 2013. ‘Still not in a class of their own,’ Hindustan Times, Wednesday, March 20, 2013.

2^ deJong, T; Ferguson-Hessler, MGM. Types and qualities of knowledge. Educational Psychologist . Vol. 31, No. 2, p. 105.

3^ Ibid, p. 106.

4^ Gardner, Howard (1999) Intelligence Reframed. Multiple intelligences for the 21st century, New York: Basic Books, pp. 41-43.

5^ Report of the Task Force on General Education, Harvard, 2007, p. 1.

6^ Ibid.

7^ Frenk, Julio. David E. Barmes Global Health Lecture given at the National Institutes of Health; December 15, 2009. ‘Globalization and Health: the Role of Knowledge in an Interdependent World’.

8^ Source: Frenk, Julio, Lincoln Chen, Zulfiqar A. Bhutta, Jordan Cohen, Nigel Crisp, Timothy Evans, Harvey Fineberg, et al. 2010. Health professionals for a new century: transforming education to strengthen health systems in an interdependent world. The Lancet 376(9756): 1923-1958, p. 10.

9^ Ibid.

10^These observations were inspired notably by remarks made at the Conference by Professors Shiv Visvanathan, Dhruv Raina, Devesh Kapur, and Madhav Menon.

11^ S. Bawa, Kamaljit. 2012. India's Path to Knowledge, Science 30 March 2012: Vol. 335 no. 6076 p. 1573. DOI: 10.1126/science.335.6076.1573-e

12^ Ibid.

13^ Report of the Task Force on General Education, Harvard, 2007, p. 1

14^ Adapted from Frenk, Julio. David E. Barmes Global Health Lecture given at the National Institutes of Health; December 15, 2009. ‘Globalization and Health: the Role of Knowledge in an Interdependent World’.

15^ Bok, Derek. 2006. Our Underachieving Colleges. Princeton: Princeton University Press. p. 25.

16^ Wilson, Edward O. 1998. Consilience. The Unity of Knowledge. New York: Vintage Books. p. 8.

17^ Ibid.

18^ Ibid, p. 9

19^ Ibid, p. 12.

20^ Nalanda's History. Available at http://www.nalandauniv.edu.in/abt-history.html.

21^ Our Vision. Available at http://www.nalandauniv.edu.in/abt-vision.html.

22^ See chapter …. in this publication.

23^ Quoted by Richard Stone^. SCIENCE IN INDIA. India Rising. Science 24 February 2012: Vol. 335 no. 6071 pp. 904-910. DOI: 10.1126/science.335.6071.904.

24^ http://www.kitesindia.org/the-future-of-scientific-research-in-india.php

25^ Ibid.

26^ Ibid.

27^ http://www.dst.gov.in/

28^ http://www.dst.gov.in/scientific-programme/women-scientists.htm

29^ Indira Gandhi Centre for Sustainable Development at Oxford University approved, The Hindu, New Delhi, December 7, 2012. Available at http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/indira-gandhi-centre-for-sustainable-development-at-oxford-university-approved/article4175367.ece.

30^ Ibid.

31^ Yuehong Zhang. 2010. Chinese journal finds 31% of submissions plagiarized. Nature. Vol. 467, p. 153 (09 September 2010) doi:10.1038/467153d. Published online 08 September 2010.

32^ Ferric C. Fang; R. Grant Steen; Arturo Casadevall
Misconduct accounts for the majority of retracted scientific publications
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2012;109(42):17028-17033.

33^ G.S. Mudur. 2012. In plagiarism too, China beats India, Calcutta, India: The Telegraph. 2 Oct, 2012. Available at http://www.telegraphindia.com/1121002/jsp/nation/story_16042659.jsp#.UgCjRRbJ4ao.

34^ Ibid.

35^ Jonathan Gingerich and Aditya Singh. 2010. Writing Requirements, Student Assessment and Plagiarism in Indian Law Schools. India Law News. Fall 2010. p. 12. Available at: http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/plp/pdf/Gingerich_India_Law_News_Article.pdf. I am grateful to Yagank Goyal for drawing my attention to this study.

36^ Papri Sri Raman and T. V. Padma. 2011. Indian scientists call for checks on plagiarism. OneWorld South Asia. Jul 21, 2011. Available at http://southasia.oneworld.net/news/indian-scientists-call-for-checks-on-plagiarism#.UgCTIxbJ4ao.

37^ http://www.scientificvalues.org/

38^ Quoted by Murir, supra, note 22.

39^ See chapter … in this publication.

40^ Ibid.

41^ Ibid.

42^ Ibid

43^ Ibid.

44^ Hans N. Weiler, Whose Knowledge Matters? Development and the Politics of Knowledge, Festschrift for Peter Molt [Theodor Hanf, Hans N. Weiler and Helga Dickow (eds.), Entwicklung als Beruf. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2009, pp. 485-496]. Available at http://www.stanford.edu/~weiler/Texts09/Weiler_Molt_09.pdf.

45^ Ibid.

46^ Ibid.

47^ Ashis Nandy, Shamans, ‘Savages and the Wilderness: On the Audibility of Dissent and the Future of Civilizations,’ Alternatives, vol. 14, No. 3 (July 1989), p. 267) cited by Weiler, note. 32.

48^ Hans N. Weiler, Whose Knowledge Matters? Development and the Politics of Knowledge, Festschrift for Peter Molt [Theodor Hanf, Hans N. Weiler and Helga Dickow (eds.), Entwicklung als Beruf. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2009, pp. 485-496]. Available at http://www.stanford.edu/~weiler/Texts09/Weiler_Molt_09.pdf

49^ World Association of Medical Editors, Conflict of Interest in Peer-Reviewed Medical Journals: http://www.wame.org/conflict-of-interest-in-peer-reviewed-medical-journals

50^ See, for example, BMJ transparency policy: http://resources.bmj.com/bmj/authors/editorial-policies/transparency-policy, ICMJE (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors) uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals: http://www.icmje.org/urm_main.html;

51^ See Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, New York: WW Norton, 2010.

52^ Id., p. 194.

53^ See chapter … by Kapur in this publication.

54^ Jon Marcus, ‘All Hail MOOCs! Just Don’t Ask if They Actually Work,’ The Hechinger Report, September 12, 2013. Available at http://hechingerreport.org/content/moocs-keep-getting-bigger-but-do-they-work_12960/

55^EdX, available at: https://www.edx.org/schools

56^ https://www.edx.org/school/iitbombayx/allcourses

57^ http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2013/03/harvards-hand-in-shaping-education/

58^ Ibid

59^ Ibid

60^ Economist.com. ‘MOOCs: The fall of the ivory tower?’1 August 2013, 21:14, available at http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2013/08/moocs-fall-ivory-tower

61^ ‘The attack of the MOOCs. An army of new online courses is scaring the wits out of traditional universities. But can they find a viable business model?’. The Economist, 20 July 2013. Available at http://www.economist.com/news/business/21582001-army-new-online-courses-scaring-wits-out-traditional-universities-can-they.

62^ Nanthikesan, S. ‘Trends in Digital Divide,’ pg. 36, Background document, 2001 Human Development Report, accessed 10 July 2011, available at available at http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2001/papers/nanthikesan-1.pdf

63^ UN MDG Gap Task Force (2012) ‘Millennium Development Goal 8. The Global Partnership

for Development: Making Rhetoric a Reality,’ United Nations, New York, 2012, p. 76.

64^Ibid, p. 77

65^Ibid, p 75.

66^ UN MDG Gap Task Force (2010) MDG Gap Task Force Report 2010: The Global Partnership for Development at a Critical Juncture, United Nations, New York. pp. 71, citing Data from ITU, World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators database.

67^ Ibid, p 74.

68^ KPMG International Cooperative (“KPMG International”), and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Broadband ecosystem for inclusive growth. Broadband Summit, 28 September 2012, New Delhi, KPMG, 2012.

69^ Id., p. 2, citing data from http://www.expresscomputeronline.com/20120331/features01.shtml3.

70^ See John Wood, inaugural address, this publication, p.

71^ Alfred North Whitehead. 1925. Science and the Modern World. New York: The Macmillan Company [edition of 1960], p.

72^ Nicholas Carr, ‘Lovers of ink and paper, take heart. Reports of the death of the printed book may be exaggerated. Essay. Don't Burn Your Books—Print Is Here to Stay,’ Wall Street Journal, Updated January 5, 2013, 12:25 a.m. Available at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323874204578219563353697002.html

73^ http://www.worldometers.info/books/

74^ Frank Newman, and Laura Coutrurier. 2004. The Future of Higher Education, p.

75^ Harvard Gazette, March 18, 2013, available at http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2013/03/harvards-hand-in-shaping-education/.

76^ Ibid.

77^ Shiv Visvanathan, this publication, p. .

78^ One source commented on the 2012 rankings, ‘Unfortunately, this year too, no Indian university features in the top 200 list.’ Why Indian universities don't make it to world rankings. Rediff.com. November 15, 2012 14:53 IST. Available at http://www.rediff.com/getahead/slide-show/slide-show-1-career-times-higher-education-worlds-best-universities/20121005.htm

79^ Ellen Hazelkorn, Impact of Global Rankings on Higher Education Research and the Production of Knowledge. UNESCO Forum on Higher Education, Research and Knowledge. Occasional Paper N°15, 2009, p. 7.

80^ Note by the author from lecture on 21 March 2013.

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