Now, buy a PhD!

In these days when employees are mostly working from home and students attending classes on-line, an Odisha-based NGO is offering something wonderful. A resident of Bharalumukh, an old posh locality of Guwahati, has lodged a complaint with the Police saying the NGO based in Bhubaneswar was offering doctorate degrees for a "nominal" fee of just Rs 5,000. The complainant has told the Police that he saw an advertisement in Facebook with the offer, and on inquiry over the mobile phone was told that he could buy an honorary PhD degree for the said amount. Meanwhile another person has lodged a similar complaint with the Prime Minister's Office against the same NGO regarding its offer of PhD degrees. Getting a PhD degree for some amount of money, however, is nothing new in India. Some UGC-recognised universities in northern India were once notorious for giving PhD degrees against payment of a couple of lakhs of rupees. A notorious private university of Meghalaya, during 2012-2013 awarded Ph.D degree to 434 students; it was a world record! The university at that time had charged only about Rs 1.25 lakh for a PhD degree; people – mostly college teachers – rushed to Shillong to procure one. There were allegations that there are 800-plus college teachers in Assam with PhD degrees from universities outside the state, and over 50 per cent of those PhD degrees were fake. Education Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, in April 2018, had announced formation of a committee to identify teachers having fake PhD degrees. He had also told the State Assembly that a large number of teachers, whose posts were regularised by the present government, had obtained PhD degrees from institutions like Magadh University and Vinayak University, which were doubtful. Nothing much however was later heard about the committee and inquiry that was probably carried out. People thus believe that many college teachers with such fake PhD degrees are still gleefully teaching across Assam. Meanwhile, the 'owner' of that notorious Meghalaya private university, arrested at the behest of the then Governor, is reportedly out of prison and has reopened his PhD 'dukan' after a gap of a few years.