There is a sickening trend of plagiarism in writing of qualitative metrics in many institutes. Not just that, even the policies and supporting documents are extensively copied. The disease obviously stems from a sheer dearth in ability of a large No. of faculty unable to think through the thoughts and pen it down professionally. So, they resort to an easy way- log on to some A++ institute’s website and copy the content along with supporting documents from their SSR. This is then dried, dusted, paraphrased and presented, uncaring for the ethics or inner conscious. The irony is that the same faculty would be standing before their students, the next day to teach a lesson from the curriculum on values and ethics and even meet out punishment for copying in exams.
The patent reason for such institutes escaping with the loot is the sheer absence of mechanism to put a stop to it. DVV is mandated to check only the quantitative metrics and the visiting peer team is without a mandate to first carry out a plagiarism check of qualitative metrics before it starts the visit. The resulting void in the system is thus exploited by the erring institutes with immunity. It is similar to the URI Surgical strike when our Special Forces (Commandos) successfully entered Pakistan in between the gaps of two Pakistan Divisions undetected to teach them a lesson. I discourage such faculty, NOT to become Commandos and go for a surgical strike. Write what is your own, and what you can demonstrate on ground. It is absolutely fine to have a mentor to improve your draft by suitable value-addition.
Just develop a hatred for the plagiarism, anywhere and do show the way to your
students. Well, that’s the way to go.
-From the heart! Prof JR Sharma.
