Prof. M.S. Ananth in conversation with Prof. R. Nagarajan
Good morning, Professor Ananth. Good morning.
Sir, its always a delight to talk to you and the
especially in the context of this
Oral History project that the Heritage Centre has undertaken.
So, I would like to start by
asking you to describe your life
before you joined IIT Madras as a faculty
member, and then we will
talk about your life here.
When I grew up in Chennai,
I was part of a joint family,
went to a Tamil medium school till 4th standard
then switched to a convent because my mother was
concerned that I...I wasn't learning English enough.
And then, couple of years in a convent then
went to Madras Christian College High School.
We had a wonderful headmaster there Professor Kuruvila Jacob,
he was a really enlightened man. He made...
I think he made learning a pleasure overall,
he never believed in any punishment,
although he carried a cane with him.
And he used to punish us when
we were caught doing some mischief and sent to him.
He would swish the cane very hard,
but very close to your hand, it will never hit you.
In fact, I remember one classmate of
mine moving the hand getting hit, he said,
"Silly fellow, don't you know I miss always?"
He said...(In Tamil) Like that
So it was simply symbolic, but it was a
wonderful experience being with him in...
And later we started this Kuruvila Jacob initiative.
We started the Kuruvila Jacob initiative.
My classmate started it, I also helped with them.
And so that was a good experience,
then I was in Vivekananda College for one year,
that was also a wonderful experience.
The teachers were very good, uniformly good,
although at least half of them didn't know
how to keep discipline in class.
120 students many of them who made noise, but...
I think they were remarkable in the sense
their concentration on the subject was so much
that they didn't even notice that the students made noise.
So, we had really good teachers in Vivekananda,
then I joined A. C. College of Technology, and...
That's because back then, IIT Madras was not...
No, actually I applied, the...I got a letter
for saying I hadn't paid the postal order,
my postal order didn't reach them.
So I can't write the JEE. Oh.
And it...it was no big deal, because in those
days the other colleges were as good. Yeah.
The state Universities were run very well.
A. C. College had probably a better chemical engineering
department at that time than anybody else here in the South.
So, there was no...this thing at all.
So I joined A. C. College, I had a very nice time,
five years there, and Dr. Laddha was the Director
of A. C. College.
He was a very serious man,
but it turned out that he had a sense of
humour once you penetrated the
initial layer, but he kept a
very serious face.
In those days I think many
faculty did that...they...because, they
didn't want the expression voice
if you give them little space,
they will climb on your shoulders.
So, essentially they were very strict,
but they were very nice, they were very focused
and Professor Laddha was very clear that
while he was Director, Administration will
not consume his whole time.
So, the Registrar will turn up between
2 and 3 for signing any paper.
If he came before 2, he would be shouted at,
if he came after 3 he would be shouted at.
Professor Laddha said the rest of it was
his research time, he can't interfere.
But those were days when people
listen to older people.
So I think in that sense, the administration
was easier. Then after I finished, I went to
University of Florida in those days, I mean
we didn't know anything about the US,
I got a 1st rank here, but
I wasn't sure that I was clever enough to do good in...
too well in graduates type school,
I didn't know anything about it,
and only Florida offered scholarship.
So I went to University of Florida,
but they had at that...in that year they got a Centre
of Excellence grant.
In those days it was
500,000 dollars and it was a huge amount of money.
So they had a lot of good people
and I had quite a few young faculty who were
very good. One of them was
Keith Gubbins, and I worked with him.
I worked on molecular theory.
When I finished, I came back,
I wanted to come back, I applied actually,
I applied to all the IITs, I got no
answer from any of them, March 1971, I wrote a letter
saying "I am likely to finish in one year,
I am interested in a faculty position."
Then out of the blue in March '72,
I got a letter from IIT Madras, the first IIT to reply.
And they offered me an Assistant Professor position.
It turns out that Dr. Ramachandran
who was then the Director, had come to the US
For recruitment, and about 19 of us in the US,
he spoke to people we...whose names we had
given as references,
I didn't know about it till much later,
then he made the offer directly as Assistant Professor.
In those days it was very hard to get Assistant Professor
we were very lucky, because if you became
Lecturer, it took eight to ten years to become Assistant Professor.
And, that was the rule, but,
we were...19 of us were lucky, but
I think out of 19, only two or three stayed.
The rest left almost immediately.
I think what people don't realize these days
is that in those days, the money
was a very severe constraint.
I would say up to about '90. In fact, '99
when Natarajan was Director, the budget was still very small.
And in '99, it was the first year when
Murli Manohar Joshi suddenly tripled the budget,
and after that we have been
comparatively very comfortable. Yeah.
As far as budget goes.
So but...I joined as an Assistant Professor,
initially I didn't understand, there was
some slight hostility. I think understandable
hostility because people didn't understand why
these young fellows were given Assistant Professor's post.
But, I was very clear that I had
to be friendly with colleagues in order to stay in an institute,
and within six months, most of them were very friendly
and they were very helpful.
Professor Gopichand was
Head of the Department, and he was a very liberal person,
he let you do...he was sort of
whatever you wanted to do, as long as it was not
anything illegal, he would say "Yes."
And...in those days the Registrars were very strong,
or at least appeared to be very strong.
And of course, I had a run in with couple of them
in those days, but Professor Gopichand called the
Registrar and said, "He is a young man,
he is very enthusiastic,
he is a very good faculty member
here so, you shouldn't trouble him."
But he would say it very nicely,
and that made a difference, then the Registrar
softened a bit, and so on.
So overall, I think he made life
much easier, but the colleagues also, after six months,
the first six months, you could feel
a slight hostility all the time, but after 6 months,
I think that's true of IIT Madras,
it doesn't take to newcomers Yeah.
very well.
But within a few months,
everybody seems to settle
into a comfortable slot with them,
and then they are very helpful.
So, this was true, but by and large,
I think IIT Madras was considered, and was
a very conservative organization.
I think the difference was because
of the first Directors in various places.
And, in particular Kanpur had Kelkar
as the Director, who was a very very liberal man.
And I think that made a difference to the starting of Kanpur.
Also, they are hiring...they hired faculty
more autonomously the,n
in some sense as the way we did it.
I mean, all the other IITs were more conservative in this regard,
I think the advantage there was that,
Kanpur was connected to the US
through a consortium of universities.
Including MIT, whereas, we were all...
all the others were connected to the
countries that help them,
through the Ministry of Education. Ok.
And, that made a difference to the whole attitude.
R. Nagarajan: But I think we also had an interface through
University of Aachen We had,
but the universities were referred to us by... Ok.
See, after about 10 years,
we got to know the Germans well enough.
Then we could practically
tell them what we wanted. Sure.
Professor Wittig I think, was the first one,
'73 or something he came,
one year after I joined.
I...I was no...never in the picture because I was too...
low in the hierarchy. But I heard stories,
and Professor Wittig said, "You guys have reached a
level of maturity and we should be able to
deal directly with the Technische Hochschule."
So then, we had a very good interface with the Germans,
before that, many of the Germans who came,
were not academically the best,
but they were still very very committed people.
We had a few people in Chemical Engineering also,
they are very committed people,
but I won't say they were academically the best.
I mean later on when we got to know the Technische Hochschule,
we knew that the best people didn't come.
After that, after '73, after Wittig's visit,
a lot of these people came from
the best schools, and they came for
short visits, which is what
you would expect of a faculty member who is busy there,
but those short visits were very useful.
But overall, I think the German
connection, had also many plus points,
I found the discipline.
The level of discipline in IIT
Madras was better than
anywhere else,
and secondly, there was this
sincerity, the commitment and this thing, if you said
something, you did it.
I think the Germans,
we probably, we were naturally also that way,
but they emphasize that so much,
that it became...and the workshop again,
was very different,
but, the Germans
were able to run it with discipline,
because they were able to convince
people, that was...with something very useful.
So I think there were some, this thing, and
after all, we are all young institutions,
even now we are only 70
years old. So I think...like...the solution
to a differential equation, the dependence
on the initial condition is very strong.
So there is still a this thing...
although we have changed considerably
in the last, maybe 30 years.
Speaking of differential equations, you know
I was a student here from '76 to '81
and I remember taking Fluid Mechanics and Yeah.
Thermodynamics with you, and...
so did you enjoy teaching those courses particularly Yeah.
to IIT students, how was the experience?
Yeah yeah, I...I think I enjoyed teaching all the time,
I am sort of...naturally liked students,
and that helps because students
then like you reciprocally.
And...in fact, I was also warned
that these students are very intelligent,
but they will take advantage if you give them allow them,
if you give them an inch they will take a...
large amount of space.
But my experience has never been that.
In 40 years of teaching in IIT,
only 2 students crossed the line
where I thought they had...and I could
tick them off immediately, but otherwise they don't.
But, I think the big advantage I had
was, that I was much younger than most of the other faculty
So...and I was able to talk to
the students much more.
I remember back then all the
students wanted to do their projects with you,
and they all wanted your reco letters to go abroad.
No, I had more contacts in the US than most people.
Many of our...my older faculty members
had contacts with Germany, but students
weren't going to Germany, so, in that sense
I was saying but, I think more importantly,
while teaching undergraduate students, my
experience in those days was,
they were mischievous, but I remembered
exactly how mischievous they...
My classmates and I had been in A. C. College
so I had a...I always keep...kept that memory.
So it was clear as to why these kids were behaving the
way they were. But, I think the one thing I
found was, that whatever I knew well, I could teach them,
and they never complained about the paper being too hard.
They complained only when you were not uniform
in your grading, or you were partial about something.
Otherwise I found they never complained, and this is in contrast,
you see, much later I went to Princeton
for sabbatical, '82-'83.
And I was teaching this reaction engineering course and after
mid-semester, the...Professor Schowalter
who was the Head of the Department, he met me in the corridor
and said, "Ananth did you give a very hard mid-semester exam?"
I said, "I didn't think so why do you ask?"
He said, "There has been complaints
of your accent after 2 months."
If they had complained in the first week,
I would have had to take them seriously,
but since they complained now...
and it turned out...then I spoke
to the class and said, "What's your problem?" They said,
"You taught five hours of polymer reaction engineering,
didn't ask a single question
in class...in the exam."
And our kids never did that
Yeah. to me, yeah.
So I think, in a sense, they...
there the undergraduates were very demanding.
And they felt they had...they judged you. Right.
And, they asked you,
"Why you didn't ask a question with us?"
I said, "I thought that was my right."
Yeah, I remember you use...I think you were probably
one of the first faculty to offer take home exams and...
Take home didn't work though,
take home I got too many copies of the same.
But, open book exam
yeah I was probably the first
to give an open book exam, I think I have never
given anything except an open book exam,
and I remember the very first batch,
I gave an open book exam, and
they all brought the mini books.
But I had told them the main book
was Smith and Van Ness in thermodynamics and
so, this kid brought Smith and Van Ness,
he looked at the question paper,
he...I was invigilating,
he looked at me and said "What page?"
And I said, "113" just spontaneously.
And so this kid opened 113, it so happened there was
a worked example there, so he copied it and he got a zero.
So he came and complained to me,
"I asked you the page number, you gave
the page number" I said, "This is a free country,
I will give any page
number I want. After that they never asked me a question "
in the exams, but I think they got
used to open book exams. They realized that
open book exams were no easier than closed book exams.
So... So you are...over your four decades of teaching,
at the...have you seen a change in the in the students
composition and make up in...?
Well there is a change, but there is also a change in me.
So I think I would say, the big change
my...my perception occurred really in
'85-'86 when we switched from
five year to four year.
There was some immediate
change in the attitude of the students.
The five year students I think
felt there was a lot of time.
And so, they were much more relaxed at least for four years,
three to four years, they were...they enjoyed themselves.
After the four year batches came,
they seem to think that they had to rush through everything.
And secondly, I mean, there is always a
fraction of students who were an absolute pleasure to teach.
That fraction remains, and when you go into
class you try to find those four, five faces
that show the 'before' and 'after' look.
I mean when they understand something, they will smile
broadly.
I think that is important,
for any teacher, and that four or five always
remained, but I think the fraction of students,
who wanted marks, but who weren't willing to work very hard,
that increased. Right.
And, I think it was also related,
thinking back, I think it was related to the fact
that its around '90s
when the state universities started deteriorating badly.
There was lot of political interference in the university,
the Vice Chancellors appointment itself was somewhat political,
and these things led
to a continuous deterioration in the state universities
so that, now the difference between
IIT and the state university is huge.
See everybody wants to get in to IIT,
and they want to get into IIT for the wrong reasons.
I won't say all, but there is a small fraction that
certainly gets in for the wrong reasons.
And they can dilute the atmosphere.
See, its not as if students
were always studious, I mean nobody is. Right.
I mean, you study only when something
interests you,
or when you have to.
But I think this large fraction,
and I...I keep quarreling with
I used to quarrel with Professor Indiresan,
because he introduced the notion of relative grading.
It was always relative grading.
I...you can never do absolute grading, because any paper you give,
if its very hard, you are going to see if...
everybody it does badly, then you are going to moderate
it in some way, but you know you shouldn't have said it.
Professor Indiresan discussed it in the Senate and
came up with a formula for large classes,
x bar by two was a pass mark.
And...with the result, the students got the impression,
if all the kids did badly,
x bar would go down, x bar by two would go down
further and they would benefit.
These are calculations that in...all kids do.
Everywhere.
I think the mistake was
probably in discussing it.
Similarly, the other mistake
historically, and this is not the blame the people involved,
I mean Professor Indiresan was very interested
in students in fact, he was very very popular.
And Professor Srinath andz...
had a long discussion on attendance,
and I remember he introduced 55 percent
as the minimum attendance required.
And in the next term,
next semester, after three classes,
after mid semester, there was nobody in the class.
And then the kid said, "55 percent we have got sir."
And then they came back, but this is part of their fun.
I mean what else will they do on a campus if they leave?
So they came back, but I thought this
idea of discussing attendance, discussing
the way you grade,
is something that should be done with...among faculty it should be
reasonably transparent if somebody demands justice.
Butu otherwise you don't
have to go around explaining everything to them.
And these were...those were two big events that
changed the character of the students and their attitude.
Other than that I...there has still always been a
fraction of students who are so good,
and they don't necessarily sit in front, they are distributed in the class.
But they are so, interested that they make your life very
happy.
So, I can't complain at all.
So, one interesting thing we are finding is the
number of girl students seems to be disproportionately high
in Chemical Engineering, about 22 to 23 percent of the
entering class is now girls, so did you see
during the time you are teaching because we didn't have too many
girl students in the early years, but
was there a difference among the boys
and the girls in terms of how they...
There was...that again after this...I mean
I...I am not connecting the two,
but around the time in five year to four year
batch. After that, the communication between
the boys and the girls seemed to decrease.
For some reason.
so, in fact I had to tell my class,
if the girls were not present, I said "Make sure the girl knows,"
and I will catch one of the fellows and say,
"You are particularly responsible,
you must communicate this,"
otherwise they won't tell the girls. Sure.
And then you have a quiz on
something, and the girls don't come.
And then turned out they went and found.
So that kind of lack of communication was there.
I think, by and large they were alright.
A few girls have complained to me saying that
the boys have the advantage of being
able to discuss among themselves.
And therefore, they do much better and, "We are not
allowed to do the discussions," turned out the
discussions were after 11 at night,
which is when the boys got...
So you can't change the rule and ask the girls to Sure.
be permitted to go to the boys'
hostels at 11 so, that was...
Where do you think the department as a whole has
evolved over the years from the time you were there?
I think all departments, the research
content has increased, of that I think I have no
doubts at all. By and large, I think its also has to do
with our hiring, when we ask more questions about
research, about what people do and so on.
And, as I said after 2000, we have had plenty of money,
it's been reflected in the increase in publications. Sure.
In fact, 2002 to 2011
when I left, the publications went up
from 400 to 1200.
So there was three times the
increase, its simply that there was more money available,
and more young faculty were hired because
they were good at research. In fact
I remember one of my colleagues told me,
he was a wonderful, he was really good teacher,
I don't want to name him, but he told me,
"Sir the IIT cheated me."
I said, "What did they do?" "They only asked if
I will teach, and after joining
they told me 'you have to do research.'"
I mean, it is something that you have to
get used to, and if you are told then you have
mentally prepared for it and so on.
So, he was very intelligent, but somehow he didn't,
he said, "I have never thought of researches thing."
He was very practical, he did a lot of consultancy,
but what he said, I think was true that,
there was no job, clear job
definition in the beginning days. Right.
They only wanted sincere people
who would teach undergraduates.
But it turned out that if you have an academic
institution of any reputation, you will need research,
and then this gathered.
And, the science
departments of course, always started first in research.
Because there is a tradition of research in science.
In engineering it is much newer.
Now there is, but in...even when I joined,
the number of publications
in engineering was one third
the number of publications in
science, whereas, there were only three science
departments, of that Maths was not very prolific.
Chemistry was maximum, and then Physics.
So I think this notion
that you need to do research in order to
just make a claim for your reputation
and all that, came much later.
How about industry?
Professor Ramachandran introduced,
Professor Sengupto apparently never
spoke about research. Professor
Ramachandran tried to introduce it, he introduced the
postgraduate programmes and emphasis on research.
Sure.
But he stayed only for one term.
And I think then, the thing went back a bit.
And have...have industry relations
deepened over the years, has that been a...
I...I think again IIT Madras was a
pioneer in this, when the Germans introduced this and I think
in '73 it was Wagner, Professor Wagner
who first brought up this Industrial Consultancy
in Sponsored Research, and the idea was a
wonderful thing.
I mean it made the
interface with the industry much easier.
Right.
And, I would say, a
fraction...the number of faculty
involved in consultancy has always been somewhat low.
I think even now it will probably be 20 percent.
It used to be even less in those days.
Except for Civil Engineering and. Ocean.
Subsequently Ocean Engineering.
So there there was a natural inclination to do Right.
practical work.
But, I think overall,
we had this notion that
we had four obligations in IIT:
teaching, research, industrial consultancy
and improving technical education in the country.
That last thing we hadn't done very well,
by and large we had gone to these
other places, and told them how to
set up the lab, but it was a one-time advice.
You didn't check whether they got the right
things and so on.
So that wasn't
there, and in fact, it was under
that, that I started the NPTEL much later.
Because there was shortage of faculty
everywhere, and I said, "At least we
can contribute that," and,
that turned out to be a good time to start, and
we have...now have what,
the largest collection of technical
We have more than a 1000.
Lectures in
courses, you know, largest open collection. Right.
In the world.
So, I think
that has worked out quite well,
but the industrial...again we needed
to take the industry interaction
to one higher level, which is
when we thought of the Research Park.
Actually, the Research Park happened because...
did an analysis, very informal analysis
of some 100 patents, IPRs
in Silicon Valley between '90 and '99.
About 70 percent of them had Indian names in it.
And out of that 70 percent
had IITian names in it.
So, well, you know the story I went to MHRD
and told them that...I quoted Louis Pasteur
he said, "Discovery is the result of
chance meeting a prepared mind."
And I said, "We have been preparing minds for 50 years,
and chance is meeting them in Silicon Valley,
so it's time that's chance met them here."
Then he said, "What do you mean?" I said, "I need a
place where industry and faculty
and students can all meet." But it has
to be right close to the campus, because
otherwise I can't ask my professors
to go there and come back and teach.
They will have to do the teaching research
and then they also have to do that.
And, fortunately for us in '99,
they closed down the...'98 they
closed down the MGR Film City
which was 40 acres of land just across the road.
So, I urged Professor Natarajan one day to write to the
State Government asking for land
for starting a Research Park.
We had no idea what a Research Park was at that time,
then we worked out things and said...
and then apparently Ashok Jhunjhunwala
came to Natarajan with the same request.
It was just a coincidence, and Natarajan
asked me, "Did you talk to Ashok?" I said, "No."
Then he said, "He also came and spoke to me about it."
I said, "It's a good time to ask for the land."
So we asked for the land, and we finally
got the land and, but the idea of
setting up a Research Park was mainly because of
all this creativity that was...
you know, on which we were losing money.
This innovation that was happening in Silicon Valley,
we were the authors, and
they were the beneficiaries.
So in that sense I think it was an
important thing...it so happened that the timing
was right, and a lot of people said "Yes",
who could have easily said "No."
So the Chief Secretary gave us land
for a very nominal sum, I mean the least amount is very
small, 30 years, and the MHRD had
to say "Yes" to start the company, Section 25
company that would...now Section
8 company that can hold shares.
And, the planning commission said "Yes"
and...I had done some homework, I had called
Montek Singh Ahluwalia twice and initially
the Planning Commission objected,
but I had talked to him when he came for a talk here,
and he said it's a wonderful idea.
So, I called him.
And he said "Its a wonderful idea," I said, "But the
Planning Commission is objecting to it," then he
said, "Look Ananth, not all
papers come up to me," I said, "Now it has."
And next morning Planning Commission supported
us, and they called me and said "Sir, we are all
in favour of the Research Park."
So I mean in various ways,
then the Finance Secretary,
she was also very nice about it.
They had never done it before,
but she said, "Ok we will take a chance."
And, once we created a Section 8 company,
we could take loan,
and that loan has also been returned.
I think the timing...it was...that's a matter of luck,
timing was just right, and now
phase 2 has also been completed.
So, the Research Park and NPTEL were the big thing.
Actually, I had a policy sort of,
MHRD everybody always complaints about MHRD
interfering, telling us what to do, and so on.
My contention to the Senate was that if
we don't keep MHRD busy, they will keep us busy.
So we should have two, three proposals
that are very large, that require a
lot of permissions, Yeah.
and you must keep on asking them,
"You see I sent you the file, what happened to it?"
So they hesitate to call you and
ask you to do this.
I think there, the Senate should play a role
in envisaging where we are going. Sure.
And that, we still don't, because we get so
busy with routine, we're still arguing
about what has already happened and...
we don't seem to plan, and in that sense,
the first time we had a strategic
plan that told us what future
should be like, was when
Madhav Rao Scindia became the Minister.
And he asked all the boards of IITs
to come up with a strategic plan,
it was supposed to be 2010,
and our board took it very seriously,
Natarajan took it very seriously.
He hired a
gentleman called Ganapathi,
who was an...Professor of Management.
In fact, initially there was lot of resistance to him,
like all things in IIT Madras,
initially when he came people said, "Oh,
he is a management man he will talk, but
he won't do anything,"
but he did a remarkable job.
Muthukrishnan was also in charge,
between the two of them, particularly
Ganapathi, he conducted 30 workshops
with various stakeholders in the campus,
and he was able to extract their opinions
in a cogent manner, so he
came up with a document
Ofcourse he wrote the document in
a very peculiar style, management style.
So I took his permission
and rewrote it in English.
I told him I...Ganapathi
became a good friend, so, when I told Ganapathi
I am going to rewrite it in English, "What do you think
its written in?" he said.
I said, "It's written in managese."
No, he had called the
Registrar a Chief Administrative Officer
and various fancy titles, Vice President,
President, things like that and,
I mean those are corporate titles
that just don't go well with...
so anyway, we rewrote it,
and it did give a good...
see it did two things, first thing
is it got the staff involved.
Sure.
And a lot of our staff are very intelligent
people, and they gave very good suggestions,
many of which were implemented.
Natarajan also started ISO 9001...
just before that. In fact,
I was Dean with him, I told him it's a
waste of time and all that,
but he said, "No no, you don't know,
we should do it," but I think it was a very
good thing in the long run, because, later on,
many of the staff told me, "Sir, for the first
time we were consulted."
And academic section was full of suggestions.
Many of which were implemented.
Simply because Professor Gokhale who was in charge,
made it very clear that ISO simply means
"You do what you say,
and you say what you do."
And we weren't doing that, we had
many rules which we thought were
not necessary, we didn't follow them,
but we had them there. So the ISO
fellow will come and say, "Where is this rule,
where is the implementation?"
And nobody knew.
Then we got rid of those rules.
So, I think we have made a lot of changes,
and they came out very well.
And, around that time, I think when
Professor Swamy was Director, N. V. C. Swamy was Director,
I was...in the last year of his
term, He made me Dean of Academic Courses.
And talking to Professor Swamy, I felt that
there was tremendous amount of
what you called oral history.
Which he alone seemed to know.
I mean he had a terrific memory,
and he remembered from '59
he knew things.
So when somebody said something,
he will say, "Oh, we discussed that in
1963," he would say.
And, I was very impressed with
how much he knew about the background.
And we are not very good at documentation,
even in IIT we are not very good at documentation.
In fact, one of our problems has been land also,
this land the MGR film city land, plus
other land, all of it turned out to be...
to have been allotted to IIT in '59.
We didn't take possession.
So, I think these are things that if the...
if we had good documentation, it would have had helped.
It's not just the IIT Madras, I think all
IITs are guilty of this. We also had
problems with the layout,
the piping, and the wires and all that, we...
I mean we didn't know where the wires were.
And when we dug for a plumbing defect,
we ended up puncturing the wire.
So these things happened in...
this thing, now I think we have a much better idea.
We have done a lot of...
and, I think the alumni were first
contacted by Professor Natarajan.
In '97 is when he first started his...
he said we have to get hold of alumni,
and relate to them. And I still remember that
was the 25th year of the '72 batch.
'72 batch and there were several
chemical engineers in that batch.
And the...I knew them, I had
not taken classes for them, I had joined and I
just knew them. So they
came to me, I was Dean Academic Courses,
and they wanted to give money for scholarship.
This is the story I like saying because
it sort of set the tone, because that's to the...
these six of them came into my room
and said, "We have...we want to give...donate
money to IIT for scholarships,
but how do we know
it will be used properly?"
So I turned around and said, "How do I
know you earned it properly?"
They were absolutely shocked,
I said, "Look I mean no offence, but
you asked the question, it provokes an automatic
question on my part." And, I said,
"As far as the IIT is concerned,
we will not take money from
arbitrary donors, we will take
money with humility from people
who give it with humility."
I said, "Both should be subservient
to higher cause called IIT."
And they got very angry, they went up to Natarajan and
said, "Your Dean said how do we earn,
how do we know you earned it properly."
So Natarajan called me,
I went up and Natarajan said, "Ananth,
I am trying to cultivate these kids and
here you are immediately provoking them."
I said, "I meant exactly what I said."
Amazing people, alumni still ask that
kind of question maybe I should repeat your
answer to them.
No actually, these...these...I said "I meant
exactly what I said."
I think we should
remember that education is a higher goal
that both of us respect.
You don't have to respect me, but you respect education,
do you respect IIT and give the money.
And I will take it with humility when you give it to IIT.
Then, actually they came back the next
morning, 9:30 they were back in my office
and they said, "We completely
agree with your philosophy,
we will go with it."
Many of them are good friends of mine,
they didn't mean any...this thing, partly,
these B. Techs. when they come back,
somehow when they first come to campus they
seem to go back to their old days. Yeah.
So they ask the same cocky questions and the
same cocky comments.
That they would have done when they were 20.
They don't mean it, but it...it sounds
nice.
Yeah.
So, they say it. I...it...then it worked out
very well afterwards, and, but
this is a question that's often asked, they
don't realize that IIT actually spends money
very carefully and it's well
accounted for, and there are statements that will
always be made. But so, it's been
a pleasure dealing with them, and after that, when we
started this in alumni relation, Satyanarayana
was first in...Professor Satyanarayana was in charge.
And then Professor Nagarajan took over, it turned out
absolutely to be a revolutionary change.
He brought in so many changes
in the alumni...this thing, and the alumni began to feel confident,
and we went on trips every year.
I think during my time, we got about
35 crores or 40 crores total donations and all that.
Of course, that's much less than what we get now.
But its grown over a period of time,
and it was a good time, because the...many of the
students I found, many of our alumni didn't know
that things had changed since they left.
They still remembered IIT as it was
when they left and it didn't change much
because we had no money.
But once we had money we were making
changes here faster than most universities in the...West
Sure.
And once they realized that,
and then they came together and so on.
So you were the first two term
Director of IIT Madras, and how to...
how was the experience
from the first term to the
second term?
I had...there was no change except that
I was reluctant initially to take a second term,
but on the other hand, I had
started this Research Park.
I mean maybe if I had known how difficult it would...
it would have become, I
may not have started it at all, but
sometimes ignorance is bliss where it's folly to be wise.
And I started it, and it was going,
but everywhere there were hurdles.
Many, many hurdles, I mean
separately I have talked about the Research Park journey,
but I felt I shouldn't leave it halfway.
So, when they called me for a second interview,
in fact, it was peculiar, I had told
the Secretary that I will not come for a second term,
I mean I will not come for a second interview,
because if after six years you don't know
whether I am good or not,
you can't know through an interview.
And, the Secretary called me
and said, "I remember you are telling me this,
but please come, we have
political compulsions which require that
we interview everybody we appoint,
even if it's a second term."
So they did that.
Although I think they have appointed
Ashok Mishra for a second time without
this thing and then,
there were some...too many discussions,
people raising doubts
"Why did you appoint?" and so on.
So they finally decided to go with the
interview process. But I took the second term
only because the Research Park was...
had progressed to a point,
and in India, your personal relations
are what seemed to matter.
I had by then known people in the Planning Commission in
the Revenue Department and the MHRD,
I knew them very well.
So I felt I could help
in getting it.
I think I did help, finally
2010...it was before it was finished,
and once the Research Park was in place,
I quit in 2011, one year before...
my term was over, but because I had
finished more or less what ideas I had for
IIT.
But, I think overall the co-operation
that I got in IIT Madras is...is
something for which I am always grateful.
I mean it's not that I haven't had arguments,
but there was a principle in IIT Madras that
I...I don't agree with the Director,
but I will go along with him.
That attitude many many faculty have.
So while they will argue vociferously,
when the decision is taken, you have find the
co-operation levels are very very high in IIT Madras.
And that helped tremendously.
And we had others, I mean everybody knows this,
but somehow, you feel it only when you
sit in that seat, I think.
This is a
small township, where if you are the Director you
also look after water supply.
And...and the hospital and things like that.
So there were too many angles to the whole thing.
I mean on the one hand, on the education front,
you can't be static, you have to make
changes as and when required.
So, for example, we introduced this M. A.
in English, which turned out to be very popular,
and then we had Engineering Design,
and we got 8 crores from Ashok Leyland,
and Bosch, and they didn't interfere at all.
Everybody said, "If you take money from the industry,
they will interfere."
I had an advisory
committee with members from both, the top people
in the committee, but they really didn't interfere at all.
I mean they will interfere, in the sense they will
ask you questions, but that...they have a right to
opinion as much as you have, and if you are
convinced, you have to argue and convince them.
And I found it took time,
but they invariably were willing to listen.
And I think one of the biggest strengths of the IIT
system is the Act of IIT.
And, that act has been a source of great strength,
but you have to take full advantage of the
autonomy that the act gives you.
If you don't study the act, and if you
don't assert your autonomy, I think you will lose it,
that's something that worries me about the future.
In fact, there are occasions when...and I am not blaming the
Secretary, in his seat I would have done the same thing.
But, the Secretary would say,
after we have made a decision in the Senate,
Secretary will say "No no take my advice."
I said, "When I have 150 Professors
advising me, why would I take your advice?"
He said no, "I have a lot of experience,"
I said, "I won't tell you stories
about what experience means, but
I am not going to take your advice, besides
you read the act, you can't interfere
with me in academic matters."
Then he said, "You have read the act?" I said, "Yes",
and then he said, "No, ok I won't read it,
but I will take your word for it."
So, finally, he yielded, but they tend to say
things and if you accept, if you
don't object right on the spot,
then they think its disobedience, if you go and do it later.
So my feeling is, we should thrash it out
with them, and if there is a quarrel, there is a quarrel,
and you have to settle the quarrel by discussion.
And I have never had difficulty with any of them.
I have...I have seen six Secretaries,
but in all cases you have to be
open and transparent. Sure.
So that has always helped.
But...I think the potential for the IIT
system is tremendous, but we still have a long way to go.
So we had the Golden Jubilee, for example,
and it was a good time to recollect.
And I made a summary of things that,
in my opinion we had done right
and summary of things we needed to do.
Golden Jubilee in 2008 and the Research Park
haven't come yet.
So at that time, I pointed out
that we were doing the right things
in several things, like the best universities in the US.
For example, in hiring a faculty
and hiring and getting students,
we had a system by which we are getting the best,
at least the best we could get of the people who applied
we did a very serious...this thing.
And then we allowed research of course,
by that time DST had copied the NSF method and all that.
So, we were essentially exposing the research proposals to
market of ideas, where the best ones survive.
So if your proposal was good, you got funded. So
again, that was filtered very nicely.
We also realized young faculty given
academic freedom, bring refreshing ideas to the system.
I think that's peculiar about the IIT system,
the universities are much more hierarchical.
They don't have an opportunity to express their ideas.
So that was another thing that we were doing right, so
in many things we were doing right, but we hadn't
done right in some issues,
and I still think some of these issues are open.
The first one is that we have very little
to show in biomedical research.
I mean while there are spots of excellence,
the overall contribution in biomedical
terms, is much less than for example, in the US,
and the reason is that the US has
medicine and engineering in the same campus,
campus we don't.
So unless you have a place
where doctors and engineers meet constantly,
and like I always say over good food,
you don't get such fruitful interactions.
Most of their best discoveries
came from such interactions.
So I wanted medicine to be included,
Arjun Singh was the Minister, and he was very nice about it.
In a council meeting I proposed this,
and he said, "The act right now says
you can give education in engineering,
arts and science."
He winked at me in the
meeting and said, "We will add comma medicine,
nobody will notice."
But unfortunately they noticed.
And the health ministry noticed, and when it went to parliament,
it was turned down.
And, so that
was very unfortunate thing, the other thing
is I think, we ought to have
I know it makes it more difficult to administer,
but a little higher component of humanities in our education.
I think humanities...having humanities
education, we scientists and engineers
tend to think everything is deterministic.
Somehow we think if we do A,
there is a causal relationship we will get B.
But society is so complex, and the whole thing...
you don't get B, you get B prime which is very different
from B.
And to understand that,
you need a humanities background, you need to
understand that even in science,
there is a considerable subjectivity
in your...this thing.
And that...automatically frame of mind comes in
if you have humanities, a strong humanities department.
We have treated them as service departments and so
they have never really picked up.
So I think during my time and now,
we have increased the number of humanities faculty considerably.
We take more Ph. D. students there and,
I am hoping that will strengthen.
Because if you go to a place like MIT,
there is a history department out of which
one fellow knows so much about history of science,
that you wonder whether he is not a scientist.
I mean I met one fellow in Princeton,
who could discuss Newton's laws
and the way they evolved, how they were
explained what Newton himself said.
I mean I didn't know any of that,
I was amazed that how how language had
played a role in the overall
understanding of physics itself.
So do you think having more free electives
in the undergraduate curriculum is going to help us in terms of...
Yes, but this is a very peculiar thing in India.
I think more free electives are required, but you see
there is no point giving electives to people
who don't know how to choose.
So simultaneously we have trained the students to
learn to choose and that will happen if society becomes
more independent.
In society they are very
dependent on the parents, so when they come here, they're very
dependent on you as a faculty member.
In fact, in Chemical Engineering, you know that, I mean
when you were students and all that, students will
peep into my room and say, "Should I take linear algebra
or partial differential equations?"
I would say, "Toss a coin."
And they would be very upset with me.
I told them, "If you don't know which one, just
toss a coin it doesn't matter."
And I think, that idea of being able to choose...
there in the West, they grow up very independently
from the time they are small.
They are asked
to make choices, and so they become...I am not
saying one is better than the other, but if you
want to use the western system of electives,
you also have to have kids
who know how to make the choices,
and live with the choices, you always make mistakes,
I mean, I make...may make a mistake, you may make a mistake.
But, if you are used to making the decision,
then you get used to living with that mistake and
correcting it, whereas here,
I have seen a lot of people
blame their parents, blame their
teacher for choices they make.
So, many...many alumni would say that
you know, it's the activities outside of the classroom
that, you know, help shape them during their...
I think that's true everywhere.
The problem with alumni is very
often, they do undergraduate here, they do graduate
school there, and they compare the two.
These two are not comparable.
What is...what you can compare is undergraduate here, and
undergraduate in the US, then they will discover that
there is not that much difference.
I think that's...that's a mistake they make,
when you go to graduate school in the US graduate
school, you are pampered, you are looked after very well.
Here you are pampered in a very different
sense, as an undergraduate, in the US
undergraduates are handled with
what I call 'careful indifference.'
They had handled with indifference,
but they are so careful that they don't get sued.
Whereas, I think we spend a lot of
time on undergraduates, we have always paid attention to them.
But, I think more importantly, this...
I mean there are few things that we haven't done,
there is something in the US that's called 'publicness',
which protects universities from interference
by the government that funds them.
Even if you get all the money from the government, the government
still...there are lines that the government can't cross.
We don't have such structures,
and I think we ought to develop those structures,
because, see, by and large we have had good secretaries,
but there can be secretaries who are very
autocratic.
And they will have their way and they tell you
what to do, and I think that
interference should be completely eliminated,
and universities are places where we will make
mistakes, but we will correct ourselves.
And I think that freedom, you need.
The other thing is...we also need
protection from people who say,
"What's the use of your research?"
One of the fundamental things about the university,
as a Renaissance concept and subsequently,
is that the...there is pursuit of learning,
there is pursuit of learning in life.
But in the university, the pursuit of learning has
two important characteristics.
One is, no immediate use
and then second is attention to detail.
Others will call it quibbling,
but we are supposed to quibble so, that you lay
your foundations very carefully,
and...I mean I always keep quoting Gibbs,
Gibbs's treatise, after 150 pages of a
statistical mechanical treatise,
first time he writes it down.
He calculates the specific heat of argon,
and doesn't agree with experiment.
So he writes saying, "We must consider our
methods tentative, because we don't
get agreement with experiment."
I mean after 150 printed pages he writes this line.
Two years later when they measured the specific heat of argon,
Gibbs was right the old experiment was wrong.
And, it's remarkable that the person
does this with such care, meticulous care,
and has the humility to say this at the end of it,
that's the nature of the university.
It doesn't have anything to do with...and in fact,
some of my colleagues in the industry say,
"You people don't take realistic constraints into account."
The whole idea is not to
consider realistic constraints.
Realistic constraints are for the industry,
or for you also in a different role,
when you are a consultant, you have to take it
Sure. into account but, as a Professor,
you should only ask what is the conceptual difficulty
in tackling this problem, and I do not
worry about other issues.
In fact, I keep quoting my very first
consultancy was for the small industry in Ambattur.
Who wanted me to design a heat exchanger
for the flu gases that were...to recover
heat from flu gases that were leaving the chimney.
This fellow gives me this problem, and I was
trying to work out an optimal solution for it,
when he calls me and says, "Make sure
you use two inch pipes," and I said, "What's
the holy...this thing?" What he said, "My neighbour
has gone kaput, he is selling...
giving away two inch pipe practically free,
so that will be the cheapest heat exchangers that I can..."
Then he told me, "Don't make it longer than
four feet, because otherwise I have to lift the
ceiling, which will cost me two lakhs."
So given these constraints, the solution was
only to arrange number of pipes and arrange them in a...
But that's not heat exchanger design, I can't
teach this in class, because this was
peculiar to this particular situation at that time.
So I think the idea has not to introduce
any real life constraints. They are
things that you have to deal with as a human being,
in your real life, but it's not something
that belongs to the university.
R. Nagarajan: But increasingly, the trend is for faculty
R. Nagarajan: to actually start companies, in fact,
R. Nagarajan: even in Chemical Engineering there were several faculty
Yeah, R. Nagarajan: who were doing...
but I am hoping in their minds, they will keep these two separate.
When I teach in the university, I am only doing...
I am dealing with conceptual difficulties and understanding. Right.
And, the whole idea that I have been saying
all the time, the university is looking at unity in the knowledge
around you, I mean you have diversity
around you, but all of it can be explained by a
few laws, at least that's an assumption.
And we have been able to discover. I mean
Newton found laws that unified so much.
So these are...it's also a fact that we have
discovered these laws, but it's an article of faith.
So that's called an assumption in the Renaissance thinking.
The second assumption is that
that unity can be discovered only by pursuit
of social and natural sciences, simultaneously.
I think they don't realize the importance of humanities.
The...I mean my favorite story is also about
Gibbs's assumption in...when he treated
isolated systems, that the microscopic states
were all equally probable.
He made that statement, I suspect,
I mean if he had made other assumptions,
he would have got wrong results, he would have gone back finally
arrived at that.
But his very first assumption was that.
And I think it was influence of Marx.
At that time there was communism, there was a notion that
God is just...he makes everybody equal and all that.
So this notion, would have
influenced your thinking.
And I don't think it does it explicitly,
but it sort of sets the tone for it.
I think it's important to be...
to realize this, and to include it.
One of the things that I wanted,
I mean I...I didn't achieve any of this,
but I...what I wanted in the Humanities Department, this is
after what Wilson said in Harvard,
the biologist. He was pointing out
the reason humanities got left behind,
because, you see about 100 years ago
humanities and science were equally
important in Cambridge and Oxford you know...
in even the big places, but they have
subsequently lost their premier standing.
And he said its because, we scientists and engineers
look at the...all information over the
entire electromagnetic spectrum,
whereas, the humanities are still confined
to what the senses see.
They are talking about what you see,
what you hear, what you smell\,
that's a very small fraction of the total spectrum.
And he is saying humanities should take
that also as human experience,
and build an holistic picture around it.
Right now they are building a holistic picture around
inputs from five sense organs, and that is
just not enough to cover the all of science.
Sure.
So I think that's an important aspect,
for that you need people with
combined talent, I mean somebody who has done
Physics and then done a Ph. D. in
Philosophy. Bring him in as a
faculty member here.
You need that mix, we still don't have that,
partly because we don't have a big enough department.
I think those are necessary,
and we haven't done that,
I think many US universities do that.
At least they always have a few people who are like this,
and these mavericks make the change.
And we don't have those mavericks at all.
R. Nagarajan: I think you and Professor Ajit Kolar
R. Nagarajan: were instrumental in starting the Heritage Centre,
when you were the Director, how do you think
that shaped up so far and
what's your vision for it, going forward?
I...I think basically, 70 years is not too much history,
but on the other hand, there is a certain
continuity. I mean I have to
tell you what Radhakrishnan said in another context,
President Radhakrishnan said...
he talked about tradition,
and he talked about problems in Hinduism.
He said the problem in Hinduism is,
that the followers seem to
mix...mix up tradition and truth.
He said, "Truth is God," that's all, he closed the chapter there.
But he talked about tradition and he
said...I don't remember the exact words,
he was quoting Goethe, but he said,
"Tradition certainly provides continuity
from one generation to the next,"
but he says, "It also ends up with vain memories."
And I think that's...you...you have to be very careful about,
you...you have to be careful that you don't allow
tradition to cloud your future thinking.
So you must keep the continuity,
but keep only the fundamental
ethical continuity in tradition.
So the Heritage Centre like ours,
should do that, and if you take a
history of IIT's performance,
I think you can't keep people entertained
or engaged for more than half an hour.
70 years you can summarize in half an hour,
if you make longer films nobody will listen in my opinion.
But I think if you keep doing that, and studying it every year,
at some stage we will see a thread of continuity.
That thread that characterizes
what you would call the 'local culture.'
Country like India is very big,
there is a difference between
Bombay and Madras and Kanpur and so on,
but it should come out...it doesn't come out
obviously, because it's not so clear.
But I think it will come out
if you study such...this thing.
So, if the Heritage Centre produces one
film every year, about the continuity...about
what has happened, and if you study these
films together, some good Humanities Professor
will be able to tell you the trend.
And what probably is recognizable, is the
strength, our strength and what's
the weakness in what we should eliminate.
So my own vision for the Heritage Centre is,
it has to be dynamic, it has to capture what
has been done.
And, I...I think we are still behind now,
I think the Heritage Centre
has pictures up to about
2000, so, 17 years is a long gap.
We should put in more things theret,
because, this is also part of history now,
and we need to keep it to a minimum,
to see what is essential, what characterizes that age.
And, I think we have to ask those questions now
so that you can...because there will always be
local things that happen everywhere.
And if you keep recording them, you will clutter up the
place without a sense of continuity.
For example, this sports, or
for example, C-Phi for example,
is a wonderful thing.
Because your batch
provided the support for it, but we
started it as a hobby workshop, and then it
expanded to the C-Phi, which was done very well.
I think C-Phi again has to be
rethought from time to time.
At the moment it seems to be dominated by
all applications that require electronics.
I think it should be possible to think of other applications
R. Nagarajan: Yeah
and get them in.
And I think we need to do this dynamically,
none...you can't sit on your laurels at all.
We don't have enough laurels to sit on.
So, I think it has to be
continuously thought out, but one of the important
things I need to...I want to emphasize
for the IIT system as a whole,
is I think we have to explain to the
ministry and we don't do this well enough.
We don't do two things, one is we don't explain
to the ministry that you may say this is obvious,
but we need to say this again and again,
that research is open ended,
they cannot ask us to complete a research
project in so much time.
I mean by saying that, they are constraining you.
So then, you pretend that you have completed it,
but then you go back, the same
project comes back again
in another name. I think this
confessing what...this is what I keep saying,
confessing to one's ignorance
is both a privilege and a responsibility of an academic.
And, because you confess,
and another IIT doesn't confess,
the Secretary will think that other IIT is better than you.
You have to live with that, till he finds out that the other IIT
only said...didn't say it, but they also are...
I think we have to as a academic
community, recognize the fact that we are
dealing with ignorance, and we will never solve it fully,
but we will make sincere progress towards
clearing it. I think that has to be made
clear, and we have to make it clear that it's
expensive, and we cannot afford to
ignore it in the long run, simply because history
tells you that we ignored it from
1300 to 1800 when the British landed here.
What...after that we have been under colonial
rule for 200 years, and the loss that we
incurred because of that colonial rule,
there is no comparison to the investment
that you should have made for having
equal universities, I mean Oxford and
Cambridge we could have created here.
Historically we missed the bus
long time ago.
I think those are important things,
it's not because, I mean one
A is good at it or B is good at it,
it's simply that the nation can't afford
to ignore any aspect of...
So I feel that that's...I mean the
protection about publicness that I talked about,
Charles Vest, spoke about it when he came here
from MIT. I think they have those structures, we don't.
We need to do that, and we need
to more and more make
suggestions about what we want to do in the future,
our Senate should do that.
I think there should be one senate meeting every year,
if I had to play the game again,
in which I will refuse to discuss any current problems.
Only discuss what we should be doing.
We won't be clear, we will say
vague things, people will quarrel, but it doesn't
matter, out of all that, something will emerge. R. Nagarajan: Right.
And I think that's an
important aspect of its, personally.
And then history will record itself.
So, thank you so much Professor
Thank you.
Ananth for spending time with us, it's been a fascinating
conversation, maybe we should do
'Part Two' sometime.
No, thank you. Right.
No, and one of the problems is that if you start me on
this topic, I don't stop so...
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