Shodh Prayas 2026: Three Days That Reminded Me Why Research Is the Most Human Thing We Do

I have been part of many academic events. Conferences, conclaves, workshops, faculty development programmes — they all carry their own energy. But nothing quite prepares you for the feeling of standing in the middle of a university that has, for three days, transformed itself into one continuous, uninterrupted act of inquiry.

That is what Sodh Prayas 2026 felt like to me.

From May 13 to 16, Vivekananda Global University became something I can only describe as a living laboratory. Every hall, every corridor, every open courtyard was occupied by someone with an idea they wanted the world to hear. And this year, that 'someone' was not just our PhD scholars or faculty — it was 12,386 students and 610 faculty and staff members, standing up, stepping forward, and saying: here is what I have been working on, here is what I believe, here is my contribution.

Writing this reflection a few days after the event, I find myself still moved by what I witnessed. So let me take you through it — not as a report, but as an experience.

❝  Every single corner of this campus was full of ideas. That is what we set out to build. And that is what we saw.  ❞

The Morning the University Woke Up at 8 AM — and Didn't Stop Till 9 PM

Let me be honest about what it takes to run an event of this scale. Three consecutive days, starting at 8 in the morning and running until 9 at night. Our DRC and RAC members — the doctoral research committee and research advisory committee members who guide our PhD scholars — were present through every session, every day. Our 218 external jury members, some travelling from universities and industries across India, evaluated research work in real time, with genuine rigour.

I watched a first-year undergraduate from our BBA programme nervously adjust his slides before presenting his transdisciplinary project to a panel that included a senior industry expert. I watched a PhD scholar — someone who had been working on her dissertation for three years — present her semester progress report with the kind of clarity and confidence that told me she had not just been doing research, she had been thinking about it deeply every single day.

That is the spirit Sodh Prayas is designed to create. And every year, it exceeds what I imagined.

Why External Validation Matters — More Than We Acknowledge

One of my firmest beliefs as Dean R&D is this: internal appreciation, however genuine, is not enough. If your research cannot withstand scrutiny from someone who owes you nothing — someone who has no institutional loyalty, no social obligation, no reason to be kind — then you need to know that.

This is why the presence of 218 external jury members at Sodh Prayas 2026 was not a logistical achievement. It was a philosophical commitment. We deliberately brought in academicians, researchers, and industry experts from outside our ecosystem and said: evaluate our people. Tell them the truth. Tell them where they stand against international research standards. Tell them how to be better.

The feedback was not always comfortable. Some of our researchers heard things that challenged their assumptions. Some of our papers were returned with tough questions. And that, I want to say clearly, is the most valuable thing we could give them. Because it is in that discomfort — in that productive friction — that real academic growth begins.

❝  Research that cannot survive external scrutiny is practice. Research that survives it — and then improves — is scholarship.  ❞

The Structure Behind the Energy: Our Research Incentive Architecture

Sodh Prayas is not just a celebration — it is the annual culmination of a year-long research ecosystem that we have been deliberately and painstakingly building at VGU. Let me share some of what went into making this year's edition so significant.

This year, we distributed ₹32 lakh in structured research incentives to faculty members. These were not token gestures — they were performance-linked rewards tied to paper publications in Q1 journals (evaluated on impact factor and citation counts), research grants received from national bodies like ANRF, DST Rajasthan, and ICSSR, and consultancy work delivered to corporates and government bodies under the SFURTI scheme — including architectural, management, and technical consultancy.

We also presented awards worth ₹20 lakh to students and scholars across all presentation categories. And for the first time, we formally recognised the full scale of what VGU's faculty have been building on the ground: a seed fund of ₹1.86 crore was allocated to faculty members for their research projects. This is the university saying, unambiguously, that we believe in your ideas before they yield results.

All 134 of our UGC and CSIR-funded JRF and SRF scholars also participated in Sodh Prayas — presenting their work alongside thousands of others. That image — of nationally funded researchers standing shoulder to shoulder with first-year undergraduates — is the image I want VGU to be defined by.

PhD Scholars: The Heartbeat of Our Research Future

Our doctoral scholars hold a special place in my heart, and in the R&D Cell's priorities. At Sodh Prayas, every PhD scholar was required to present their semester progress report before their DRC and RAC. This is not a formality — it is accountability by design. It ensures that every scholar is progressing, that their guides are engaged, and that any challenges are surfaced and addressed in a structured setting.

But Sodh Prayas is not all rigour and evaluation. On one of the evenings, we organised a cultural programme exclusively for PhD scholars and their research guides. I want to be candid about why we did this. Doctoral research is a deeply personal, often lonely journey. It demands enormous reserves of patience, resilience, and self-belief. It can be consuming in ways that are hard to explain to people outside the experience.

We wanted to give our scholars — and their guides — a space to breathe, to laugh, to connect with each other as human beings, not just as researchers and supervisors. The response was beautiful. People who had spent years in parallel academic pursuit, barely knowing each other's work, found themselves in conversation about life, ambition, and the long road ahead. That evening reminded me that the best research communities are, at their core, human communities.

❝  The best PhD scholars I know are not defined by their bibliography. They are defined by their refusal to stop asking questions.  ❞

Two New Chairs, One Enduring Commitment

This year, VGU established two new research chairs — the Dr. K. Ram Chair for Research on Rural Development, and the CA Anil Bafna Chair for Research on Family Business. I want to pause on this for a moment, because it matters more than it might seem.

Research chairs are not merely honorary designations. They are institutional commitments to sustaining inquiry in specific domains over the long term. By establishing a chair focused on rural development, VGU is saying that the lives and challenges of India's rural population deserve sustained, rigorous academic attention. By establishing a chair focused on family business — the backbone of India's entrepreneurial economy — we are saying that the knowledge generated in our classrooms must speak to the realities of the people and enterprises around us.

These chairs are also a signal to our researchers: there are questions worth spending a career on, and we will support you in asking them.

What the Numbers Tell Us — and What They Don't

I am proud of our numbers. 2,853 Scopus-indexed publications. 396 published patents. Active research partnerships with SIDBI, ICSSR, and our participation in the BITS Pilani SATHI Project. These figures represent years of disciplined, sustained effort by our faculty, scholars, and the broader VGU community.

But I want to say something that I think is important for every researcher — especially the young ones — to hear: the numbers are the outcome, not the goal. The goal is the question. The goal is the curiosity. The goal is the stubborn refusal to accept 'we don't know' as a final answer.

At Sodh Prayas, I heard two PhD scholars — Ram and Anoop — speak about their experience of presenting their research. What struck me was not what they said about the awards or the feedback, though both mattered to them. What struck me was when Ram said: 'For the first time, I felt like my work had a place in the world.' That sentence is worth more to me than any citation metric.

❝  "For the first time, I felt like my work had a place in the world." — Ram, PhD Scholar, VGU  ❞

To Every Student Who Presented: You Changed This University

I want to address something directly to the 12,386 students who participated in Sodh Prayas 2026. Many of you presented for the first time. Many of you were nervous. Some of you revised your slides at midnight. Some of you wondered whether your idea was 'good enough' to stand before an external judge.

I want you to know that by showing up — by stepping onto that platform and saying 'this is what I've been thinking about' — you did something far more important than you realise. You participated in the act of knowledge creation. You contributed to a culture that does not confine research to elite departments or senior faculty. You made this university something more than a place where people pass exams.

You made it a place where ideas live.

What Comes Next: The Work That Never Ends

My team — Associate Dean Dr. Deepali Singh, Section Officer Rahul Sharma, TDP Officer Dr. V. Sairam, and the entire R&D Cell — used Sodh Prayas not just to celebrate what we have built, but to have hard, honest conversations about what needs to improve. We spoke with researchers about the barriers they face in publishing. We listened to faculty members describe the challenges of balancing teaching loads with serious research commitments. We discussed patent commercialisation with Dr. Sairam — because a patent that never reaches the marketplace is an incomplete act of creation.

These conversations are the most important output of Sodh Prayas. Not the awards. Not the press. The conversations. The ones that identify the next problem worth solving.

We will take every piece of feedback forward. The incentive framework will evolve. The grant support infrastructure will grow. The seed fund will continue to back bold ideas. And Sodh Prayas — already three days long and 13,000 participants strong — will be larger, deeper, and more impactful next year.

A Final Word

I began this reflection by saying that nothing prepares you for the feeling of standing in the middle of a university that has become one continuous act of inquiry. Three days later, I still carry that feeling.

Research is the most human thing we do. It is how we say: the world as it is, is not enough. We can understand it better. We can improve it. We can ask better questions. At VGU, Sodh Prayas is our annual commitment to that belief — not just in words, but in three days of eight-AM-to-nine-PM evidence.

See you at Sodh Prayas 2027. I promise it will be even more extraordinary.