Update 2014! See new post
Update!
There are many comments in support of Prof. Dass and some in support of Sujoy Pal. But many are rather nasty and merely personal attacks against the one or the other. I have left the last comment with one of Prof. Dass’ students which is rather more compelling than the personal attacks.
But if the allegations against Prof. Dass are largely malicious then it is a great pity that
- he resigned, and
- that IIM-A has not backed him up and declined to accept his resignation.
IIM-A does not come out of this very well. My tentative conclusion to all this is that IIM-A is still developing its own internal processes and does not really know – yet – how to handle matters of alleged plagiarism.
There are some parallels with development of internal processes in industry to deal with corruption over the last 15-20 years. Here the mistake made by industry – in my opinion – was to focus on compliance rather than on ethics. A focus therefore on detection and punishment rather than on prevention. There is a risk that Indian Universities are going down the same path with a focus on plagiarism detection rather than on ethics. While the act of “policing” cannot be avoided by organisations the mere mechanical use of software to detect plagiarism is not enough. My own experience is that if ethics can be sound then compliance (or plagiarism) largely become non-issues. The challenge is how to institutionalise the development of sound ethics in any organisation.
Comments on this subject are now closed.
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Professor Rajanish Dass at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad had blamed his co-author, Sujoy Pal (a research associate) for the plagiarism he was found guilty of. Dass has claimed that it was due to “ignorance and not intention” and had taken his case to the Gujarat High Court which had given him a small measure of relief when it had instructed the Institute to take some of his additional responses into account.
But he has now bowed to the inevitable and resigned.
Faculty of Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A), Rajanish Dass, who had approached the high court after the institute accused him of plagiarism, has chosen to resign from his post at the institute.
Confirming the resignation, dean of academic affairs at IIM-A, B H Jajoo said, “He left on April 2.” ……. In its report to IIM-A director Samir Barua on February 3, the committee concluded that allegations against Dass were “valid” and he has resorted to plagiarism in three papers. Confirming his resignation, Dass said, “I submitted my resignation due to health issues on April 2, which was accepted by IIM-A on the same day.”
Dass has been on medical leave from the institute since the time he had approached HC (the High Court).
Considering that he had resigned 12 days ago and in a rather high profile case, it is a little surprising that the Institute did not have the courage to come out with the news of his resignation immediately. It suggests that they have not yet seen the advantages of transparency and that some are perhaps still hoping that the plagiarism issues cropping up at IIM-A will merely go away.
Some students at IIM-A have also accused Dass – anonymously – of having outsourced his own thesis to students at Jadavpur University.
