Almost everyone likes to travel abroad, especially those who enjoys seeing places and meeting new people. If one is lucky, one can even make acquaintance with a few of them. For those who are working in colleges and do some research, the best way to go abroad is to send their research papers to conferences that are being held in their places of interest. Large number of conferences are being held these days and it will not be very difficult to identify a conference venue. First step will be to send a paper to the conference and get it accepted. Once paper is accepted next step is to raise funds to meet the registration fee, travel and accommodation. There are several governmental and a few private agencies providing financial support for researchers for attending conferences to present their papers. A few educational institutions provide registration fee alone for attending conferences. Application for financial support can be given only after the paper is accepted and a copy of the letter of acceptance and the paper will have to be submitted along with the application. Very often, by the time one has to proceed for the conference, even the offer of financial support may not be available. If one is optimistic, he can spend money from his pocket and if the support is offered, actual bills, receipts and travel tickets will have to submitted for reimbursement of the expenses. It is most likely that the expenses for travel and accommodation will be reimbursed. Often the air fare is the major component. For example, in 1998, the economy class air fare to and from any major city in USA was of the order of one lakh or more by Air India. Financial support from the Government departments
require that we have
to travel by Air India even if cheaper flights are available from
other airlines. Sometimes, even if one applies early, due to
red tape, the formal
sanction of funds can be delayed.
In spite of all these, even today,
for faculty from ordinary institutions,
this is the easiest way to get financial
support. If either the researcher or his guide is involved in a major externally
funded research project and if
the investigator is
willing to release project funds, it can be
utilized for the travel if it falls within the
allocation. These days, after the implementation of the Sixth pay commission report, faculty in central
universities, IITs and NITs are
provided with a special allowance called Professional Development
Allowance (PDA) under which they can use part of
the money for such purposes under certain conditions. When I was in
service, we could use it for attending
one national conference and another international
conference. But this story was
of 1997
when we could get the
registration fee alone from the
college.
I was not very keen to send
papers to international conferences held outside
the country mainly because conference papers are
not given much importance other than for
meeting friends and making new contacts. Second
reason was the huge expenditure involved.
One or two papers from my PhD work written by me and our
guides were presented by my professor himself. Just
for the experience, I
thought of attending one for conference.
With this in mind, a paper was sent for a conference in Honolulu , Hawaii in
1997. Paper was accepted for presentation. Our institution did agree
to give the conference registration fee of Rs.
20,000/, but the travel expenses of more than one lakh
had to be raised.
Among the governmental agencies that
provide grants, the most important were the University
Grants Commission (UGC), Department of Science and Technology(DST), All India
and Council for Technical Education(AICTE) and Kerala Science Technology and
Environment(KSTE). But most of
these organizations take minimum
three months to process the application and to communicate
a decision in the affirmative or else. When I was hesitant counting
the money involved, my wife and children
encouraged me to take a chance and go, if necessary taking a loan
from the provident fund. So, I finally
decided to go and attend the conference.
Most of the conferences abroad
are held in beautiful
tourist locations and mostly in first class
hotels. Charges for accommodation in
such hotels are quite high, usually of the order of 100-150 USD per
day. I was not sure whether such amount
will be reimbursed by the agency supporting
me. As I was regularly using internet and email at
that time itself, I remembered a famous university in Hawaii
from where one of our senior colleagues had taken PhD, i.e. East
West University in Honolulu. I checked their website and
searched for any Indians in the
university as research scholars or faculty. I could locate five
of them and copied their email id. I wrote to all of them stating that I am
coming to Honolulu for presenting paper and asking
whether there is any possibility of getting concessional
accommodation for teachers in the university. All the five of them replied
promptly that they have nominated one of them to help me and
accommodation can be arranged in the faculty house for a nominal
payment of USD 25 per day. They added that frequent
buses are available for transport to
the conference venue from the university by paying USD 2
per person. But the accommodation has to be booked in advance by paying the
rent for the number of days required. Further, they said if I have any
difficulty in sending the money, they will pay and I can
reimburse when I go there. International credit cards were not
available with me; however, I took a demand draft for USD 100 and
send it urgently by Air mail. Fortunately for me, by the time I reached
the university, the DD was received and I
could get the accommodation without troubling my new friends. So, I
started on my first trip abroad without any guarantee
that whether I will be able to get any
financial support. However, on reaching
the university and when I went to the university library to check my
mail, I saw an email from my colleague and research student Smt.Padmakumari
that UGC has sent a telegram offering
financial support for attending the conference. The best
possible financial support was from UGC and I was sure
that major part of the expenditure will be reimbursed by them.
When I was talking about Honolulu, Smt. Padma
Kumari’s daughter who was probably in class 4 or 5, told me “ Uncle,
don’t you know that live volcanoes still exist on
Hawaiian Islands” . Hawaii, is in the centre of the Pacific Ocean which can be
seen as a series of tiny dots in the deepest ocean in the
world. The 50th state in United
States of America even now have live
volcanoes from which hot reddish lava flows into
the ocean creating new lands almost every day. They have
a national park of these mountains.
There are excellent videos on National
Geographic channel indicating how they
are sprouting hot lava out. Hawaiian Islands happen to be one of the
most beautiful locations with
virgin nature at its best. With a slight fear in my mind and
with all good wishes from my family
and friends, I embarked on the first voyage
abroad in which I had to fly over two
great oceans, Indian ocean and Pacific Ocean. Hawaiian islands
are hallway to US
mainland from Asia.
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