India, Oct. 29 -- Scholarship demands total surrender to the pursuit of knowledge. But such a pursuit can't be surveyed or quantified in terms of the hours seen to be spent in labs or libraries. The work has to be voluntary and its quality assessed by peers. This is applicable for the full spectrum of scholars - from students to researchers to senior professors. Which is why a recent attendance policy at a department (Electronic Systems Engineering) of the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru - which demands MTech and first-year PhD students spend at least 50 hours a week in labs, and senior PhD scholars do 70-80-hour-a-week schedules - makes for a troubling read. With a whole gamut of surveillance paraphernalia necessary to track the h...