Prof. M.S. Ananth "The IIT Madras Research Park Journey- An IITACB Webinar"
Good morning, Professor Ananth,
it’s a pleasure to talk to you again.
I trust you are keeping in good health during these pandemic times.
Thank you.
So you may recall that we had a conversation
few months ago in Heritage Centre.
Yeah, yeah.
And it looks like many alumni have listened to it
and they want more of the same from you.
So this is a kind of a sequel to our first conversation
which was quite broad ranging and
so I thought that maybe this time I would like to ask you
what you would like to talk about in particular, you know
other topics that you would like to focus on,
and if so we will…we will start with those.
Yeah, the primary things are the strategic plan
and of…as a follow up to that,
the Research Park, NPTEL and recruitment of faculty.
Prof. Nagarajan: Okay.
Of that the Research Park, I have given a separate talk
with the IIT alumni in Bangalore,
and that’s…I think already linked to your Heritage Centre site.
Prof. Nagarajan: Yes, we have given a link from the Heritage Centre website.
No, I think I have said enough about the Research Park there.
Prof. Nagarajan: Okay. Prof. Ananth: So, I thought of confining myself a bit to NPTEL
and also really what the strategic plan did to us.
A little bit about historically what happened in IIT,
in the first two decades or so, there was really no money at all.
I joined in 1972.
Until about ’92, when I became Head of the Department
there was practically no money at all.
And even from ‘92 to ‘99 there was very little money.
But we had started connecting with alumni,
which is another important point that I want to make.
Prof. Nagarajan: Right. Prof. Ananth: I think it’s a good thing that we are connected to the alumni,
you know that even better than anybody else does.
And we had the Golden Jubilee celebrations
that made us pause and reflect.
Prof. Nagarajan: Yes. Prof. Ananth: What we have done right
and what we have not done and so on.
So I think that’s an important point there.
Prof. Nagarajan: Sure. Prof. Ananth: Like to say a few words about…
and then talk about the NPTEL itself
as part of our mission that we failed to do in my opinion,
the IITs as a whole, but they…the IITs…
I mean it’s not as if they didn’t want to do it,
but it just needed somebody take the initiative and organise it,
and then the participation from IITs has been excellent
and as you know, NPTEL does some very well.
So I think those are the major things,
I mean some of the academic changes that we were able to do
when I was Director.
Prof. Nagarajan: Sure. Prof. Ananth: Talk about MA in the Humanities and Sciences Department.
Prof. Nagarajan: Right. Prof. Ananth: What the task forces for curricular revisions and so on,
and Engineering Design as a discipline,
the new department that came up
thanks to Bosch and Ashok Leyland.
Yeah, okay, yeah. Those are the things
and possibly a bit about biotechnology because
the Mehta Foundation gave us that money for that.
Prof. Nagarajan: Right. Prof. Ananth: Biotechnology…that and then
as part of reflections,
I would like to state some things that are important for IIT.
That…it’s not so much advice, it’s simply a word of caution
that we have to be alert all the time. This is a part of our autonomy.
Prof. Ananth: Right. I think that’s it. Prof. Nagarajan: Okay.
So, let’s…let’s start with…maybe start with NPTEL,
but you probably want to frame that in the context of our vision
and the…and the mission and the vision and the strategic plan?
Yeah, I think so.
I think the big change in IITs came
when Professor Natarajan was Director,
when Madhavrao Scindia became
the Minister for Human Resource Development.
He was a very enlightened man
and he sent a letter to all the Boards of the IITs,
saying that they should develop a strategic plan.
So they should know where they are going.
I think that is important,
because we were so busy making ends meet,
and running the routine programs
that we didn’t have time to think about the future.
In fact even now, I mean right through my tenure,
and possibly now, I think we are not thinking enough about the future.
I think a fraction…
there must be a subcommittee of the senate
at least that keeps thinking about the future.
That unfortunately hasn’t happened,
but the strategic plan gave us an opportunity to do so.
And as part of the strategic plan several things were discussed.
I think also at the same time Natarajan brought in this ISO 9001
which was really a bookkeeping kind of exercise,
but it’s an exercise which involved all the staff,
and many of the staff were able to participate
in governance and give you suggestions
that you woudn’t have had otherwise without their participation.
So, that happened.
So the staff involvement was an important part of it,
then documentation of the strategic plan
gave us some clear ideas as to where we were going.
So it gave us ideas about the lacunae.
One of the things I noticed was
first of all they said the vision can be written by the Director
without consulting anybody,
whereas, the mission is what the Institute will do
and that doesn’t depend on the Director,
mission is independent of the Director,
but something that you continued to do.
And as part of the mission, it was clear that the mission was fourfold:
One was education, second was research,
the third was industrial consultancy and
connection with the industry.
The fourth was improving technical education in the country.
I felt that that fourth part of the mission, IITs hadn’t done enough.
We did some few things,
we always were consultants for the
regional engineering colleges and so on.
We went there from time to time,
we set up a lab here a lab there and so on,
but it wasn’t enough; it wasn’t something sufficiently participated.
So…and meanwhile, the knowledge economy came along, by ‘90s
the liberalisation was announced,
but by ’99, I think true liberalisation had set in.
And we were already participating in the global economy,
but not very well.
And one of the big reasons for that,
the UN Report came out I think in ‘97 or ’98,
which pointed out that the gen…
the enrolment ratio…the Gross Enrolment Ratio
which represents the ratio of people in higher education,
by the number of people who are eligible for higher education.
This number for us was 15 percent.
For a population of 1.2 billion,
with one third of the people in the right age group,
this was miserable.
At that time China which is our constant comparison point,
it was at 30 percent,
and the US and Europe were around 60 to 70 percent,
Japan was at 80 percent.
So I…I thought it was ridiculous that a nation of our size
should have such a low Gross Enrolment Ratio.
So we did some quick calculations to see
how many more colleges can be started.
Turns out our typical colleges have about
thousand strength of thousand.
So if you get the thousand people coming into your college,
you will have to start one college every week in order to catch up .
So the brick and mortar model was out of the question.
Actually simultaneously around the time,
I was thinking about this,
I was Dean Academic Courses at that time
I did not know what is going to be done.
But, MHRD had actually arranged
for a team of Directors of IITs and IIMs to visit the US
to study this problem of education using ICT,
taking advantage of ICT
and they visited Carnegie Mellon in particular.
I think Professor Natarajan led the delegations
and Carnegie Mellon had a very successful experiment in Mexico
in which they had started online…essentially online education,
but they created a large number of courses;
technical education courses
and we felt that we certainly could do better…
I mean in terms of manpower
we had really good manpower; large numbers and so on.
And there was a Professor Paul Goodman
who was Director of Strategic Studies in Carnegie Mellon
who had an interest…who had a big project
and he funded actually
a workshop on technology enhanced learning in Madras.
He came and spoke to us; Natarajan welcomed it and
he essentially put me in charge.
So Paul and I discussed it
and we called people from other IITs;
in particular we had A. K. Ray from Kharagpur.
A. K. Ray is one of the earliest people in Education Technology;
he had done a remarkable job in IIT Delhi
and was doing a remarkable job in IIT Kharagpur.
But we needed to scale the whole thing up to increase the numbers.
So we got together and made a proposal,
that was called the National Programme on
Technology Enhanced Learning,
and the idea was to both improve the quality, as well as the reach,
because while we wanted this GER to increase,
we wanted people to be eligible for it and be able to get in,
and we eventually wanted a Virtual University
which I thought really would be the solution to the whole thing.
But my own calculation, you know the thumb rule
was that we needed about 600 courses ready
before we start the open…start a university.
It’s not an Open University…it’s a Virtual University;
there were admission requirements.
I wanted actually a virtual IIT,
but the other Directors felt that the brand would be diluted.
I didn’t agree with that, I still don’t.
I think the brand is what you maintain.
I mean, it’s simply a matter you must tell yourself
once you call it an IIT, you will maintain the standard,
but in any case the program started;
the NPTEL proposal was submitted in ‘99,
it was 2003 before it was funded.
What we suggested was that we run these courses on the web.
Connectivity was becoming very good,
but Murli Manohar Joshi, the then Minister,
he said, “You have to do video courses.”
He was very participative kind of Minister. I mean
he didn’t spend that much time,
but when he came to the meeting in Delhi,
and he said, “You guys have to do video courses, because
the rural student in India can relate only to a teacher’s face,”
and I think he was absolutely right.
The video courses have been the ones that have been most popular,
and he told us that he will create a
channel…separate channel called Eklavya Channel.
He said Eklavya because
he was the first distance education student in mythology,
and he felt that this would be an appropriate name,
and he will make the channel available for us to play our courses.
Of course, in the beginning we had very few courses,
I don’t know if you remember;
Professor S. Srinivasan in Electrical, he used to give a course on VLSI.
And every afternoon I listened to this S. Srinivasan
and I went for lunch half an hour I heard a lecture from…
not that I understood much, but that is…
we had so few courses that we had to play the
lectures again and again and again.
But anyway, that was the beginning
and we got about 20 crores from the Minister,
and another 5 crores for equipment
because we all equipped our various labs
and Professor A. K. Ray was primarily responsible.
He was so thorough with all the equipment and
he was a great bargainer.
He got us a great deal from Sony
for all the old IITs.
We all have studios you know that are very good
because of A. K. Ray. Of course they will need renovation again.
I mean this…I am talking about 2010…
when we…I mean 2001, when we set up this lab,
but that’s what happened,
and then we had to discuss
how are we going to run this programme.
I felt one IIT can’t take up this role fully,
so we needed all the IITs to be participants.
So I was made the Chairman of the Project Implementation Committee,
and I quite gladly accepted it
and I felt that a Director of one of the Institutes
should always be the Chairman
because then you can make the others participate
by talking to your colleagues.
So we had a lot of discussions; many, many, many meetings
because all of us in…faculty in IIT have strong opinions;
not necessarily convergent opinions.
But after a long discussion, after several discussions,
every time we had a Director’s meeting in a different IIT,
I would request…I will go there the previous evening
and request a meeting with faculty who were interested.
And this happened in all the 7 IITs.
And…then finally we came to a consensus,
we decided on some broad principles.
First thing is we will offer it as a service,
not from…we will not take on an
attitude of being superior institutions helping.
I think we are just doing our duty,
and we will do it as service.
So there are no questions that were considered silly,
if anybody asks any question, you have to reply patiently.
So for example,
one of the arguments was that I can only teach at the IIT level.
Then my reply was, “You can teach only at…
you know you are helplessly yourself.
You can only teach at your level .”
So, there is no point in your saying “I can only teach at this level,
you teach at the level that you…is convenient for you.”
But people ask doubts,
then you have to give additional lectures
to clarify what you are saying. That they all agreed.
In fact, I think typically Kamala Krithivasan gave…
instead of 40 lectures she gave some 52 lectures.
But the 12 lectures were not to dilute the syllabus,
but to make up for background…
lack of background in the students.
It was very well appreciated,
the whole thing has been well appreciated, I must say.
So we created…we wanted to…we created about
325 faculty members were involved
and we created about 400 courses I think, in the first phase.
The second phase was funded much more liberally.
In the first phase I had to give a lot of arguments
because I wanted roughly funding of 2 lakhs per course.
See actually little more than that, actually,
I am sorry, I wanted 7 lakhs per course,
2 lakhs for the subject matter expert, for 40 lectures
equivalent material,
and the remaining 5 lakhs for setting up studios in the various IITs,
staffed with M.Sc. or B.Tech. graduates
who would do a lot of support service.
They would do animations, they would do…
and they were remarkable;
these…our NPTEL studio people were very good.
They stayed with us only for 2-3 years
because they got permanent jobs and left,
but in those 2-3 years they made a difference
to the whole programme,
and they saved the faculty a lot of time
because the faculty gave a sketch of
what they wanted by way of illustration, they would do it exactly.
So all that worked out very well
and Mangala Sunder of course, was the
prime mover in the whole thing.
He worked…I think he must have worked 16 hours a day,
and the Chemistry Department is very kind to relieve him
of some teaching duties…major...
they allowed him to do this,
and he really did a remarkable job.
So with all these were set up,
other faculty also participated;
Kushal Sen was there from IIT Delhi,
he was running the Eklavya programme,
then there was A. K. Ray from Kharagpur,
there was Ghosh from Kanpur
and so, and Shevgaonkar from IIT Bombay.
So this is how it happened,
and finally, they all came together,
we…I said…as I said the first principle was
that we should develop the courses in modular form,
because there were several universities
and universities have different syllabi from same course,
and we needed to consolidate all the syllabi together,
take into account inputs from our own faculty,
who said, in spite of all you putting all this together,
this chapter…this whole concept is missing, this must be taught.
So we included that as well.
We came up with 8 modules,
of which 6 modules satisfied the syllabus
of some 6 modules satisfied the syllabus of all the major universities.
The three universities in the South
Anna University, the Visvesvaraya Technical University
and JNTUA Hyderabad, plus AICTE common syllabus.
So we did this, we insisted that faculty should
do the lecture sequentially,
they…there was a big argument about MIT.
MIT lectures are phenomenally good,
whose open courses started around the same time.
I think in fact, Chuck West told me later that
he also had the idea in ‘99,
but he didn’t have to wait for money .
And secondly, his was different;
he was simply
asking faculty who would like to talk about subjects
to give lectures on various topics.
So they were topic-based, not syllabus-course based,
and that made a difference
because you were always very enthusiastic about
a particular topic in your course,
and they do a remarkable job of course,
but I told them, that was like icing on the cake,
but what we have…we don’t have the cake of education, and yeah,
so we first had to create the cake.
So then they all agreed, everybody agreed.
In fact, within a few months they were all on the same page,
you know, all the coordinators, the NPTEL coordinators, and then,
the faculty joined, I was amazed at the cooperation involved;
325 faculties were involved in first phase,
and they all developed courses.
We also made subject teams,
and these subject teams then
distributed the courses among the IITs,
because initially we didn’t want repetition.
So we chose the courses so that there was no repetition.
Afterwards, in second phase we allowed repetition,
because you also want pedagogy to be different,
different people teaching the course…
we will teach it differently and
some students will like one type of teaching over the other, and so on.
So all that we did,
we didn’t pay too much attention to pedagogy
because they were more worried about getting along
with…getting the courses on stream.
It was only at the second phase that
we started worrying about pedagogy about various things.
Meanwhile, what happened was
there was a change of Secretary, Deputy Joint Secretary and so on.
There was a new additional Secretary in N. K. Sinha in MHRD;
the original Joint Secretary who supported us was Pandey;
V. S. Pandey, and then it was N. K. Sinha.
N. K. Sinha had a bigger idea:
he created this National Mission on Education through ICT.
That was a huge mission: 4000 crore projects…
and they are in fact, I also helped in presenting;
he wanted me to come and present the thing and so on.
He was very ambitious.
Then NPTEL got subsumed under that,
but we said we have to retain the name
because by that time NPTEL was well known.
So it must be called the same…by the same name.
He agreed and he gave us the money,
he gave us the funding. In the second phase we got 96 crores
or something like that, and so that’s how it happened, the whole thing,
but we did make sure that several things were done;
In the second phase all the courses were in four quadrants,
there were the lectures, quadrants are not equal,
lectures with three fourths,
and the rest of it, we had questions;
typical questions that would come in university exams and so on,
and questions with answers…so sort of a question bank.
And then we had additional reading
for those who were interested.
So things like this, there were four quadrants in this…
in the…further reading if they wanted to do,
search the area and so on.
So these things we are all put in together,
and everybody participated very well.
So the whole thing came off well,
and then we started distributing these courses,
initially by hard disk,
and we actually gave it to individual colleges.
We gave, I think…for 2 lakhs or something we gave
5000 hours of lectures.
And covering several courses in
Civil, Mechanical, Electrical and Computer Science.
So this was the genesis of the whole thing,
and I must say when we distributed these,
it was done completely free of cost,
except for cost of the hardware alone,
and it…they had to bring their hard disk and so on.
Many colleges bought it, and they put it on their intranet.
The internet then developed and then,
it was…I think Guha; our alumnus
who is with Google. He was Vice President of something
I don’t remember, he came
and he was very impressed with what had been done,
and he suggested that we put it on YouTube.
Everything used to be a bit of a controversy,
when…he said YouTube, I said…I thought immediately it’s a good idea.
But many faculty objected saying
“There’s a lot of bad stuff on YouTube.”
I said, “That will remain,
so let’s put some good stuff there and see what happens.”
But also, Guha did a great thing;
he got us a YouTube channel without advertisement.
So that was separately a YouTube channel for us,
it turns out, actually at the end of 2 years,
we got the award for the most visited website under YouTube.
It was remarkable how people were absolutely…
you know, they were desperate for good courses,
things like that, and courses to a syllabus,
so that they could also write the exam again.
Also a lot of people who wrote GATE
for entrance to postgraduate, found this very, very useful.
That’s how it happened; it caught on
and a lot of people…Srivatsan,
he was a former IIT Kanpur guide
who was at that time in charge of
the IIIT in Bangalore.
Later on…I mean Trivandrum, sorry.
And he…he was right through the participant in all the meetings,
Paul Goodman was always there,
and he gave us a lot of good advice from his experience in…
in fact in Mexico, the Vice Chancellors
participated in the workshop that we conducted here.
They told us
that the best students used to go to some two universities in Mexico,
after this Virtual University was floated
the best students came to the Virtual University.
It took some time for it to be established,
but once the students realised that it was serious good stuff…
so that is the possibility.
I mean eventually people will want that flexibility,
and I think probably happen…but
the Virtual University was something that
MHRD chose not to give it to me for…at that time
and…they gave it to somebody else and then
switched back and said, “Will you do it?” I said “No,
I am not going to take it.”
You know once the thing has failed in somebody’s hands,
it creates a bad…this thing,
then you would spend all your time making up.
So I said “No, you have to go to somebody else to do this,
besides I was getting a little tired; I was 8 years into the system.
So I was going to quit,
but Mangala Sunder continued…now of course, we have a…
we have a very good NPTEL program,
but the interactions between the IITs
are not as strong as they used to be…in the context of NPTEL.
I mean, we still have a lot of interactions in other contexts,
but in the context of NPTEL, I think the interaction is not quite as strong.
But each IIT is doing very well.
Andrew, Prathap and Niketh are doing a very good job in IIT Madras,
they have this huge programme of B.Sc. Data Science,
and also overall MOOC’s have been running very well.
NPTEL office is a very busy office.
So I think it’s worked out quite well,
and it’s been very timely, when the COVID came, it was very, very handy.
I mean, not that we anticipated any of it,
but then in any case, and my main…like this thing was that
you have to take opportunities as they come and positively.
You can’t very well say that
YouTube is…has bad things in it, therefore I will not go with it
I mean that’s all bunkum here is n…nothing that’s completely saintly,
there is nothing that’s completely wicked.
So it’s a mix of everything,
and you play the game along with them.
And it’s amazing how many people…
in fact, 15 percent…the hits are over a
300 million or something now,
and 15 percent are from abroad.
In fact, we have had several emails from abroad saying
“Can you…can we pay for it?”
“We have benefited so much from it, can I pay for it?”
But we refused to take any money.
I told the Government of India, “The total expense is very small for you,
and by not taking money you keep the whole thing clean,
nobody can accuse any
coordinator of running away with any money and so on.”
And once they start looking at…
looking after the money, then they will forget about this.
So I think it’s been in that sense, the principles were right,
and it’s worked out very well, and it’s been a…in a sense it is a success,
but you know it’s like the Chinese proverb or something,
it says “It’s easy to open a shop, it’s hard to keep it open.”
I think it’s going to be very hard to keep it open,
in the sense that Andrew and Prathap and all these people
now spend so much of their time,
and it’s rewarding in itself, but we must think so.
If you don’t, and if you think your research is suffering and so on,
then it becomes very difficult.
And it’s very difficult to find committed people to do this without a regret.
Prof. Nagarajan: Okay.
Prof. Nagarajan: I think one thing that NPTEL has done is make our
Prof. Nagarajan: IIT faculty into global superstars;
Prof. Nagarajan: you know they get mobbed when they go to airports and
Prof. Nagarajan: all kinds of people run…come up to them and say,
Prof. Nagarajan: you know, “Thank you so much, I learnt so much from your course,”
Prof. Nagarajan: I think that’s been great.
That is very true, even at the counter,
people will tell you…at the ticket counter, they will tell you
“Sir, sir you are from IIT.”
Prof. Nagarajan: Yeah, yeah.
You are surprised at the kind of people who watch your course also.
Prof. Nagarajan: Of course, I am personally very happy that
Prof. Nagarajan: Usha, my wife was associated with NPTEL for 5 years.
Yes, it was good good yeah.
Prof. Nagarajan: And that’s were very exciting 5 years
Prof. Nagarajan: through phenomenal growth Prof. Ananth: Right…
Prof. Nagarajan: and so, on. Prof. Ananth: You know she was a very enthusiastic manager,
so she managed the whole show very nicely in the NPTEL studio.
I mean, I think…I think a lot of people…
now many wives are involved; Balaji’s wife is involved.
Prof. Nagarajan: Yes. And she is doing a great job, Bharati is doing a great job.
So I think all of these…there is lot of talent on campus,
and we also began to tap them.
Prof. Nagarajan: Yeah, of course, and that’s why video courses have now
Prof. Nagarajan: evolved into books and live courses,
Prof. Nagarajan: certification courses, diploma courses, degree courses…
Prof. Nagarajan: I don’t know…where do you see the future I mean…
I don’t know, originally, I was thinking of NPTEL as
the bank of courses for a Virtual University.
So I wanted a virtual labs,
I wanted two things:
virtual labs I wanted,
IIT Delhi gave a great proposal and they are doing it.
I don’t know if they are doing it now,
they were doing it when I was in the Director’s seat
and they did a good job. It’s very hard,
virtual labs are very hard.
And then, there was…so, these were going on…
I suggested that we should have
a 100 laboratories geographically distributed in the country,
and located in many private institutions.
The MHRD should spend 5 crores setting up
these undergraduate labs per institution.
And that’s not much money; 100 crores…500 crores
and that’s not much in those days.
And I said, “Set it up and give it to them for 9 months,
let them use it freely…3 months they must run it for NPTEL.”
So the fellows can go from the nearest place
they can go and do these…that never happened.
Partly because MHRD is always obsessed about
private institutions misusing money and so on.
I said, “A fraction will always happen,
but a large fraction of them will do a decent job;
you trust them they will also do a decent job.”
I think it hasn’t happened, as far as I know.
So that needs to happen, then the Virtual University can come.
The Virtual University can handle 20,000 people.
In fact, I was trying…in a sense,
I was looking ahead at the
Ministers talking about increasing the strength in IITs.
I didn’t want that.
Not because I want to be exclusive,
I just think it’s very hard for us to handle such numbers.
When I was Director, there were 5,000 students now there are 10,000.
In 10,000 students…you can keep them engaged in class,
but outside class, having 18 to 22 year olds on your hand,
not being able to entertain them adequately
can be a disaster. I in fact, suggested to the Minister
that IITs are aspirational institutions;
leave them alone and let them
reach levels of the highest in the world.
Meanwhile there will be models that can be copied,
then as we go along we can copy them,
but don’t increase the strength in anyone of them.
But Arjun Singh told us, “You are just being impractical;
politically that’s ridiculous because
you are essentially encouraging exclusiveness.”
But you know, this discussion came up earlier
when Indiresan was Director.
And Indiresan said, “We are not elitist enough.”
In fact, he told the Minister that.
“We want to be even more elitist.”
In a sense that is true, it’s not about snobbery,
it’s about seeing how far we can push ourselves…
and you can’t do that with a very large number,
so you know in a way it’s happened either way.
Prof. Nagarajan: Okay, do you think a programme like NPTEL can be designed for schools?
In fact, it can be and it ought to be, in my opinion,
but I do think face to face contact is important in schools.
The NPTEL material can be used as a supplement.
In fact, we did do that
during 2008-2009
when N. K. Sinha took over and wanted to subsume this NPTEL
in the…this thing. He couldn’t provide us with funding
which he had promised already,
because he was waiting for this to come through.
I told him “You can’t do that and I can’t check…
I can’t throw away all these trained people.
I can’t get them again.”
Then he said, “You use them for any education purpose.”
And in Tamil Nadu we used them for
corporation schools and all that…30 schools.
We developed material
with the teachers coming in and using our NPTEL Lab.
NPTEL studio and the lab,
and in fact Mangala Sunder again helped in that,
also Natarajan helped in that. Physics…and they did remarkably well.
They made 30 odd videos for courses 8, 9 and 10.
Beyond that people were too concerned about
how well their children will do and so on. So they didn’t want to do that.
And also, this also takes a lot of time.
The teachers were actually I was
amazed at the commitment of the teachers; school teachers who came.
Many of them would finish at 4 and take a bus and come.
So I insisted that they take a taxi or an auto,
and we will pay from NPTEL
and they did that finally.
I told them, “You are just tiring yourself, I want you to be consistent
and do this,” and they said, “How could how we will be pay for it?”
I said, “You don’t pay for it, I will pay for it.”
So they were really remarkable,
and they came, they participated they took a lot of interest…
worked out well and
our Mangala Sunder and Natarajan made
Physics and Chemistry labs available,
I mean the departments made it available.
So they could do experiments there
that were shown live to students in class.
I think it’s possible, but I think it should be in the form of supplementary
material, it can’t be the main…simply because I think
students need a teacher at their class.
They need some role models,
they need to see people being sincere about it and so on.
You know, I have always been saying that
the teachers should be paid much more; the school teachers
Prof. Ananth: and… Prof. Nagarajan: So we talked about Research Park,
your earlier webinar, and you talked about NPTEL.
I know that the third outcome that
you are particularly happy about during your tenure was
faculty recruitment.
Prof. Ananth: Absolutely. Prof. Nagarajan: But first, I want you to repeat that
anecdote that I always recall about when you realized that
we needed to hire some young faculty.
Yeah, I know…go ahead.
No, you start with that.
Yeah, you know, what happened in ’98, I think,
we gave the Professor who is…who was then the
President of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation…
we gave him an honoris causa degree.
He couldn’t come to the convocation,
so we had a special convocation in September of that year,
and all of us were…met in the hall…like function…it was a formal function,
we didn’t have the same crowd as in the convocation,
because the students weren’t graduating in that function.
But we had that ICSR conference hall full,
and our photographers had taken a picture from the back,
and when I was sitting with Professor Natarajan,
he brought the photographic album to the room,
and we both looked at it together,
and all the heads were bald.
I think we almost found no head that was not bald
(laughs) in the auditorium.
So I told Natarajan, “Time to hire people…(laughs)
look at the age of the faculty.”
He laughed, but it was about his last year ‘99
it was his last year...[indistinct]
So I think he did some, but not much.
Then I decided that that was the most important task,
I still think so. I think if you hire good faculty,
then you don’t have to do anything else; they will run the show.
And I think hiring good faculty is very, very important,
we set up an elaborate procedure.
We came up with an ‘academic performance index’
and then ‘overall performance index.’
See, academic performance index was for teaching, research
and Ph.D. guidance and so on.
The overall performance index included money brought in
by projects for improving infrastructure in IIT.
The consultancy was not counted there,
because consultancy has its own rewards.
The faculty gets anyway from remuneration.
So while they can do that
to help themselves and to help their teaching,
that wasn’t counted in the overall index,
but the research projects were counted,
and the things like fist, money to improve labs and so on,
all these were counted.
So we had these indices worked out fully.
I told the Dean Research and Dean Administration…
were the two people who drew the weights
associated with these numbers.
It was Professor Raman in Computer Science
who made it logical.
I mean, he never figures in all these things,
but he was the one who told me,
“You should normalise the whole thing.”
These days somebody may do only research
and he may do it so well that you want keep them.
So you must say in research
how many points you will give for research, overall.
So we did that and so,
everything was expressed as a fraction,
for example, if you only publish papers,
and I am talking about 2001 when we first came up with it,
we said, “I would expect you to publish 125 papers in your career.”
So this is just a number,
and we knew it had to change with discipline
and change with [indistinct] and so on.
Some refinements we will introduce later,
but this gave you an idea…
so even if the…others were…columns were blank,
you had those significant contributions to show,
because of which you could retain the faculty member.
So, for promotions and for new faculty,
for everybody, this was the very nice thing
and the lot of exercise was done,
the best papers that the…applicants were asked to name the best papers,
and the best papers were read by faculty in the department
in the area; they make comments on it,
those comments came to the Director,
Head of the Department forwarded.
The Head of the Department also used it to screen the application,
so there was a very long…huge effort;
I mean, before every recruitment, the three of us:
the Director, the Dean Research and Dean Administration
would visit the department
and look at all the borderline cases.
I mean cases that were
rejected with only a very close score and so on.
And so, after discussion we
called all these people then they were selected.
So we had about 600 on an average, applications every year
after screening, out of that we picked 35.
That was the average score,
I think Bhaskar has about similar numbers may be a little more,
but he also finds that…he can be sure only of about 35 people,
because once you take them
and we don’t have a system by which we eliminate them afterwards.
So…and it’s also not fair to eliminate them
in an economy which doesn’t have parallel movement.
I mean in the US, if you leave the university
you can go to the industry, here you can’t, not yet, but in any case…
so we did all this…took a lot of effort,
and we didn’t give the weightages to the people,
but [indistinct] we have…we had international publications,
national publications and so on.
One thing I couldn’t get is the departments to tell me
which was the most important journals there.
I wanted to give…them to give me A B C,
so that I could weightage…weight the articles published,
but they said no.
So, what then happened was finally, we had this 35…
so we had a recruitment of about 350 people
when I was Director there, about 125 retired,
so we still ended up with about 500 faculty,
whereas, when I joined it was 320,
when I became Director it was at 320.
And the students’ strength was increasing.
So, we finally ended up with about 500.
I think now it’s 600-650 or something like that,
I mean numbers have being increasing.
And I remember that 3 years after the recruitment drive,
the Electrical Engineering Department faculty beat the students
in the cricket match fair and square.
Because lots of youngsters in the faculty
who were good players,
it so happened that they were reasonably good players.
So it was sort of line…very reviving thing.
You had a feeling that you had a lot of young people…
there was some future in the whole thing.
So basically the strategic plan did that;
it did also…our ISO 9000 also cut down a lot of rules.
There is always people complaining about bureaucracy…bureaucracy.
In itself, bureaucracy is not bad I think [indistinct]
[Indistinct] says it’s rule of the norm.
But I think we reduced it considerably because of ISO 9001.
And thanks to a lot of suggestions from intelligent staff,
who felt…who are not shirking work, who simply said,
“This is a unnecessary duplication, this should not be done,
this should be done,” and so on.
One of the recommendations…
it was a very peculiar, a very good recommendation,
they said, “Move the…
the academic section to the ground floor,
then your electricity consumption will decrease.”
Because students were coming to the fourth floor regularly using the lift,
and the number was so large,
that it would have been logical to shift
the academic section to the ground floor,
but for some reason a lot of Deputy Registrars and Assistant Registrars,
they had the reason, they said,
“It’s much safer in the 4th floor.”
I mean the possibility of theft possibility of…
you know, one fellow, one crook doing things wrong
with the academic section is very high.
So keep it in the 4th floor.
So I was just saying the level of participation in detail was remarkable.
It showed a lot of staff were actually very interested in IIT,
and in its functions…and Professor Gokhale ran the ISO 9001, first time.
He did eliminate a large number of rules that we had…
that were not necessary there.
So that’s the…
You know there is now…I mean push to also recruit international faculty.
Prof. Ananth: Yes. Prof. Nagarajan: What do you think about that?
Do you think that will help the IITs in the long run?
I think…I think it’s very, very important.
In fact, I wrote…article on…
we had a ‘Golden Jubilee Reflections’;
small booklet that I think Professor L. S. Ganesh had brought out.
Different people wrote articles in it, one of them was me, as that…
and I wrote saying
“the Golden Jubilee is a good time to reflect on what we have done
and what we want to do.”
And I said, “If you compare us with the best universities abroad,
mostly I am familiar with US universities but the good universities abroad…
we had done some things right;
first thing is that we realised that
hiring young faculty brings a fresh…
a breath of fresh air to the Institution,
and giving them autonomy, complete autonomy.
But I insisted every young faculty member
who joined come and see me.
The first thing I told him was, “You don’t have a boss,
and formally although I am the boss
I am telling you: you don’t have a boss.
The whole idea is for us to
benefit from your ideas,
and you have to cooperate with the Institutional schemes,
but otherwise you are the…you are completely [indistinct].”
Second was that
money comes to research based on proposals given to various agencies,
and that’s good because that competition sharpens you and so on.
Then we said, “We do need the…”
I mea… noted a few other things that we have done right,
but we also said that we haven’t done a few things right.
One of the things that happens when you get rated internationally is
the international character of the Institute.
And that depends on the number of international students you have
and the number of faculty you have.
And this thing, my opinion is always been important because
while the science is universal,
the scientist has a cultural background,
and therefore set of prejudices.
If you have a mix of cultures, then you have…
some prejudice is overcome easily because
some of the faculty now don’t have those prejudices.
So that is really the crux of it,
and I found that we were losing some 5 percent - 10 percent marks
in the rankings, and that is a huge amount of marks…
you can’t very well expect to get to the top without them.
Similarly, you needed graduate students who were from other cultures.
I wasn’t so…particular about undergraduates,
but at under…at the graduates level I wanted
students to be selected by us
for admission, I felt people would come.
And…I mean, that has happened and
I think it needs to happen more openly.
Faculty for example; we can hire
visiting faculty, we can give them professor appointments,
but for 5 years.
I think that does not encourage the feeling of belonging.
You need people permanently there, knowing that they can’t be fired
I mean except…unless they do extraordinary things.
So, I think that’s where the crux of it was; I think
it’s…more and more people are coming now,
but we still…I don’t know
if we have a provision for giving them permanent employment.
But I think that is important.
And…so, I think it’s a good idea, it’s a good idea to have
one third of your students,
at least one third of your students from abroad…
from other cultures, not Indians
from abroad, but from actually different cultures.
I think that’s important,
that’s the secret of the success of the graduate student with us
that mix of students of different cultures
and that seems to help them understand.
Since it works there, why can’t we copy it?
Prof. Nagarajan: So as a Director you are quite active in
Prof. Nagarajan: building international relations as well as alumni relations.
Prof. Nagarajan: How do you think IIT Madras benefited
Prof. Nagarajan: and continues to benefit from these efforts?
I think the funny thing was that the alumni
felt we were indifferent as an institute.
I think they were right to a large extent,
but to be fair to us,
I should also say that we were living hand to mouth
and the [indistinct] thing, but
Professor Natarajan realised the importance of it and he started the whole thing
See, in 1997, the Silver Reunion of the ‘72 batch of che…of our students,
who was the first one that was conducted in some scale.
I remember the students coming there,
I still remember this conversation with a bunch of students, I think I told you this before,
but they came and they wanted to give a donation…
contribution for scholarship or something, I don’t remember.
I was Dean Academic Courses, so Natarajan sent them to me.
Some of them were Chemical Engineers,
and I had given a lecture in one of their courses.
So, they came and said,
“We want to give you a donation,
how do we know you use the money properly?”
So I said, “How do I know you earned it properly?”
They were very upset.
I told them, “Look I don’t mean to upset you,
but I think you should realise that you have to give this money with humility
and I will receive it with humility,
both for a bigger cause for the IIT.”
And they were furious,
but they came back next morning and said they agreed with me.
And we are still very good friends…many of them are good friends.
But, I did feel that they had a lot of ideas
and they had no opportunity to express those ideas anywhere in IIT forum.
Secondly, I also found that they didn’t know anything about IIT after they left.
So their whole idea of IIT was of an undergraduate institution,
whereas, we had a large number of post graduate students,
we had really good theses Ph.D. theses and so on.
So finally I said, “We have to talk to about to them about our research,
what we want funded, what projects we think are good,” and so on.
And worked out very well;,you came with me,
you made a big difference in the Professor-Alumni affairs
because you introduced a lot of procedures and…
that were very useful for contacting them,
and I think prompt…
your promptness in replying to emails itself is a huge thing.
It was the change from anything that had happened before.
And the second thing was transparency;
I had been insisting on transparency in administration,
but you actually practised it fully; 100 percent in the alumni office.
I mean any time any contribution was made,
IIT Madras was known to be
the most transparent institution [indistinct].
Because they…you put up immediately how it was used,
where it went, where it is parked, what it’s used for.
I think overall we built up relations in the…
Bhaskar has taken it to greater heights
subsequently you became Dean.
Now, Mahesh is Dean,
I think overall, the alumni relations with IIT Madras are very, very good,
and they also participated quite
enthusiastically in the Research Park,
although they were getting a bit fed up because it took 8 years.
So every year I go to IIT…you have been with me several times,
every time we spoke about the Research Park,
there was a smile of scepticism on their faces,
but in 2009, things changed;
suddenly they saw the beginnings of it, and 2010,
a lot of them wrote to me saying,
“We didn’t quite believe you, but it’s actually become a reality.”
So I think it’s…it helped,
but I knew this would take time,
I wasn’t going to defend myself. I allowed it to take time.
So I think they’ve come up with a large number of ideas,
then the ’81…your batch of course, came up with that CFI idea…
Centre for Innovation of which you are also very proud.
It was actually a very good thing
because along with the Research Park you needed a centre here,
which was informally…which wasn’t worried about money.
But we should come up with ideas
that were potential good ideas for incubation and startup.
I think the CFI is being… we got rid of
one of the sheds in the workshop;
carpentry shed or something and converted it into CFI.
And as I said, I have always been
amazed at the interest the students directly
and now they were smiling all the time,
wheras they don’t smile in class much.
But I think it’s fine,
I mean, it’s just that they were interested in it very much,
they weren’t fazed.
They did a remarkable job of managing it all on their own.
We said give the key students both…
there was a faculty advisor,
who has always kept core struck with them,
but I think they managed the whole thing on their own.
So I think that whole innovation through
entrepreneurship pipeline is now so well laid out, you know.
Prof. Ananth: Exactly.
So anybody can make the journey,
so to speak.
Yeah, absolutely. And the incubation centres in the Research Park also
doing very well, I mean they know how to take care of these.
So, I think
starting new programmes, new departments, new schools is another
important thing for an institution to do to…to stay current
and I believe there were…there was a big School of Biosciences
and a Department of Engineering Design that were started
during your time. What are your recollections on…on how…
Prof. Ananth: Department of Management Studies became
independent only during my time;
it was part of the Humanities Department,
but we finally…we were able to push through an MHRD order.
Prof. Nagarajan: Sure.
The only problem has been, in my opinion,
I don’t know if Bhaskar sees it also as a problem.
Basically that the management departments in the IITs
don’t deal too well with finance,
and financial management is a very, very important component
for a management school to become famous.
So we haven’t…while we have publications,
we haven’t reached kind of a reputation that we could have,
like the IIMs, if we had a strong group in financial management,
and that hasn’t happened,
but in any case that was the first one
that took off from humanities and became a separate department.
We have built a new library,
so we gave the old library building to
Department of Management Studies.
And then we started M.A. in English.
I’d always felt that the
our students who came from different backgrounds,
they usually had good general knowledge in first year.
Of course, my memory is all of the first few batches,
all with your batches since one.
Up to about ’83-’84…
that was the transition from 5-year to 4-year,
and up to that point,
there were a lot of interesting conversation
you could have with students outside your topic,
and that I somehow thought was very important.
It sort of shows a breadth of exposure,
and the chances of your getting ideas from other fields.
And…and I somehow felt that was missing.
It was…used to be reflected even in the cultural programmes,
that time it was Mardi Gras and so on.
But, it was getting a bit…this thing,
and I wanted an…Masters Programme in Humanities.
We had one with about 60 students
in three disciplines:
Economics, Development Studies and English.
I think Economics would drop subsequently,
but the other two remain.
And the students who came to this programme,
wrote the competitive examination in all-India level.
They were as selective as the JEE.
In fact, there were a couple of people who
got through JEE, got an admission,
but took the M.A. programme.
So that increased the prestige of the programme.
Also those kids could hold their own against the B.Techs.
Because the postgraduates have always suffered in terms of confidence,
and so the B.Techs. have owned the place for a long time,
but I think the M.A. programme helped even it out a bit.
There were still the Bachelor’s students,
but they were students whom M.A. students and…
they were from a different…they had a different perspective,
and that happened,
we had several task courses that changed the curriculum
and provided more electives and more choice.
Then we had the Engineering Design programme,
I mean engineering design is becoming more and more important
I approached Seshasayee and Ashok Leyland,
and he had…Bosch and Ashok Leyland were close collaborators
they brought in Bosch,
I mean between Bosch and Ashok Leyland,
they gave us 8 crores to start a new department.
That is how the Engineering Design Department came.
And that has been a quite a good success…
lot of biomedical went in there
and there was lot of classical design.
It’s not as if other departments don’t do it,
because I think the emphasis here is on design; synthesis and design.
So that also worked out very well.
I think it’s on…more than that, in the strategic plan,
while discussing it, and during the reflections of the Golden Jubilee,
we felt there were two important points that we need to emphasize.
It’s not as if we don’t, but I think we don’t emphasize it enough.
One is autonomy; the kind of academic autonomy that we have had,
and I think that needs to be preserved, you can’t take it for granted.
If you don’t watch out, there will be interference from other sources,
because others have strong opinions,
but your senate should have discussed and
you must be the final arbiter.
And the second is what
Charles Lee came from MIT to visit us.
He gave a talk.
He talked about what is called ‘publicness.’
And publicness has to do with
essentially structures that preserve the
autonomy of an academic institution,
even if autonomy means…
preserve it from interference from the government,
even if it is funded by the government.
That, I think is an important characteristic
and we don’t have such structures,
we have to create them,
it doesn’t matter if we copy, we can always adapt it.
We don’t always copy for backup.
We sort of copy and adapt to our conditions and so on.
But I think that needs to be done.
The other point that came out of the strategic plan is…
the…Bhaskar is fully aware of this also,
that fundamentally our senate should have future plans for IIT.
I think it should discuss…there must be a
mechanism by which a separate subcommittee at the senate
discusses the future,
consults faculty and brings it back to the senate from time to time.
And then you will see where you are going.
I am not saying you will see all of the path,
but you would see part of the path.
I think that’s important.
Prof. Nagarajan: Yeah, by the way at…Institute level
Prof. Nagarajan: now there is the Advisory Committee
Prof. Nagarajan: which has people from you know, from alumni and industry,
which is a separate body from the Board of Governors,
so, hopefully that will be of some help in providing
strategic directions for the Institute in future as well.
Prof. Ananth: My feeling is you need a board like that,
but to that board, the agenda that comes to the board,
should be set by the senate subcommittee.
Prof. Nagarajan: Sure, sure, sure.
Because they are after all, busy people,
they are very good people, they are wise people,
but they have their own commitments.
Prof. Nagarajan: Sure. Prof. Ananth: They are not going to come up with ideas for you,
you should come up with ideas which you take to them
for refining and positioning properly.
So from an autonomy viewpoint,
do you think the designation of IIT Madras as
an Institution of Eminence is going to be of help?
Actually, I don’t know too much about this Institution of Eminence;
I was a bit disappointed with the wording.
Institution of Eminence
the ‘excellence’ I have heard, the Institution of Eminence
I didn’t understand, because we were already eminent, anyway.
The IITs are so few,
in the country with such large number of students
that, you know, but I don’t know if that is going to make a difference.
Those are only words.
I think unless we make a postulate,
we make a postulate saying,
“These are the ways in which we should guard against
autonomy being eroded,”
because nobody takes away your autonomy like that.
They erode your autonomy in small ways,
and you don’t notice it, and after a while it becomes a habit.
I found this in Anna University,
I was…used to be on their syndicate,
and I found that the Secretary Education of the State
never attends to syndicate meetings,
but then writes to the Vice Chancellor saying,
“The following decisions in the syndicate may be deleted.”
And if at all independently I had met him,
in my capacity as Director of IIT, he was a very decent guy,
and I couldn’t understand how he could even write that.
And I found that he got used to writing it for IIT…for Anna University
because Anna University had never protested.
It’s a matter of habits, more than anything else,
and some of these things of commission,
are best handled by preventing them from happening.
Once they happen, you have to actually fight the fellow
and the fellow deals with you on a daily basis with finance,
everything and then he can get…you know,
he can have a bad feeling about it and so on.
So I think you have to prevent them;
prevention is much better than cure.
So you have to prevent any…for example, in the M.A.
programme that we started,
Secretary Education at that time,
told me, “Take them…take the students from your JEE,
go down the list and take them.” I said, “I won’t.”
We discussed in the senate,
and they all agreed that we need a different perspective,
so we need students…you know different…with different interests,
and he was very unhappy, Kanpur said they will…
Kanpur said they will call the programme M.Sc. in Economics.
I said, “I won’t do that either, I call it M.A. in Economics,
and I will take it with...”
Then Secretary said, “Aren’t you being unnecessary fussy?” I said, “Yes,
I value my academic autonomy,
I have already discussed it in the senate and senate has approved it.”
Then he said, “I didn’t have the minutes to the senate with me.”
He said, “You go back and write the minutes to suit your…this thing.”
I said, “No, in two days you will get a...this thing.”
So, I circulated it
and you know all senate members signed it…
all of the senate.
It came back in two days,
in fact, the Secretary told me
“If you of have this kind of cooperation from your senate,
then I won’t question your…this thing…[indistinct].
So I think it’s important that you be watchful;
the Secretary was a very good gentleman,
I won’t…even if I named him it won’t be a this thing,
but I know he was a gentleman,
but he is harassed on many counts,
and he has been told from JEE,
“You’re rejecting a large number of good people,
so you should take them.”
So that was his agenda,
but that can’t be your agenda;
your agenda should be ,”Why should I teach this course?
If it’s interesting who should I take for those course?”
In that way, I discussed already.
So I think it’s important that from time to time, you have to assert.
It’s like the way we do the ritual of closing a gate,
to show them we own the property.
I think it’s similar,
there are some academic gates that you have to close from time to time,
showing people that you are the final authority.
Nobody can tell you what to do.
Yeah, I…I remember your saying that, you know,
“As long as you have good ideas,
they will leave you alone to execute them.”
So only if you don’t have ideas, they will impose their ideas on…
Yeah, the problem is, it’s not that we don’t have ideas; we don’t pursue them.
We don’t put them down in writing,
we don’t crash them out,
some will disappear others will remain,
and then you should carry them forward.
That is how both the Research Park and the NPTEL…
and I think by…because of Research Park and NPTEL,
we had the advantage there…
the Secretary was hesitant to call me,
because he said, “If I call you, you will ask about those files.”
So, Professor Ananth, I think we have come to the end of the 1 hour.
Thank you so much for spending the time this morning,
who knows we may have to do
one more of these to cover all the topics you want to talk about, but…
Yeah let me just stand one last thing that
actually Chuck West told me,
he told our Dean’s Committee in some meeting.
He pointed out that as far as the university is concerned,
the product is not the student; product is education.
He said, “If you brag too much about a student,
then you will have another student who is bad,
who people can throw at you.”
“The fact is that these students come with a certain background,
and you add some value to them.
So what you add by way of value, is education.”
And he said, “You should always remember that
the product is education not the student.”
I think that’s an important point.
He said, “The price of that education is tuition,
but it will never meet the whole cost.”
“It will meet only one third of the cost,
and the rest of the money should come by way of subsidy
from various sources maybe from the government
may be from the industries and so on.”
But, he says, “The guiding principle
is never cut down on expenses that can compromise product quality.
You can instead, constantly strive to find additional sources of funding.”
I think this is very, very important.
You have to keep that in mind all the time.
So you can’t say...if an idea for improving education is a very good one,
you must ensure that you get the money for it,
rather than saying, “I don’t have the money so I won’t do it.”
You can postpone it a bit,
because you don’t have the money,
but you must have a time, target and money.
I think these are somethings that western universities take for granted,
but they have been, you know, for hundreds of years.
But I think we should write it down
and make sure that we practice it.
Anyway, good…thank you very much Nagarajan, once again.
Thank you, Professor Ananth, that was a pleasure as always.
Thank you, thank you very much.
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