Four Decadesat ITBombay

FOU R DE CADE S AT I IT B OM BAY
33
FOUR DECADES
AT IIT BOMBAY
RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS
s.p. sukhatme
in conversation with rohit m anchanda
Four Decades at iit Bombay Text copyright S. P. Sukhatme, 2009.

Any part of this book may be reproduced subject to the condition that a
proper acknowledgement is given for the material reproduced.
Design and typography by Vaibhav Singh. Set in Hoefler Text.
Published by the author in 2009. Printed and bound in India.
Contents
preface 7

1. recollections 11
Joining the Institute 12
First Impressions 18
The Early Years 24
Previous Directors 27
Faculty Colleagues and Other Staff 53
Initiatives as the Director 67
My Team 96
Directors of Other iits 100
Chairmen of the Board of Governors 107
Officials in the Ministry of hrd 112
11. reflections 115
On Teaching and Research 116
At the Institutional Level 125
On Students and Alumni 145
111. thoughts for the future 157
about the author 180
about the interviewer 181
abbreviations 182
PR EFAC E
The Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, came into existence in 1958 and it is currently celebrating its Golden Jubilee.
As part of many activities during this year, a book on the history
of iit Bombay has been written by Professor Rohit Manchanda,
a faculty member of the Institute. The book entitled Monastery,
Sanctuary, Laboratory describes the story behind the creation of
the iits after independence, the steps taken for the formation
of iit Bombay, and the early years first in Worli and subsequently in Powai. It then goes on to trace the growth and evolution of
the Institute to its present position where it has achieved a certain amount of global distinction.
I was closely associated with the writing of the book as a member of an Institute Committee appointed to help Rohit. In the
course of writing the book, he had to collect a large amount of
information from the past. Among other things, he browsed annual reports, Senate reports, agenda and minutes of meetings of
the Board of Governors, and correspondence and papers of the
Directors of the Institute. He has also relied on the information
supplied by various faculty members (past and present), alumni
and many other persons associated with the Institute in various
capacities. This information was generally obtained by recording
interviews with the persons concerned.
As part of his information-gathering mission, Rohit spent quite
a few hours with me in December 2006. We had five sessions,
lasting for about seven or eight hours and these conversations,
in which Rohit posed the questions and I did most of the speaking, were recorded. In his book, Rohit has used a small amount
of the material recorded in my interviews. However, there is

much more.
After hearing the recordings of my conversation with Rohit, I
thought it would be useful to put these down on paper in the
form of a book. A few others who heard the recordings agreed
with this view point and hence this book. I felt that the material would be of interest to people who have interacted with
me in the past and also to others who are interested in the iits
or in the growth of technical education in India. However, a
few words of caution may be in order. The recording was done
about two years ago and consequently some of my remarks may
appear to be outdated. For example, in chapter 3, I have made
the suggestion that we should strengthen our activities in the
area of energy. To some extent, this has been done by the Institute. A new department of Energy Science and Engineering
has been established and the faculty strength of the Department
has already been increased from four to nine. A dual degree programme in Energy Science and Engineering has also been started in July 2008.
In doing the transcription, I have remained fairly faithful to
the words spoken at the time of the recording. However, a
large amount of editing has been done in order to smoothen
the language and to ensure continuity. Repetitive sentences and
thoughts have been deleted and some material has been appropriately relocated. At many places, I have inserted a few sentences if I felt that the context in which I was speaking might not be
clear to readers.
As Rohit says at the beginning, the conversation is in the form
of recollections and reflections. Towards the end are some of
my views on what I would like to see happening at the Institute

in the future.
The conversation with Rohit brought back many memories and
evoked a lot of nostalgia in me. The words spoken by me are
spontaneous. Only the overall order of the questions which Rohit
would pose during the sessions was discussed by us beforehand.
It has been a rewarding experience for me to write this book and
I do so with the hope that readers will find it interesting, informative and perhaps instructive.
suhas p. sukhatme
October 2008
C HAP T E R I
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RECOLLECTIONS
JOI N I N G T H E I N S T I T U T E
rm: A very good afternoon to you, Professor Sukhatme. Thank

you very much for joining us this afternoon and agreeing to spare
your time to be interviewed for our History Book project. It is
my pleasure to welcome you today.
You have occupied many important positions in the Institute
and spent a large amount of time here. I believe, it adds up to
more than four decades now. So in my view there are very few
other people who can offer us the breadth of vision that you can
for the history of iit Bombay. In addition to having spent a long
time here, you have also brought honour and distinction to the
Institute through the many awards that you have received, such
as the Bhatnagar award, and of course, steered the Institute in
many ways as the Director, as the Deputy Director, as the Head
of a Department and therefore have been responsible for the direction which the Institute has taken from time to time.
So what I would like to do, to start with, is to ask you about your
recollections of the Institute at various phases of time and then
we will move on to your opinions on certain matters. Your reflections when you look back on certain developments that have taken place. And then finally, perhaps you could carve out for us a
vision for the Institute, where you see it headed in the next twenty or twenty five years. So if I may, I shall start with your recollections and let us go to the very beginning. You joined iit Bombay
in 1965 and you came from mit. Prior to that, you had graduated from the Banaras Hindu University. Why and how did you decide to join iit Bombay after graduating from mit? What was
the process?
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sps: Well, first of all Rohit, thank you for having me on this programme. I will try to do my best so that you get adequate information and we get a fine history book written. Now to your
question
It is interesting that events sometimes unfold in a very natural way. I received my Doctor of Science degree from mit in
1964. After that I was working in the usa, in a company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. While I was working, I was pretty sure
that I wanted to return to India and I was sure too that I wanted to teach. By teach, I dont mean just teach. I mean teaching
and research. As it happens, that was the period when the iits
had just been set up. iit Kharagpur was the oldest one established in 1951. iit Bombay was set up in 1958 with assistance
from the ussr, followed by the iits at Madras, Kanpur and Delhi which received assistance from West Germany, the usa and
the uk respectively. All were new institutes and the idea behind
setting them up was exciting because they were expected to set
new trends in engineering education and research in the country.
Even in the usa at that time, one got a feel that something new
was happening, even though communication was not what it is
today. But I was pretty sure that I wanted to come back to India
and that if I wanted to teach and do research, an iit would be the
place for me to go. By the way, I was also interested in a research
career by itself. Atomic Energy was one area in which I was interested. In fact, the thesis work which I did for my doctoral
degree was sponsored by the usa Atomic Energy Commission.
I had a deep interest in atomic energy then and it continues to
this day.
So in 1964, when I was working in the usa, I wrote a number of
letters to various persons in India. I wrote to the Directors of
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iit Bombay and iit Delhi. I also wrote to Dr. Bhabha directly
and one or two other persons. I sent a one-page biodata and a
covering letter stating my interest in a teaching and research
career. One of the first to reply was iit Bombay and interestingly
enough, it was Brigadier Bose, the Director who himself replied.
He wrote saying, I am glad to receive your letter indicating your
interest in coming here. At your level, we would probably take
you as an Assistant Professor. (He was straight away telling me
that he would be able to make an offer!) I would certainly be
interested in knowing your plans to come back so that we can
discuss the matter further. This was the substance of what he
wrote. It was a short letter, but what I appreciated was that he
took the time to reply to me immediately. My recollection is that
the Director of iit Delhi did not reply to me. However, I did
get an envelope from iit Delhi containing an application form
for a faculty position. From the Atomic Energy Establishment,
Dr. Bhabha also did not reply, but I got a letter from their
Administrative Officer saying that they were happy to know
that I was intending to return to India. The officer went on to
say that I should contact them after returning to India and they
would see what could be done. Now obviously that is not the
way you want things to move. You dont want to come back all
the way and then see whether you are going to get a job. I was
looking for some job offer from India, while I was working in the
usa. One or two other places also indicated their interest in me.
The two iits were of interest to mei it Delhi and iit Bombay.
iit Delhi was of interest because I grew up in Delhi and iit
Bombay because my mother tongue is Marathi. Of course, prior
to that I had not stayed in Bombay, only visited it a few times.
Interestingly enough, when I went to the usa in the September of 1958, iit Bombay had just started functioning. While
14
re c o l l e c t io n s
going to America, I stayed in Bombay for four or five days. Professor Katti, whom I knew, had just joined iit Bombay. He had
completed his Ph.D in Soil Mechanics from Iowa State University and received a job offer as Assistant Professor from iit
Bombay while in the usa. When he came to know that I was
in Bombay, he said Why dont you come over to our Institute?
I want to show it to you. It is temporarily in Worli in a building belonging to the Silk & Art Silk Mills Research Association
(s asmira). He gave me directions for coming to Worli by bus
and we agreed to meet at four in the afternoon. So I went there.
Professor Katti was very happy to see me and he showed me
round. He had been there only two months, but was full of enthusiasm. I remember he introduced me to Professor Kelkar. Professor Kelkar was then the Planning Officer of the Institute. At that
time, there was no Director. Thus it is very interesting that my
first association with iit Bombay occurred sort of unwittingly.
I had no idea at that time that eventually I would come back to
work at the Institute.
Coming back to 1964, I got the application forms from iit
Bombay and iit Delhi and filled them up. My application to
iit Bombay was considered in absence by a selection committee. There was no interview and I was offered the post of an Assistant Professor with some increments. This was unusual for
iit Bombay at that time. iit Delhi also replied to me. At that
time, Mr. K.B. Chandiramani was the Educational Adviser in the
Ministry of Education. He was closely involved in the setting up
of the iits and was visiting the usa. The Director of iit Delhi,
Professor Dogra, requested him to meet me. So he called me up
when he was in Boston and expressed his desire to meet me. We
met for half-an-hour. It was a brief meeting, not an interview. I
think he was supposed to carry some impressions back. He did
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chapter 1
and apparently they were positive because iit Delhi also sent
me an offer of a faculty position as an Assistant Professor. So I
had two offers and I had to choose between them.
I really cannot tell you why I chose iit Bombay. As I said, I grew
up in Delhi and had some affinity for Delhi. But somehow, I felt
that Bombay was the better place at that point of time. It is possible that my decision was subconsciously influenced by the fact
that Brigadier Bose himself wrote to me. Perhaps it made a difference. It is possibleit does make a difference. As I said, he
wrote very short letters. But he used to take the trouble to write
himself. When I had accepted the position (after I had thought
it over), I wrote back to him saying I am accepting your offer,
but I need some time to join because I am working in the usa. I
need six months. And he said that was acceptable.
rm: So again he replied ?
sps: Yes, he wrote to me. I still have that letter with me saying
I am happy you have accepted. You have asked for six months
time so I expect you will join us in October. But please dont ask
for a further extension. That will be difficult for me to give.
I thought that was very fair. And so the die was cast, so to speak,
and I joined here on the 11th of October 1965. I still remember
the day. It was a Monday. That is how it all began.
rm: So it would appear that even from the early days, an institution such as iit Bombay was taking what are now known as proactive measures. You spoke about the additional increments you
were offered, you spoke about Professor Bose replying to you directly. So it would appear as if, when there was an outstanding
16
candidate in sight, the Institute would go out of its way to attract him. Of course, the tradition has been continued over the
years, but I never knew that it started so early.
sps: Thats right. And you know, these actions do influence you.
Later on as the Director, I tried to play a similar pro-active role
in recruiting faculty. If I spotted a good person, either I would act
or I would request the Head of the Department to act on my behalf and pursue the candidate by indicating our interest. I think
it is still being done at our Institute and that is one of the reasons
why iit Bombay gets good faculty.
r m: Do you have any memories of any other colleagues who
might have joined around the same time as you and were recruited in a similarly enthusiastic fashion ?
sps: I think there were a few, but not many. I know that Professor Kar joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering two
years before me. He also had a Ph.D from the usa. If my recollection is correct, he also came straight from the usa and joined
here. I do not know what he was offered and whether he was given increments. Another faculty member who joined in Civil Engineering around 1969 was one Dr. Kelkar. I am pretty sure he
was given some increments. He was even reimbursed for his air
ticket from usa to India. So I was not an exception.
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F I R S T I M PR E S SION S
rm: Your first encounter with iit was in September 1958 when
you were on your way to the usa. But then when you came back
to join, the Institute had shifted from Worli to Powai and so you
were confronted with a new landscape, a new setting all together. Could you perhaps recall for us your initial impressions when
you joined here? Your initial impressions of the campus and the
physical setting that you hadnt encountered before. And then
perhaps move on to the academic environment that had already
been created in the first few years.
sps: When I joined, the Institute was seven years old. The departments had been set up. On the campus, we had separate
buildings as exist now for Mechanical Engineering, Civil, Electrical and Metallurgical Engineering and Physics on one side of
a long corridor. Then on the other side, we had Chemical Engineering and Chemistry and the annexes of Civil and Electrical
Engineering. We also had the bays housing the workshops and
laboratories. And of course, the Technical-cum-Storage Sheds
(t cs). So in a sense, a certain structure existeda physical structure. I think we had eight hostels then. Hostels 9 and 10 were
built a few years after I joined. The main roads were all laid out
in 1965 though they were a lot narrower then. My first impression was that it was a very pretty campus. October is not the
best time for an outsider to come to Bombay. It is hot, it is humid and it is dusty. I wouldnt recommend it to anyone else. But
the fact is you cannot quite choose the time when you are going to join. Even then, my first impressions were What a beautiful campus! Quiet, serene. The palm trees lining the side of
the main road were a source of joy, as was the quiet lake. Watch-
18
ing the sun set over the lake with the hills of Powai in the background was sheer ecstasy. These were things which straightaway
attracted me. I stayed in the Staff Hostel in Room 23 a single
room overlooking the lake. This room had been allotted to me in
advance and was available on the day I joined. All in all, the campus made a very good impression on me with its natural setting
and its new buildings.
Then, of course, I interacted with the faculty. I joined in October in the middle of the semester and had no teaching to do during that semester. My teaching was to begin in January and I had
about two months to settle down. In that time, I could go to the
library, meet people and come to know them. All this was in a
way good. So I met faculty, one by one, and my general impression about the faculty (and this stayed with me over the years)
was that they were a very dedicated group. My earlier impressions of teachers in India came from the Banaras Engineering
College. In Banaras also, the teachers were dedicated. But here
at iit Bombay, if anything there was even more dedication. It
was very noticeable. Every one took his job seriously. This was
the first thing which struck me about the Mechanical Engineering Department. Obviously, I cannot speak for all departments
because my initial interactions were limited.
The second thing which immediately occurred to me was that
though we had a ussr influence (so to speak), the autonomy given to the teacher was complete. An instructor was the person
who decided everything as far as his course, his subject for the
semester was concerned. It is still like that today. The syllabus
was broadly written, but it was for the instructor, the teacher to
convert as much of the syllabus into reality as he could. He could
alter it a little. Question papers were set by the person teaching
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the course and the answer books were corrected by him. The only external examiners were those who came to judge the B.Tech
home papers and the M.Tech and Ph.D theses.
r m: Was it a surprise for you that this sort of system existed
here? Had you not expected it?
sps: I hadnt expected it. Because you see I had been to Banaras
as a student where there was a rigid syllabus, you were taught
through the year and at the end of the year, exams were held.
There was a question paper set by somebody whom you never
saw and never came to knowthe traditional university system.
And then two months later, the results would be announced. In
contrast, here everything was internal, which is what I had got
used to in the usa. So it was a pleasant surprise to see that this academic autonomy existed at our iit right from the beginning.
rm: I am very interested to learn that you had not known about
this before, the academic autonomy part of it at least.
How much of the reputations of the iits had sprinkled over to
the usa during the time that you were there at mit? How much
did one know about the iits?
sps: Not too much. I just knew that the iits had been set up and
I had met a few alumni who had passed out of the iit system.
For instance, I met Bharat Shiralkar from the 62 batch. He had
stood first in Mechanical Engineering at iit Bombay and then
came to mit as a graduate student. It was about the time I was
leaving mit. But beyond meeting a few alumni, I really didnt
know much about the iits.
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rm: A very new environment. You have compared it with bhu.

How would you compare the environment here at iit with
mit? You said that as far as the academic autonomy of courses was concerned, it was the same as at mit. (s ps: Some similarities.) In other respects, how did you find the transition from
mit to iit Bombay?
sps: I do not think you should compare iit Bombay with mit.
In 1965, mit was already one hundred years old. It celebrated its
centenary year in 1964 when I was there. So really they are not
comparable situations. mit was a very well established teaching
and research institute with a tremendous outreach all over the
world. I mean, I was expecting the iit environment to be something different.
rm: I was asking this question more from the point of view of
the fact that the iits had taken a conscious decision , arising
from the Sarkar Committees recommendations, to model themselves along the lines of mit. (s ps: Thats right.) So did you find
that model being developed over here, actively? Or were people
going about things their own way?
sps: I wouldnt say actively. What I would say is that in 1965 when
I met the faculty and saw what they were doing, I was struck by
the fact that there was a tremendous dedication, that the undergraduate teaching programmes were probably already among the
best in India. The course work and course content was fairly upto-date. That struck me straight away. But research-wise, we were
nowhere. iit Bombay was really nowhere. We were not doing any
worthwhile research either in terms of the output of students or
in terms of publications. That was very obvious. However, many
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chapter 1
people were aware that research work had to begin at the Institute. That was clear to them. That feeling was in the air.
r m: Was it simply because of the lack of time that one could
spare towards research? Or was it something to do with the
ethos that prevailed at that time?
sps: It was not just lack of time. Time was one factor because
many of the faculty members were associated with setting up
laboratories and that takes a lot of effort. But it was not just
time. I would say that some could have had the time for research,
but the facilities for doing research were exceedingly poor. You
know, iit Bombay was set up with help from the ussr and we
got a fair amount of equipment and instruments from there. In
addition, many of our younger faculty went to the ussr for doing their candidates degree, equivalent to a Ph.D. But you know
communication with the ussr was never smooth. For example,
suppose as part of the programme of assistance, some equipment
was to come. You would want communication between someone
on this side who was to receive the equipment and someone on
that side who was to send it. The person here would tell what
was needed and lists would be sent back and forth. That never
really happened with the ussr. What happened was that packages came directly that had to be collected from the docks. And
so some of the equipment wasnt that useful and certainly it was
not something that came because somebody here wanted it. It
came because somebody there thought it would be useful. Thats
not a good situation to be in, but really that is what happened.
So barring a few laboratories here and there in the Institute, facilities in the form of high class instrumentation or equipment
were just not there for us to do quality work.
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Take my example. I work in the area of thermal sciences. In my

laboratory, the Heat Transfer Laboratory, there was no standard
thermocouple wire. In those days, we couldnt import a thing.
So if at all I was to have the wire, it should have come from the
ussr where obviously it was available. We should have received
bundles of it. I would have loved to have different gauges of wire
with different insulations so that I could work at various temperature levels and to have two or three of the common combinations, copper-constantan, iron-constantan, etc. Unfortunately,
there was just no thermocouple wire! So we made our own thermocouples. We bought copper wire, we bought constantan wire
and we put plastic sleeving on them. Then since the wires were
not of the required degree of purity, we had to calibrate them
at fixed points in order to get any kind of accuracy. So we built
a steam point apparatus to get the steam point and obtained
the deviation from the standard emf by measuring the output
of our thermocouple. That is how we made our first reasonably
accurate measurements of temperature using thermocouples.
(r m: Right from the bottom up.) Now thats a lot of effort.
Compared to that in the usa, I used to pick up the telephone,
call the supplier and say that I wanted so many feet of copperconstantan thermocouple wire of this gauge with this insulation
and of this class. It would be delivered the next day. The specifications ensured that it would measure up to a certain accuracy.
No calibration was necessary.
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E A R LY Y E A R S
r m: How much time, how many years did it take you to start
your research activities and do something worthwhile?
sps: I think that the first good quality research that I did was
probably around 1968 or 69, three or four years after I joined.
The initial years were spent mostly in setting up the lab, experiments for students and things like that. The first really good
quality work which got published in a good journal, the Journal of Heat Transfer of the asme, was in 1969. It was the first
Masters thesis done under my supervision and interestingly, the
student was Professor G.K. Sharma of our Institute, who was a
young lecturer then. I took care to identify a problem which was
doable from the point of view of our facilities and yet worthwhile
from the point of view of research at an international level.
rm: Otherwise it wouldnt have got published.
sps: Yes, it wouldnt have been published. And that is what is important when you come back. You cant say, This is the research
I did with sophisticated instruments in the usa and I am going
to do similar work here in India. I would have been nowhere.
In the usa, I had done experimental work on condensing mercury, something that was fairly high flown stuff even for the usa.
A lot of care was needed and safety measures taken. Obviously I
couldnt have come back and said this is what I know and this is
what I am going to do. So it took some time, but eventually I did
settle on some problems which were worthwhile and doable, and
worked on them with my students.
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rm: A good sort of training, I suppose, born out of necessity. You

use your imagination and come up with problems that are feasible under the circumstances.
sps: The problems develop as you keep abreast of a subject by
reading the journals regularly and as I said, you look for a certain simplicity.
rm: In the initial days what were your impressions of the students that you encountered ?
sps: As I told you earlier, I didnt do any teaching in the first
two months. Then came the second term beginning in January
1966 in which I taught a postgraduate course. It was a batch of
about 20 students doing their Masters degree in various specializations in Thermal Engineering like I.C. Engines, Refrigeration
and Air Conditioning, etc. I taught the course on Measurements
and Instrumentationtemperature, pressure and flow measurement, error analysis and so on. I had a small batch and the students were grown up. It was interesting, but I didnt quite get the
excitement of teaching.
The first real excitement came in the following term in July 66
when I taught the undergraduate course in Heat Transfer. It was a
4th year class of about seventy students. I think that was the time
that I started to enjoy my teaching and the students also started to enjoy the course. It took some time. I would say that those
years, the first few years when I was learning the subject (Im still
learning the subject for that matter!) were a real challenge. Even
if you know the content, you have to think over how you are going to present it. Those years were probably the most enjoyable
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years of my career as far as teaching is concerned. The students

responded beautifully. You know at times in an undergraduate
class, there is a little bit of unruliness. That is not the issue. Those
were minor things. Once the students recognized that you were
interested in teaching, they had so many questions, so many queries, and they were willing to take on all your challenges.
Incidentally, many of them remember me because I was the first
person to have open book exams. Such exams were not given in
the Institute then. I said to the first class,I dont want you to
memorize anything. You can bring one sheet of paper to the exam and on that you can write anything you like, but no borrowing or lending of that paper during the exam. So they said,Fine.
During the exam, I remember walking around the class room
and you will be surprised how much material can be crammed
on one page on the two sides. Basically, the idea was that I didnt
want them to memorize any formulae or values of constants that
they needed to do the calculations. They found out quickly that
the single page didnt get them far, if they had not understood
the subject. An open book exam meant a lot more than just repeating what I had done in the class. I had told them,You will
get no questions saying, derive this, discuss this, or describe this.
If you think so, you are mistaken. You are going to get numerical problems, real problems. Engineers solve problems. So many
students still remember me because of that. As I said, it was really enjoyable. That enjoyment has remained with me through the
years. It has never gone away.
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PR E V IOU S DI R E C T OR S
rm: Perhaps we could now move on to the people that you came
across and your recollections about them, first the other Directors who preceded you. You would have seen Professor Bose in
action, following that Professor Kelkar, then Professor De, Professor Bedford and Professor Nag. So in various capacities, how
did they come across? What were their styles of functioning?
What were their quintessential characteristics?
sps: Well, thats a tall order! I was fortunate to be associated
with each of them. I will speak in general terms and try to give
an overview.
Professor Bose was the founder Director of the Institute. He
joined in 1959 and was the Director up to 1969.It was during
the early part of his tenure that the Institute moved from Worli to Powai. He was the one associated with the initial construction work, getting it moving and I think a lot of credit is due to
him for having got the Institute going on the new campus. It
was a time in which both steel and cement were in short supply and their sale was controlled, and to add to this, we had the
war with China.
First a few words about the setting. Powai was an isolated place
in the early sixties. It was isolated even when I joined in 1965.
We had just one bus route from Vikhroli station to here; that
was 392. The other bus route was 337 which used to go past the
iit from Ghatkopar to Andheri. It was not a frequent service.
So 392 was the lifeline to the Institute. The last bus used to leave
Vikhroli station at 9.40 pm. If you wanted to return to the Insti-
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tute by bus, you had to be on a local train which would get you
to Vikhroli before 9.40. Sometimes, we used to come out of the
local and run to catch the last bus. At that time, it used to stop
on the slope going down to the station.
But to come back to Professor Bosewe owe a lot to him for
getting the physical structure in place as quickly as possible.
He was a civil engineer, came from the army and had been associated with a lot of construction work. He knew how to get
things done. However, quality did suffer on account of the hurry and shortage of materials and we have paid heavily for it in
later years.
I have mentioned earlier that one of the reasons I joined here
was that I liked his style. That he took the time to reply to me.
That was one of his characteristics. I would say he probably
knew all the faculty members by name. The number was a little
smaller than now and we used to meet more frequently at Staff
Club functions and other occasions. With fewer outside distractions, people tend to get together. If Professor Bose met a faculty member during any function, he would enquire about the
family and so on. I think he liked doing that. At heart, he was an
exceedingly nice person.
Here I must recall what happened when I first met Professor Bose. I told you, I joined on Monday, October 11th, 1965. I
was staying with my uncle in Colaba. When I asked him how I
should go to iit, he said,I am not too sure, but Powai means
you have to go somewhere near Powai Gardens. To go there,
we used to get off at Vikhroli station and take a bus. So your
best bet is to get off at Vikhroli and take a bus or a taxi. There
were no rickshaws back then. So I did as my uncle had sug-
28
gested. There was just one taxi standing outside Vikhroli station. He took rs 2 and dropped me at the Main Building of
the Institute at 11.30. I asked for the Directors office and was
guided upstairs. I went up, met his secretary, one Mr. Kulkarni,
and introduced myself. He went inside and told the Director
that I had come. Professor Bose was with somebody then, but
called me in. As soon as I went in, he said,I am happy you have
come. We have been looking forward to your joining. It is very
good. Then he said something very interesting. He looked at
his watch and said, It is quarter to twelve. You know what you
should do first. You should go upstairs and sign your joining report. If you dont sign before noon, it will mean that you have
joined in the afternoon and if you have joined in the afternoon,
you will only get half a days pay for today. You dont want to
lose half a days pay, do you? I said,No. Half a days pay was
about rs 20 at that time. He told his secretary to phone upstairs in the Administration office. Mr. Sherikar was the concerned person. He was an Office Superintendent then. Later
on he became the Deputy Registrar. So I went up and signed
the joining report. That was my first encounter with Professor
Bose. You see he looked at things in a very practical manner.
I met him off and on, sometimes in his office but more often
at some function in the evening. He was the same age as my father. So the relationship was also like that. I respected him a
lot and he in turn had a soft corner for younger faculty. His attitude was, so long as they are doing well, working hard, thats
fine. That was his way of handling things. Overall, these impressions about him remained with me. He had been the Principal
of the College of Military Engineering in Pune before coming to
iit. So I am sure he could discipline people if he wanted to, but
that was not his style.
29
chapter 1
He rarely lost his temper. I only recall seeing him angry, once
or twice. Another characteristic about him was that he was
punctual. He didnt like people being late. I think it was the
army training. I remember one meeting; I think it was a meeting of the Senate Standing Committee scheduled for 2 oclock.
He was there on time. Some of the members came a few minutes late. He kept quiet until everyone had settled down. Then
he said,Gentlemen, this meeting was at 2 oclock. I want all of
you who came late to stand up and apologize for coming late.
Three or four faculty members stood up and said they were sorry. He said,Fine, now we will carry on. (r m: Really quite different from the situation that prevails today.) He was particular
about time. I think it is quite fair to expect people to come on
time for a formal meeting which has been announced. You must
come on time. It is something which carries over to me, something which I feel strongly about. As the Director, if I would
have a meeting, I would expect people to come on time. I dont
see why one cannot schedule things properly. If a meeting is not
your priority, then say so and dont come, but if you are going to
attend, come on time. I think people like Professor Bose who
had these habits, influenced younger persons for the better by
their actions.
Professor Bose was not a research-oriented person. He could see
the importance of research and he tried to tell faculty members
to do research. But you know, if you have not done research on
your own, you are not likely to make an impression. I dont think
a beginning was made in his period. I would say we started to get
into a research mode. His tenure was a period of setting up the
whole physical plant, the buildings, the laboratories, the hostels,
the staff quarters, etc. Getting the campus up and going was an
enormous job. It took a lot out of him and out of the people con-
30
cerned. I think within the limitations he had and the operational

difficulties he encountered, he did some wonderful things.
rm: I suppose because of the fact that he was not doing research,
his advocacy of research might not have been as passionate as it
could have been.
sps: Probably, probably, but I do remember that he held a series
of one day departmental workshops in which we had to present
what we were doing by way of research. He attended each departments presentations to get an idea of what was going on.
rm: But he certainly seems to have been passionate about institution building, teaching, setting up labs, etc.
sps: Absolutely!
rm: And then came Professor Kelkar.
sps: Yes, then came Professor Kelkar. Professor Kelkar was not a
newcomer to the Institute. He had been the Planning Officer in
1958 and 59. Then he was appointed Director of iit Kanpur. He
went there and Professor Bose came here as the Director. So iit
Bombay was not new to him. In fact, Bombay was not new to him
because he had served in vjti for many years. He had crossed the
retirement age of 60 at Kanpur, but was given an extension and
appointed to our iit for a four-year period from July 1970.
Professor Kelkar was in some sense a visionary. He had a philosophical outlook and a tremendous feel for education. To him,
education meant a rounded individual, not learning a subject
here and a subject there. It meant a person, who while being an
31
chapter 1
engineer had a broad feel for the humanities and the sciences.
One could see the difference between him and Professor Bose
immediately. To Professor Kelkar, an undergraduate engineering curriculum meant first the teaching of sciences. Physics,
Chemistry and Mathematics taught to engineering students because these subjects are important in their own right. Subjects
in the Humanities and Social Sciences taught for their own sake
as beautiful subjects and then, of course, engineering subjects
taught first as a science and then as an art. To him, this was education. In a sense, this is the guiding philosophy of many of the
worlds best universities. Professor Kelkar believed in this passionately. This vision had been implemented in Kanpur during
his tenure and he wanted this to happen in Bombay also during
his four years here. It is not as if we had no humanities subjects
or science subjects in the curriculum prior to that. We had them,
but the emphasis which he would have liked to see was missing.
In addition, Professor Kelkar wanted to introduce a semesterbased credit system and a continuous evaluation system as in
the usa. He wanted all these things to happen and he could see
immediately that this would also require a change in the structure of the academic bodies at the Institute. He sensed it within
a few months of coming here. Or maybe, he knew it even before coming.
rm: And what sort of system prevailed at iit Bombay at that
time?
sps: There was no continuous evaluation in a course; no tests,
quizzes or assignments. We only had a mid-term exam and an
exam at the end of the term. Also we did not have a credit system. The academic year was the basis for promotion. In order
to get things moving, Professor Kelkar straightaway appoint-
32
ed a high-level Senate Committee. It was headed by Professor

G.S. Tendolkar, the doyen of the faculty in the Metallurgical Engineering Department. He was a fine person, highly respected. The Tendolkar Committee circulated a questionnaire,
consulted many faculty members and presented its report to
the Senate in a few months. It recommended that we needed
to move vigorously towards a semester-based credit system, a
grading system, a system in which there was continuous assessment, a curriculum in which the humanities and social sciences
got more importance, a curriculum in which the sciences were
taught at a higher level, and a curriculum with more choices for
the student in the form of elective courses. Basically, the Committee broadly agreed with Professor Kelkars thoughts on the
matter. I recall that there was a fair amount of discussion on the
Tendolkar Committee report in the Senate before it gave its approval in principle.
Then the details had to be worked out. For this purpose, Professor Kelkar appointed two committees, one was the Rules
Committee with Professor Hira Lal of Chemistry as the Chairman and the other, the Curriculum Committee with Professor
Mallik of Metallurgy as the Chairman. Let me digress for a moment to say that the procedure followed by Professor Kelkar
is a nice example of the approach to be followed for tackling a
complicated issue involving major changes to an existing system. Never try to go into the details first. First secure an agreement in principle to the broad outlines of what you want done.
This way, you have the Institute committed to something; then
appoint a committee or committees to work out the details. If
you do not adopt this two-step process and have a committee
which works out all the details and comes straight to the Senate, then the chances are that its report may be rejected and its
33
chapter 1
efforts are wasted. When you recall these events in perspective, you begin to appreciate the persons art in getting things
done. It influences you and I suppose it influenced me too, the
way I got things done later. Not that there is something devious about it. It is the practical way to approach matters when
you have a large body of people to be satisfied.
To come back to the two Committees, the Hira Lal Committees
task was to work out the details of the credit system, the continuous assessment system, the grading pattern, etc, while the Mallik Committee was appointed to formulate the new curriculum.
Both were compact five-member committees. It so happened
that I was a member of both. Professor Kelkar called me and
told me,This is intentional. I want you on both committees because the two cant work in isolation. One must know what the
other is doing and you are the link between the two. I am appointing you for this purpose. Indeed, I was fortunate to be associated with both because the experience which I gained was
invaluable. The other members on the Hira Lal Committee were
Professors Subba Rao, Bannerji and Tyagi, while on the Mallik
Committee, the other members were Professors Mehta, Madhavan and Mahajan. I must tell you that we worked very hard. The
reason was simple. The Committees were formed in March 1972
and Professor Kelkar wanted a beginning to be made in July that
year. Prior to that, we needed to go again to the Senate and seek
its approval. So we wrote interim reports, went to the Senate,
secured its approval and from July that year, the semester-based
system was introduced.
rm: Thats very quick!
sps: Yes indeed. The reports generated a lot of comments. The
34
B.Tech degree programme was a five-year programme then. If

within this five-year period, you give a little more importance
to the humanities and social sciences, and also add some elective courses, then some of the existing courses have to be deleted or combined with some reduction in terms of content. These
subjects were either descriptive or had become outdated. However, they did matter to the faculty members concerned and so
in some departments, there was a fair amount of discussion and
opposition. But Professor Kelkar was a respected, senior figure.
In the Senate, he presented his arguments for change so convincingly that he could get things done. In the end, the reports
were approved and the proposed reforms introduced. I think
those were very important steps which we took about thirtyfive years ago. Since then, many modifications have taken place
over the years. The curriculum has been modified from time to
time, the grading system has been changed with the addition of
more grades, the methods of continuous assessment have been
altered, and so on. However, these are all variations on what was
proposed then. The essential features have really remained unchanged. Professor Kelkar was able to effect these lasting changes in a short span of time. That tells us what a remarkable person
he was.
The other issue on which Professor Kelkar knew he had to act was
to change the existing structure of the academic bodies of the Senate. For this purpose, he appointed another committee with Professor Bedford as chairman. I was a member of that Committee
also. The other members were Professor Narasimhan, Professor
Bhattacharya and Professor Raman. There were five of us.
rm: In these committees, was the breadth of vision shared by
all the members?
35
chapter 1
sps: No, not always. Let me tell you about the Hira Lal Committee. Professor Hira Lal had done his Ph.D studies in England. When he started the work of his Committee, he said,You
know, I dont know what this credit system is. He was blunt,
but passionate about what he spoke. He had a style of his own,
smoked a pipe and all that. So he said,I dont know what this
credit system and relative grading is all about. But I have been
appointed as chairman and we have been given a responsibility.
Professor Kelkar knows what he wants. So lets talk it over and
see what can be done. By the end, when our final report was
ready, you couldnt have found a more passionate believer in the
new system then Professor Hira Lal. You should have seen the
way he presented the final report to the Senate. Professor Hira
Lals English was outstanding. His choice of words was impeccable and while writing, he was particular about the grammara
hyphen here, a comma there. If you wrote a draft, he would look
at it and smile.This is okay, but you know Sukhatme, I think it
needs some touching up. Lets sit down. And he would sit down
and correct it, word by word. Even today, I recommend that you
read the Rules Committee report if you have not done so before. It is written in good English and is a model of clarity. It
went through many drafts through all of us before it was finalized and as I said, to this day we are following it, albeit with
some variations.
But let me come back to the Bedford Committee. At that
time, we had at the Institute level, a Senate Standing Committee which considered all matters before they came to the Senate, and we had an Academic Committee for each department.
There was no distinction between matters related to the undergraduate and the postgraduate programmes, and between matters concerning the curriculum on the one hand and evaluation
36
and examinations on the other. After a study of what was being

done at universities which followed a credit-based system, the
Bedford Committee recommended a larger number of committees with specialized functions. It suggested that at the Institute
level, there should be an Undergraduate Programmes Committee (u gpc) and a Postgraduate Programmes Committee (p gpc)
which would be essentially concerned with the curriculum, the
courses and their contents. It also suggested that there should
be an Undergraduate Academic Performance Evaluation Committee (u ga pec) and a Postgraduate Academic Performance
Evaluation Committee (p ga pec) to consider matters related
to student academic performance. At the Departmental level, it
suggested that the functions of the existing Academic Committee be split between two committees, a Departmental Undergraduate Committee (d ugc) and a Departmental Postgraduate
Committee (d pgc). This was broadly the structure which Professor Kelkar wanted and it was approved by the Senate. The
structure remains to this day. Professor Kelkar created the positions of two Deans during his time. These were the Dean of Academic Programmes and the Dean of Research and Development.
The Dean of Academic Programmes was the Chairman of the
ugpc and the pgpc. The position of Dean of Research and Development was created to give an impetus to the growth of sponsored research activity and consultancy work at the Institute.
So in a span of four years, Professor Kelkar did many things
which have influenced the Institute in a remarkable manner. I
cannot quite find the words to express our gratitude to him. One
final thought, which I should have perhaps talked about earlier.
Professor Kelkar also expanded the scope of the Department of
Humanities and Social Sciences and made it into a real department. Till that time, it had only six faculty members and was
37
chapter 1
treated as a service department. During his tenure, Professor

Kelkar brought Professor Prabhu from outside. He was a retired
professor from Bombay University and helped in the expansion
of the department. About ten faculty members were added so
that the faculty strength went up to 15 or 16 persons. In fact, faculty members like Professor Amitabha Gupta and Professor Rehana Ghadially who were hired then as young faculty members
are retiring now.
rm: It is easy to see that Professor Kelkar was quite a visionary
in the sense that the steps initiated in his time survive to this day
without much tampering.
sps: Absolutely.
rm: I suppose that also speaks of the thoroughness with which
the Committees appointed by him approached their tasks and
made recommendations which were, in a sense, water tight.
sps: Yes, you have to give them some of the credit. They did a
lot of hard and dedicated work.
rm: In view of the revised curriculum introduced in 1972, a question that has cropped up in my mind is : How long did it take for
the changes effected to have a demonstrable effect? For example, did student performance change noticeably within a short
period of time?
sps: Thats something which is difficult to say because a demonstrable effect is difficult to define, leave alone quantify. In any
case it is not related to student performance. Student performance is evaluated in terms of grades and performance indices.
38
Whether you have more of humanities or less of humanities,

more of social sciences or less of social sciences, more of basic
science or more of design are separate issues. They are different
things altogether. So to come back to your query whether the reforms introduced had a demonstrable effect, the answer is that
it is something that is not measurable. But I guess over a period
of time, as students go out in the world, one sees the kind of impact they make. That long-term feedback starts telling us that
we probably did the right thing. Now the trouble is that in the
iit, the students are inherently brilliant; most of them are really good by any standard. And so one might say that whatever you
do, they are going to do well anyway. Its an argument we always
have to face, that our students do well in spite of us, not because
of us. Be that as it may, I think one makes changes in the curriculum because it is something one has a feel for and one introduces
the reforms based on the knowledge of what we see happening
all over the world. Thats the way I look upon it.
rm: Was there a qualitative difference? Did students express an
appreciation of these changes, especially those who were in the
mid-stream of their programme?
sps: No, I wouldnt say so. You see when students are here undergoing a curriculum, very few of them react to such changes.
Their immediate concerns are grades, marks, whether a faculty
member is a good or poor teacher. One cant expect them to be
really reactive. When you introduce changes like these, such reforms in the curriculum or in the method of assessment, it is the
long term impact you are looking for. Having seen those reforms
in the seventies, my personal view is that they did a lot of good
to the students. I have no doubt about it.
39
chapter 1
r m: You have spoken at length about Professor Kelkars academic insights and breadth of vision. Have you any recollections
about his administrative style of functioning?
sps: Not too many. I really wouldnt be able to comment too
much on his administrative style. What I can tell you is that
his way of doing things was always to speak politely. There was
never any unpleasantness in what he said. His way of speaking
was refined and even when he was annoyed, he had a way of putting things. You had to understand the language to know that
he was annoyed.
One thing I do recall is that at times he could be ambiguous. For
example, if you sent him a routine note requesting permission
to serve on some committee outside the Institute or to do some
work for an outside agency, it would come back with his initials
pkk written in big letters on it, nothing more. The first time this
happened to me, I was not sure what to make of it. I asked a colleague and he said,If it has come back with his initials, it means
he has approved your request.
rm: We will move on to Professor De now, your salient recollections of his tenure. He had a long tenure here.
sps: Oh yes. Professor De had a fairly long tenure. He joined
us as the Director in July 1974. But he wasnt new to the Institute. He was one of the first faculty members in the Mechanical
Engineering Department and joined iit Bombay in 1958. He
was here till 1969, excepting for a period of three years when
he was in the ussr studying for his Candidates degree. From
1966 onwards, he was the Head of the Department. Then he
was selected as the Director of the Central Mechanical Engi-
40
neering Research Institute at Durgapur and left for a five-year

term. When that term ended, he came back as the Director of
this Institute in 1974 and he was the Director till July 1984, excepting for a short period of about eighteen months when he
went to Delhi as Chief Controller of r & d at the Ministry of
Defence. So effectively, he was the Director for about eight and
a half years. As I said, he knew the Institute well when he joined
as Director in 1974. That was a big advantage for him. His tenure here was a period in which many reforms were introduced
and new activities started. Looking back, I would say that it was
not an easy period. These are the two aspects which stand out
in my memory.
First, let me describe some of the academic and research activities initiated, which I think have had a very good long term
impact on the Institute. A number of interdisciplinary programmes were introduced during Professor Des tenure as Director. I think the first one was in Materials Science, followed
by others in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research,
Energy Systems Engineering, Systems and Control and so on.
He laid the seeds of the thought that such programmes were important and that they required faculty from more than one department. I think this was a very important contribution which
he made, encouraging the start of interdisciplinary M.Tech programmes which also had a few Ph.D students. For instance, the
Energy Systems programme for which I was the Convener, was
started in 1981.
In addition, a few centres were established. The most noticeable
was the Centre for Studies in Resources Engineering (c sr e).
Based on an expert committees report, the Ministry of Education suggested that each iit should take the lead in one area
41
chapter 1
and Resources Engineering was the area suggested for iit Bombay. As far as the other iits were concerned, Kharagpur started
the Centre in Cryogenic Engineering, Kanpur in Materials Science, Delhi in Energy Studies and Madras in Ocean Engineering. If my recollection is right, the Centre for Environmental
Science and Engineering was also started in Professor Des time.
It was a spin-off from the Civil Engineering Department and
Professor Narasimhan was the first convener. The Regional Sophisticated Instrumentation Centre (r sic) was also established.
This was an initiative of the Department of Science and Technology. Five centres were set up in different parts of the country
and iit Bombay was picked for the western region.
Moving to the other aspect which I alluded to earlier, the decade
from 1974 to 1984 was a difficult period from the point of view
of administering the Institute. You may recall that we had the
emergency during that period and although iit was not directly involved, indirectly the effects of the emergency were felt.
When I say that iit Bombay was not directly involved, I mean
that nobody here was arrested, nor were there any disturbances
on the campus. But certainly there were undercurrents which
disturbed the peace of the campus. No question about it. In
that sense it was a difficult period. It was also a difficult period because unionism came to iit Bombay. The non-academic
staff formed the Non-Academic Staff Association (n asa). Now
when a union is new, it has to make its presence felt and it does
so by being belligerent even on minor issues. Similarly the faculty of the Institute formed the Faculty Forum. It too got organised and wanted to show its might.
rm: Any examples?
42
sps: There were some issues, but I dont think we should go into
the details. I recall, there was a case of a faculty member who was
on a temporary appointment and whose appointment was not
extended. The Faculty Forum made a big issue out of it. Looking
back, I dont think that one or two of the things which the Faculty Forum did at that time were necessary. They wouldnt act
like that now. (r m: I see.) But when you are new, you do these
things in the heat of the moment, partly because you have the
enthusiasm and partly because you have to make your presence
felt. You do that by making a bigger thing out of an issue than
you need to.
rm: Any examples of the undercurrents that existed during the
emergency?
sps: It is not something that you can lay your hands on, but certainly the Governments control over small things seemed to
have increased during the emergency. There were directives saying that on the campus you must see that this is done or that is
done. For instance, I know that some of these letters were concerned with the birth control programme. It is not easy for the
Director to handle such issues and they make life difficult.
rm: Was there a sense of threat to the Institutes autonomy?
sps: Yes and no. Yes, there was certainly a threat to the Institutes administrative autonomy, but no, there was no real threat
to the academic autonomy. In spite of all the difficulties he
faced, Professor De handled things well. He does not articulate
his thoughts well, often speaking in a somewhat disjointed fashion, but when it comes to executing what he wants to do, he is a
very firm person. Basically at heart, Professor De is an exceed-
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chapter 1
ingly fine person dedicated to the interests of the students, the

staff and the Institute. One should never lose sight of that fact.
rm: So he helped the Institute tide over a difficult period?
sps: Yes, tide over would be the right phrase. He was the buffer
between the Ministry of Human Resource Development at Delhi and the campus community. Often times, he had to see that
some decisions taken in Delhi were implemented, but he couldnt
explain who had taken them and why?
rm: How accessible was Professor De?
sps: Oh, very accessible, very accessible. Anybody could walk
in and see him.
r m: During his tenure, there occurred those incidents in the
late 70s? Any recollections?
sps: It was early in 1980, I think. There were incidents, fairly serious. First some students with very poor academic performances were asked to leave. This resulted in a student agitation. Then
the mess workers went on strike to press for their demands. They
had some genuine grievances. I dont think there was any doubt
about that, but what was disturbing was that a few people, staff,
students and some outsiders, were taking an active role in disrupting activities and instigating the agitation.
rm: What might have been their motivation?
sps: Well, these were people with extreme feelings. They were
influenced by what had happened in West Bengal and they be-
44
lieved that things can only be corrected by disrupting activities,

by having bandhs, by gheraoing and so on. There was no question of sitting down and talking to them. Nothing would have
come out of it. The situation was such that the Institute had to
be closed. In my memory, that is the only time the Institute has
been closed.
rm: For how long did it close?
sps: I think it was two or three weeks. (r m: I see, a brief spell.)
But that was the only thing to do. If students are not going to get
food, if things are getting disrupted and there is a threat of violence in the air, the only way is to separate people. If you close
down the Institute and say students have to vacate the hostels,
they do so. Immediately that element which feels it can do what
they like is rendered ineffective. So really the idea of closing is to
separate everybody and to just cool things down. Then see what
the genuine grievances are and whether they can be tackled.
Closing an Institute is not something you do readily; you dont
like to do it.
rm: Especially in the iit system, it is unheard of.
sps: Yes, unheard of. As I said, in my forty years here, the Institute has not been closed again. There were gheraos, there were
threats of violence personally directed at Professor De. But when
you have a Director who is firm, who knows how to act and acts
with the interests of the Institute at heart, these things get resolved. It is to Professor Des credit that he never lost his cool. I
still remember the Senate meeting which was called then, an extraordinary meeting of the Senate. He said,I am forced to take
this decision to close the Institute from tomorrow. I need your
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approval. After that he must have gone to the Chairman of the

Board and got his approval too.
rm: Following the evacuation of the hostels, was he successful
in bringing the Institute back to normal?
sps: Yes, we re-opened after two or three weeks and we were
back to normal. Some committees were formed to look into the
real grievances of the mess workers. Those issues were considered. It wasnt as if the agitation was for nothing. But there was
no need to have gone to the extent of disrupting the Institutes
activities or threatening violence. Even a feeling that violence can
take place in an educational institution is distasteful.
rm: Now we move on to Professor Bedfords time.
sps: Professor Bedford was the Director for a relatively brief
period. He was appointed as the Director during the eighteen
months that Professor De went to Delhi to work in the Ministry of Defence. Professor Bedford is a close friend of mine. In a
sense, he is an ideal professor because he is not only learned in
his own subject but in a variety of other subjects. He is well read,
very articulate, speaks English beautifully and is always willing to
learn. He was one of the first persons to receive a Ph.D in Electrical Engineering from iit Kharagpur in the fifties. Thereafter
he was abroad for a year or two at the University of Illinois and
then came back to India in 1959 to join iit Bombay. He was the
Head of the Department for quite some time and was also active
with the Students Gymkhana. He was the Deputy Director during Professor Des tenure. Professor Bedfords approach was always to talk to everybody and willingly discuss all issues. He was
a calming influence and never got too agitated.
46
r m: Professor Hariharan in his interview has recounted that

Professor Bedford had the same kind of breadth and academic
vision as Professor Kelkar.
sps: Yes, Professor Hariharans description is an apt one. In a
sense, he was like Professor Kelkar. It so happened that he was
also from Electrical Engineering.
One of the reasons why I came close to him was that we were
together on the Committee for reviewing the structure of the
academic bodies. In later years, the Committee was given the acronym cr a b. Professor Bedford was quite senior to me, about
fourteen years older. He was the Chairman of cr a b and I was
a member, the youngest member. The other members, Professor Narasimhan, Professor Raman and Professor Bhattacharya
were all older than me. During the existence of the Committee,
we met regularly and first prepared an interim report. After receiving feedback, we met again. It was a fairly intense period of
a few months in which the five of us used to meet uninterrupted for hours at a stretch to put our views across. What did we really want? What were the defects in the system as it existed? If
we wanted to change the academic structure, what were the pros
and what were the cons? What was happening at Kanpur? And
what was the prevailing system at Delhi? It was an education for
all of us, an unmatched experience!
rm: I suspect, exciting times as well?
sps: Yes, to be quite honest with you, we enjoyed the work.
There was never a feeling that we were doing it as a duty. I
thought that was a very nice period. For me being the youngest,
it was a good education. In fact, our friendship continued long
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chapter 1
after the Committees work was over. The five of us used to meet
at our homes for dinner once every few months and this continued for at least ten years.
As far as new academic programmes are concerned, I think the
interdisciplinary programme in Industrial Management started during Professor Bedfords time. This was part of the on-going process initiated by Professor De. Otherwise, things moved
very smoothly.
rm: So now we come to your immediate predecessor, Professor Nag, known for his flamboyant manner. What are your recollections of him? You were the Deputy Director when he was
the Director.
sps: I was appointed as the Deputy Director in December 1983
when Professor De was the Director. Professor De retired in 1984
and I continued on as Deputy Director. So I was the dd both
with him and Professor Nag.
rm: For iit Bombay, after a number of years we had some one
coming in so to speak from outside.
sps: Yes, from outside.
rm: And how was that received?
sps: You know at iit Bombay, the faculty are really very nice
people. Professor Nag had no problem because he was an outsider. In fact, he was not even from the iit system; he was from Jadavpur. He brought to the job some unique experience. He had
served in Delhi as Secretary to the Department of Electronics.
48
So he knew Delhi and the way the Government functions well.

That is very useful.
Some of the difficulties which Professor De encountered persisted during Professor Nags time. There were problems with the
unions and occasional problems with students as well. Professor
Nag was gheraoed more than once and I think, once even the
police were called to lift a gherao. The issues were varied; some
were of a passing nature, while some were long standing problems which did not admit of an easy solution. Be that as it may,
Professor Nag was the Director for two full terms of five years
each from September 1984 onwards.
First, let us look at some of the important things on the academic side done during his period. He was a computer science
man. The Computer Science and Engineering Department
at iit Bombay was a new department then. It had just been
formed by breaking away from the Electrical Engineering Department. There were only six or seven faculty members headed
by Professor Jimmy Isaac. A B.Tech programme in Computer Science and Engineering had been started and there was a
small M.Tech programme too. More faculty strength was clearly needed along with more space. I think one of the main contributions made by Professor Nag was to strengthen the cse
Department. Over a period of time, more faculty members
were hired and a new building was built during his time. In addition, the computing facilities at the Institute were improved.
Till the eighties, iit Bombay was known for having the poorest computing facilities among all the iits. The Russians gave
us a minsk in 1966 in which you had to punch holes on a tape to
write your programme. Then came an ec 1030 which we bought
from the ussr in Professor Kelkars time. Both machines were
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outdated by the time they came to us. As a result, most computational work of any significance had to be done by going to
tifr. There was no other way till 1980 because there was nothing worthwhile we could do with the computers here. The Institute got its first good mainframe computer in Professor Nags
time. It was an excellent addition, really useful to us.
rm: So it was his initiative?
sps: Yes, he went out of his way and fought to get the extra few
crores needed to buy the new mainframe machine. We wouldnt
have got the money easily. The request had been made. But requesting the Ministry for something and getting the money are
two different things. It is to Professor Nags credit that he got
the money for the mainframe sanctioned.
There were some other things too. For instance, the M.Sc programme in Biotechnology started in his time. The initiative
came from the Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India. They wanted to know if we would start the M.Sc
programme and the Institute quickly said yes. In fact, it has
been one of our very successful academic programmes. Our
M.Phil programme in Planning and Development run by the
h&ss Department also started in his period. That was a new
concept. No iit had an M.Phil programme then and we had to
go to the iit Council to get it approved. It has proved to be a
good activity for the Department and for the Institute.
Then I must mention the School of Management. It was during
Professor Nags time that the Institute started to think in terms
of having a School of Management. The basis for it was laid by
appointing a Committee, chaired by Professor Madhavan, which
50
put down the broad principles for setting up the school. Why
have a School of Management within an iit ? In what way would
such a school be different from an iim ? These were some of the
issues addressed by the Committee. The report of the Committee was considered by the Senate and the Board. There was considerable discussion and in the end the report was approved.
However, the School could not be started in Professor Nags
time. I think the primary reason was lack of funds. The Ministry
of Education was not prepared to fund the new activity fully and
the Institute had to look to outside sources. Two organizations,
icici and Hindustan Lever, agreed to give a crore each, but that
was not enough and the matter had to be kept pending.
During Professor Nags tenure, sponsored research picked up a
lot and so did consultancy work. He was a great believer in institute-industry interaction and having been a consultant to industry for many years, he encouraged faculty members to do
consultancy projects with industry.
But having said all these positive things, I must confess that the
period from 1984 to 1994 was a difficult one. This was the big issue. We were starved of funds. This was the real issue. Indeed,
none of the iits received adequate funding to meet their needs
and aspirations.
r m: Was this especially towards the end of Professor Nags
tenure?
sps: Yes, the last five years were particularly difficult. It was
very obvious that we were not getting enough money to run
the Institute. What happens then is that things that can be deferred are postponed to the next year or even indefinitely. For
51
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example, repair and maintenance work gets delayed. Year by

year, the state of the Institutes buildings worsened. It is unbelievable how poor a shape we were in then. Visitors to the Institute used to be shocked. In the rainy season, you sometimes
walked into a room with water literally leaking from the roof.
Even in the Directors office, there was a leak in one corner
and water used to drip when it was raining outside. (r m: Well,
congratulations!) Yes, it was there when I took over in 1995.
I couldnt figure out how the water used to come on the first
floor. I guess it must have been coming from outside through
a series of interconnected cracks. My office staff used to put a
bucket to collect the leaking water and a chair in front of the
bucket in order to hide it.
rm: Sounds incredible, also very shameful.
sps: Yes, I agree. A fair amount of repair work was taken up later in my time resulting in some improvement. But the remarks I
made give you an idea of the degradation that had occurred and
the state of the buildings.
I think we will conclude this part of our conversation on the iit
Directors here.
52
FAC U LT Y C OL L E AG U E S A N D O T H E R S TA F F
rm: Now we could perhaps take up your recollections of some

other people that stand out in your memory, persons in your department or else where in the Institute with whom you came in
contact and who made a lasting impression on you. They could
be faculty colleagues or other staff members.
sps: This is going to be a difficult task because there are so many
people who come to mind as I look back. I am going to pick up a
small set of names which occur to me on the spur of the moment.
These are people who have served the Institute well in some distinctive way and have characteristics which I admire. I will start
with faculty members from departments other than mine.
A name which comes readily to mind when I think of the Electrical Engineering Department is that of Professor Hariharan.
Over the years, we interacted in many ways because we were together on numerous committees. Early on during Professor Des
time, we were on a committee which looked at the rules for taking up consultancy work in the Institute. The last committee
which we worked on together was appointed by the Senate to
revamp the procedures followed at the time of the convocation.
Professor Hariharan joined the Institute in 1958 and was sent to
the ussr to his doctoral work. Later on he served as the Head
of the Department and was also the Dean, r & d. Professor Hariharan brought to his job the kind of dedication which very few
do. It was the kind of dedication which has made iit Bombay
what it is today. Very few people in the world outside appreciate the role of good committed faculty members in building up
an Institute. Hariharan was an example of such persons dedicat-
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ed to a cause, the cause of education. He had a fine academic career, did his Bachelors degree from the College of Engineering
in Anantapur and was selected as an engineer in the Department
of Atomic Energy. He worked there for a few years and was doing
well. They did not want him to leave when he was selected by iit
Bombay. But he joined here and I dont think he had any regrets,
because he enjoyed teaching and interacting with students. He
had a subtle sense of humour and was very soft spoken. He was
in Power Engineering, excellent at his subject and known for his
contributions. He did some good consultancy work for industry as well.
r m: While we are on Professor Hariharan, there is a related
question. I might have asked it later on, but I will ask it now. In
his interview for the History Book, Professor Hariharan had recounted how he felt strongly that iit Bombay should have detached itself from the undergraduate programme and become
predominantly a postgraduate teaching and research institute.
Was this vision of his strongly spelt out? Did you for example
concur with this view?
sps: Well, many of us have felt that way. You may recall when I
was the Director, I said at many faculty meetings that this Institute was set up to match the worlds best universities at the
undergraduate and postgraduate levels. While we have to some
extent achieved the first goal of having a strong ug programme,
we are still a long way from achieving the second. So I share Professor Hariharans view that we need to put more emphasis on
the pg programme. But you know our success with the ug programme has made it very difficult for us to get out of it. You cant
go around saying that from tomorrow we want to close down the
54
B.Tech programme or even admit a smaller number of students

in it. It will make newspaper headlines. iit Bombay does not
want B.Techs any more. People will not understand that it is not
that we dont want to serve the cause of education. We want to
serve it in a way for which we were established.
rm: In fact, Professor Hariharan went on to say that the needs
of the ug curriculum could well be met by local colleges.
sps: I essentially agree with that view. Since we are on the subject, I want to say something more on it. You may recall that during my tenure, the Institute started the dual degree programme, a
5-year programme at the end of which the student would receive
both the B.Tech and the M.Tech degree. It was our hope that
the dual degree programme would grow in size, spread to more
departments and that its distinctiveness would be appreciated.
A 5-year programme gives the student time to learn subjects in
the sciences and the humanities in more depth. It gives him time
to do a one year thesis and it is likely to turn out a person who
would make more contributions to research and development. In
a 4-year programme, there is always a little bit of a hurry because
of the shortage of time. So the reason behind starting the dual
degree programme was to graduate a different breed of students
with more of a research orientation. Unfortunately that has not
happened because the dd programme has been made to work
within the constraints of the B.Tech programme. When we want
to plan the dd curriculum, we always ask, What is being taught
in the 4-year programme? We start with the first year and say,
Well we could have the same subjects. Then we move to the
second year and say, Can we not have the same subjects in this
year too. If we can, all the better, less faculty load. For the third
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year, a course or two may be different. And then in the fourth

year, we try to see if some existing courses offered in our 2-year
M.Tech programme can be used for the dd programme.
rm: Almost like a subset?
sps: Yes, a subset. Once that happens, the real reason for having a dd programme fades away. The students are reluctant to
take it. They think that it is just one more year. They also begin
to think that the programme which counts is the 4-year B.Tech
programme.
The idea behind starting the dd programme was that it would
grow and that eventually there might not be a need for a 4-year
B.Tech programme by itself. Eventually after say ten years, we
might have only a dd programme in which we would give both
the degrees at the end of five years. That was the kind of thinking in my mind. But it hasnt quite worked out that way. People are now thinking of a dd programme in which after four
years you will get a B.Tech in some discipline and in five years an
M.Tech in something else altogether, not a specialization of the
B.Tech discipline, not even a continuation of it. So the thinking
has changed and there are reasons for it. When something like
the existing 4-year programme is popular and has acquired a certain brand value, it is difficult to break away from it.
rm: Sorry about that digression.
sps: No, no. Thats fine. Let me come back to the description of
some of my colleagues. Next, I shall speak about two colleagues
from Chemical Engineering with whom I have had a long association, Professor Narayanamurthy and Professor Madhavan. As
56
was the case with many other colleagues, our association began
in the Staff Hostel where we all stayed in the sixties. I stayed for
only one year, but that one year was important because you know
we were all bachelors at that time, we used to go out in the evenings, eat together in the mess and play tennis together. All this
was the basis for enduring friendships.
Professor Narayanamurthy was Dean, r & d and then Dean, Resources Mobilization, during my tenure as Director. Prior to that,
he had served as the Head of the Chemical Engineering Department. He is a fine teacher known for the clarity of his concepts
and his ability to present things well. He is a very fine administrator as well. We have been good friends for years and I came in
close contact with him because he served as a Dean in one capacity or other throughout my five-year term.
The area of Resources Mobilization was new to us and yet it was
necessary for the Institute to venture into it. There were no procedures in place. So the obvious questions which arose were: How
do you go about it? Whom do you talk to? What kind of feelers
do you send out to prospective donors? And so on. I think Professor Narayanamurthy handled the job well. He laid down the
basis for mobilizing resources from private sources and streamlined the procedures. He was very good at doing such things and
as a result, small irritants which bother people dealing with you
from outside were removed. What was equally important was
that he was willing to take initiatives on his own.
Let me give you an example. For the School of Information
Technology, we received a good donation from our alumnus,
Kanwal Rekhi. Thats another story which I will take up separately. Now Nandan Nilekani was also interested in funding the
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School. He had indicated as much earlier. It was near the end of

the financial year, February end or early March. Suddenly, Nandan called up and said he was interested in transferring some of
his shares in Infosys to the Institute. I told him we were not allowed to hold shares. He said that was not a problem. His lawyers would see that iit received the money equivalent of the
shares as soon as they were transferred. I need your approval to proceed, he said. He also told me that there were no difficult conditions involved in making the donation. He would
like a Chair Professorship set up in his uncles name and some
scholarships for students. The details could be settled later.
What was important was that he should give the money before
the end of the year. Now the amount involved wasnt small. It
was a few crores. The Institute had not received a donation of
this magnitude before. If I was to follow the normal process, I
would have had to put up a proposal to our Board at the next
meeting and proceed only after receiving their approval to accept the donation. This could take a few months because the
Board meets only four times a year.
I told Nandan, Give me a little time. There is money involved
and I have to be careful. I then asked Professor Narayanamurthy to come to my office and we had a brainstorming session.
He said, Theres no way we are going to let this money go. The
donor is Nandan and there is no problem in accepting the money. So how do we go about it? I said, Let me call up Professor
Menon. He was the Chairman of our Board. So I telephoned
Professor Menon in Delhi. I explained the situation to him and
the need to act fast. He said,Whats the problem? Just send me
a letter today describing Nandans offer and request my approval. I will send it back saying yes. Then you go right ahead. We
58
will explain everything to the Board later in the form of an agenda item for information. Thats all. That shows you the kind of
person Professor Menon is. He had full faith in us. So that part
was taken care of.
Now it was back to Professor Narayanamurthy. If I remember
correctly, he was sitting in front of me. I said,Now, its your job.
He was on the phone to Nandan immediately to say that we were
ready. Nandan told us whom we should contact, so that a proper agreement could be drawn up and the necessary papers exchanged. This took a few days. The shares were then transferred
and immediately sold. My recollection is that it was a good time
to sell and the money was with the Institute well before the financial year ended. The whole transaction required a fair amount of
work on Professor Narayanamurthys part. Today, I make it sound
easy by saying in a few sentences that it was done. It required going back and forth between the parties and also some negotiation. But everything was done and done to perfection. That is
because we had a Dean who took the responsibility on himself. If
you talk to Professor Narayanamurthy, he will probably give you
more details of what was involved. I recall this story to illustrate
the dynamism and commitment which he brought to his job.
Amongst other things, he also streamlined the process of letting
donors know what was happening with the money they had given. This was something the Institute had not done well in the
past. When you have alumni or organizations giving you money, they like to know what you are doing with it every year. This
is particularly true if the amounts involved are large. You cant
just say, Yes, the money is with us. We are looking after it. Dont
worry. Thats not the way. You have to keep a separate account
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and write annually to the people concerned. Professor Narayanamurthy was very good in these matters and I think he did an outstanding job.
rm: So in this way, resources really picked up in his time.
sps: Yes, they did. Resource generation really picked up during
my tenure and the credit should go to the Dean. He was the one
at the ground level, mooting new ideas and executing them. Professor Narayanamurthy was truly a wonderful colleague.
Professor Madhavan was another fine colleague. He served the
Institute in many ways. He was the Head of the Chemical Engineering Department, Dean of r & d, and worked on many committees. You may recall my mentioning that we were together
on the Curriculum Committee during Professor Kelkars time.
Professor Madhavan was also an outstanding teacher. He was
known for the clarity of his thinking and his willingness to spend
hours with students. He was the recipient of the best teacher
award. You might also be interested in knowing that he played
basketball well and there was a time when the staff-student basketball match was not all that one sided.
rm: I think in some ways he was the architect of the vision for
the School of Management.
sps: Thats right. He was the Convener of the Committee which
prepared the report for the Senate. The report laid down the
basis behind establishing a School of Management. It felt that
since the som would be located in an iit, it should have some
distinctive characteristics and should focus on areas like Tech-
60
nology Management and Production Management. The report

also suggested that the School should admit only students who
have Bachelors degrees in Engineering. Thus the Schools curriculum would be somewhat different compared to that in general management programmes.
I now turn to a person whom many of us respected as a model teacher and who made an impact on me. That was Professor
Vartak. Many may not remember him now. He retired around
1990 and passed away about seven or eight years ago at a relatively young age. He was in the Department of Mathematics
and though he taught various courses in Mathematics, his subject was Statistics. He was one of the most unassuming persons I
have ever met, never seeking anything for himself and yet willing
to teach as many hours as you wanted him to teach. If you started a new programme and needed some one to teach some topics in Mathematics or Statistics, Professor Vartak would teach
them. You just had to meet him and he would agree. There were
times when he used to teach the equivalent of four courses in a
semester. Talk to any faculty member today and if they have even
two courses to teach, they let the whole world know. On the other hand, here was one person who taught without thinking about
the number of hours involved, a person who was very good in his
subject and very good in his diction, a person who was always
willing to answer your questions, both in the class and outside.
Where will we find such a gem again?
rm: I mean, they were like pillars for the Institute.
sps: Indeed. There are many others whose names come to mind.
As I said earlier, I shall restrict myself to a few.
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Now I come to a person who made an impression on me because

of his dedication to consultancy and research, Professor Katti of
Civil Engineering. He joined here in 1958 because he had been
told You are going to do research, not teaching alone, but teaching and research. So he always used to say, I have come here to
do research. In 1958, when he was in sasmira, there were no
facilities to start with. He got hold of a small room, 8 ft by 8 ft,
and set up a facility for testing samples for his work in geotechnical engineering. There was no Russian equipment. So he got
some set-ups fabricated and started his work. One year later, he
started the M.Tech programme in Geotechnical Engineering on
his own without any expert help from the ussr. You know he
was totally committed to research and consultancy. He did consultancy work all over India and was always on the move. He also served the Institute well in many capacities, as Head of the
Civil Engineering Department, as Dean of r & d, and finally as
Head of csr e.
Then, of course, in Civil Engineering, there was Professor
Narasimhan. His subject was fluid mechanics and he was another remarkable person. He had an excellent academic record, a
Ph.D from the University of Iowa, and was a fine teacher and
researcher. He was a member of cr a b, the Committee whose
work I described earlier when I was discussing Professor Kelkar
and Professor Bedford. That is why I knew him well. He too
served the Institute in many ways. He was the Head of the Civil
Engineering Department and later the Dean of Planning. If my
memory serves me right, he was also the first convener of the interdisciplinary programme in Environmental Engineering.
Finally, let me come to my department. One of the first persons
I met when I came to the Mechanical Engineering Department
62
was Professor Parulekar. Like many others at iit Bombay in

the early years, he was from vjti. He was in his forties when he
joined iit Bombay and was immediately sent to ussr where he
completed his Ph.D. Then he came back and worked in the area
of refrigeration. He guided a large number of students for their
M.Tech dissertation and was dedicated to teaching Thermodynamics and Refrigeration. He used to draw a lot of sketches and
diagrams on the board while teaching and would always tell students to try and picture a situation before putting down any equations. In fact, mathematics was not his strong point. Once, he
attended a series of my lectures in Heat Transfer. When I asked
him for his reaction, he said What you taught was fine, but every time you wrote an integral sign on the board, I was reminded
of a snake! That was Professor Parulekar. I remember him because of his friendly attitude and his helpful nature. I remember
him too for his humour, for his ability to teach large classes and
for his ability to carry people along. He was liked by all the nonacademic staff and his house on the campus was very much like
an open house.
Professor Jaganmohan and Professor Jagadish were two other
colleagues with whom I came in close contact. Professor Jaganmohan received his Bachelors degree from Sagar University in
1951 and then worked in the State Electricity Board. He had acquired hands-on experience by working in many power plants
where he had done maintenance and erection work. Thus, he
was very familiar with equipment like boilers, turbines, pumps,
etc. He worked in the Electricity Board for about seven years before joining iit Bombay. The interesting thing was that in spite
of his long stay in the field, he retained his academic leanings. No
one has quite taught steam power plant engineering the way he
used to because of his all round experience. He too was sent to
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the ussr, but had to return in 1962 without his advanced degree
because of the war with China. Nevertheless, he never gave up on
his Ph.D. He took up a topic in heat transfer in the seventies and
completed the work when he was about forty five years old!
Professor Jagadish and I were very close because we were in the
same laboratory and taught courses which overlapped. He was
a unique person because he was one of the few people I have
known who straddled the two culturesscience on one side and
arts on the other. (r m: I have heard a lot about him.) The technical subjects of interest to him were gas turbines, jet propulsion
and wind energy. Apart from his competence in them, he was a
connoisseur of music and was proficient in playing the sitar. He
loved nature and wild life and visited many of our national parks.
He was liked by all because of his gentle nature and helpful attitude, and it was a great shock when he passed away in 1988 at
the young age of fifty two.
By now you may have come to the conclusion that I am only going to speak about the past. So let me dispel that impression by
describing one person who is still very much in the Institute and
with whom I have been associated for more than thirty years.
I am referring to Professor Uday Gaitonde in my department.
ung, as he is known, joined iit Bombay as a student in 1968.
I came in contact with him in his final year when I supervised
his B.Tech. project. He was our silver medalist in 1973 and I was
delighted when he joined the Ph.D programme as a research
scholar under my supervision. For his Ph.D, he worked on the
problem of measuring the thermal conductivity of liquids and in
particular, liquid mixtures. The idea was to build a set-up which
could measure the k-value to a reasonable accuracy and then see
if we could come up with correlations for predicting k-values of
64
mixtures from the k-values of the components. Till that time,

the usual practice had been to adopt some kind of a weighted
average formula for predicting the k-value of the mixture. We
were trying to see if in some way the molecular weight and the
molecular structure could also be brought into the predictive
correlation. It was a challenging problem and of course, Uday
did a wonderful job. Subsequently, he spent about four years
with bhel working in their r & d division before coming back
to iit as a faculty member. He has been a tremendous asset to
the Department and the Institute ever since. He is known for
his teaching skills in subjects like thermodynamics, heat transfer and energy conversion, and has guided numerous students
for their M.Tech dissertations and Ph.D theses. He has done
consultancy jobs for a variety of industries and is also the adviser to many engineering colleges in Maharashtra. There are very
few who have served the Institute as well as he has.
Now let me take a few moments to describe some other colleagues who were not faculty members. The first name which
comes to mind is that of Mr. D.K. Ghosh who was the Registrar from 1985 to 2000. Mr. Ghosh was selected to be the Registrar in 1985 when I was the Deputy Director with Professor Nag.
He served the Institute well over a long period of time. He had
many fine qualities. The best was his ability to get on well with all
people in the Institute. He maintained good relations with many
faculty members and also with the office bearers of the non-academic staff. In addition, he had an excellent liaison with the Ministry officials in Delhi. I remember Professor Nag once saying to
me that Mr. Ghosh was in his opinion the best Registrar in India.
After having seen him at close quarters during my tenure, I would
agree with that viewpoint.
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Amongst the technical staff, there were many who served the Institute well. Two names which come instantly to mind are those
of Mr. E.T. Randelia and Mr. Kasbekar. I knew both of them
well and in my opinion, they were exceptional people. Mr. Randelia was in the Internal Combustion Engines Laboratory of
the Mechanical Engineering Department. He joined iit Bombay almost at the beginning and was responsible for much of
the erection work in the laboratory in the early years. He was
best known for his ability to explain the working of I.C. engines
and he would do so rigorously to batch after batch during the
practical sessions. His explanations were very lucid and all the
students liked him and still remember him. Mr. Kasbekar was
initially in our Nuclear Engineering Laboratory and later moved
to the Electrical Engineering Department. He was an M.Sc in
Physics and did his M.Tech in Electronics at the Institute as a
staff member. He too was very good and sincere in his work. I
remember him too because of his love for walking. He was very
regular about taking his evening walk and we must have crossed
each other hundreds of times.
I think I could go on and on describing the work and achievements of faculty members and members of the staff who have
served the Institute well. I have given you a fair glimpse though
and this is probably a good place to stop.
rm: Some of them are the unsung heroes of iit Bombay over
the years. It is nice that you have shared your memories of them.
Next time when we meet, we will move on to your experiences
as Director.
66
I N I T I AT I V E S A S T H E DI R E C T OR
rm: We will now make a departure from the kinds of things we

have been discussing so far and come to the period when you
were the Director at iit Bombay. Qualitatively, this was a very
different period when you were heading the Institution and I
suppose the skills needed for the job would have also been different. Your experiences too would perhaps have been of a different type. As we start recounting your years as the Director,
may I ask what you remember of the legacy that you had inherited when you took over in 1995? What were the strengths that
iit Bombay already had that could be bolstered and what were
the weaknesses which needed to be worked on?
sps: When I took over as the Director in 1995, I had been in
the Institute for nearly thirty years. Prior to that, I had been the
Deputy Director for a little over two years from 1983 to 1985, and
also the Head of the Mechanical Engineering Department for
about two and a half years from 1973 to 1975. I had also worked
on a variety of committees before that, Senate committees concerned with academic matters and administrative committees
concerned with pay scales, promotions, etc. So I knew the Institute well. Of course, when I took over, the Institute was going through a difficult period. I have discussed this aspect earlier
when I was describing Professor Nags term as Director. Funding was not as good as it is today. We were getting enough money to pay salaries and pensions, our electricity and water bills,
and things like that. But you need money also for development
in order to go forward and execute new plans. Funding was needed for new buildings and classrooms, new laboratories, new
equipment and instruments and for maintenance of the physi-
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cal infrastructure which existed. When you do not get adequate

amounts of money, all these activities suffer and you are in trouble. And that is what happened and was visible for all to see as
funds reduced in the late 80s and the early 90s.There were indications that things were picking up in 1995, but certainly inadequate funding was a cause for worry. So that was the situation
I inherited.
Mind you, we still had our strengths and they were many. Our
number one strength was that we had excellent and motivated
students. Then we had very good faculty, no doubt about it. Here
and there, there may have been some aberrations. You know if
you have a faculty strength of four hundred or so, you are always
going to have a few who are going to give you problems. But you
have to take these things in your stride and look at the larger picture. And finally, and this is important, our strength lay in our
non-academic staff, who were, by and large, a dedicated group.
That was not the case at many other institutions in India.
rm: Not the other iits?
sps: Certainly not at any of the other iits! So we had all these
strengths with us, and I think with these strengths, there was
reason to hope that if things turned around in terms of funding
or we could generate funds from other sources, then we could
probably go forward. At this stage, the appropriate thing for me
would be to mention the first Institute Faculty Meeting which
I addressed about fifteen days after I took over and in which I
brought out these concerns. I believe it was held on January 18,
1995. I said to the faculty, This is where we stand and you have
to help me. It is not a question of my doing things alone. I need
your cooperation, I need your goodwill and together I think we
68
can move things forward for the better in the right direction. I
also gave an idea of some of the things we wanted to do. For instance, I said we would need to look at the undergraduate curriculum and its reorganization. This had not been done for nearly
ten years. In addition, we probably needed to introduce some
new academic programmes. We needed to increase our commitment to sponsored research. Faculty members had to make this
more of a postgraduate institute with more research and more
consultancies. There could be no two ways about it. I said that
in spite of the fact that we have teaching to do, there is time to
do research. I am not convinced if somebody tells me that he has
too much teaching. To be quite honest, there is no such thing at
the Institute. Then I made an important point. I said we had to
increase our enrolment; it had been stationary for ten years. So
I did make a number of points and I felt that in an overall sense,
my comments were well received.
Then I spoke about myself personally. I said I would continue
to do teaching even as the Director, though to a lesser extent
than before. I also gave the faculty members an idea of the some
of the formal duties of the Director. How many committees he
chairs and how many meetings he has to attend. I went on to say
that when you add it all up, it comes to a very sizeable number.
You get to see me quite often at formal functions also, I said,
like the convocation ceremony, the foundation day function,
etc. Therefore I said, I shall be grateful if you dont ask me to
inaugurate workshops, conferences and the like. Please request
other officers in the Institute to do the honours. I request you
to exempt me. I also told them that on certain mornings in the
week, I would not be in the Main Building. I would be in my Department looking after my academic duties. If you read my letterhead carefully, I said,You will see that it says Director and
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Professor of Mechanical Engineering. That was being written

for the first time to emphasize that I held both positions. As a
professor, I will be in my department and when I am there, I request you not to call me about issues which I have to deal with
as the Director.
rm: That was a first, wasnt it?
sps: Yes, it was a first. I said, It wont happen every day. Only
two or three times a week when I have lectures. On those days,
I will go first to the Department and I would request you not to
call me there. By and large, people respected my wish. In a way,
what I was trying to say was that academics is important. We are
academic people and we will try to do everything with rational
arguments and by keeping our academic outlook.
In that meeting, I also tried to convey a feeling that I was optimistic. As I said, there are very few people who had been appointed to the Directors job and brought the kind of experience
which I did. Since I knew that I was going to be the Director, I
had even had the time to plan out my actions.
Oh! But that brings to mind the story of my appointment and
how I took over. I must tell you that since I am recollecting
events. The meeting for selecting the directors for iit Bombay and iit Delhi took place in September 1994. After that, the
Ministry took some time to obtain the Visitors assent. The delay had nothing to do with iit Bombay. I believe there was some
other issue involved because of which the papers went back and
forth between the Ministry and the Visitor. In any event, the
formal communication from the Ministry saying that I had been
selected came to our Chairman, Dr. Chidambaram, on Decem-
70
ber 17th. He called me as soon as it came and said, I have received this letter and I am issuing your letter of appointment
immediately. You can take over tomorrow. I said,No, I would
not like to take over tomorrow. He asked me why and I told
him, This is an academic post and just now we are in between
semesters. It would be appropriate for me to join on the first
working day of the next semester, which is the second of January. It is just fifteen days away and I would prefer to join on that
day. I told him that the Indian Institute of Science has a tradition that a new Director joins on the first of July because that is
the beginning of the academic year. Dr. Chidambaram is from
iisc. He said,I appreciate what you are saying and I like your
idea, but these are difficult times. You know some complication
may arise; somebody might bring a stay order. Such things can
happen. I said, I have nothing to fear. I was selected on merit
and there was no wrong-doing. So if there is some problem, Ill
face it. Dr. Chidambaram gave his approval and it was agreed
that I would join on January 2, 1995.
Now it so happened that on January 2, I had my first lecture
at 9.30. I was teaching the first half of the ug course on Heat
Transfer that semester. So I delivered my lecture from 9.30 to
10.30, then walked to the Main Building and signed my joining
report in the Board Room. The idea behind all this was to convey that it is good to follow certain traditions.
In any case, I had fifteen days between the time I was formally
appointed and I joined, and I used that time well. I met a number of people in the Institute to seek their views on the kinds of
things that needed to be done. I had a set of pages and at the top
of each page, I put headings like academic programmes, administrative issues, infrastructure and so on. After each discussion,
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I jotted down the issues, some major and some minor, and prepared some kind of an agenda for action. That set of papers is
here with me just now, a little faded after all these years.
rm: Would you be so kind as to share with us some of the notings made on those papers?
sps: That will come out as we go along. I must mention that this
bunch of papers was on my desk for five years throughout the
time I was Director. From time to time, I used to refer to the
notings made to remind myself about what issues had been tackled and what still remained to be done. In some cases, my thinking changed and then a particular issue was dropped or modified,
while in some instances, new issues were added. Looking back, I
can say that many of the things I had planned for were done in
my five years.
I will digress again for a moment to emphasize the need for an
action plan when you begin your term as the head of an institute. If you dont have one, you will just run the institute on a
day-to-day basis and that is not good enough in the long run. Of
course, you may not succeed in executing everything you would
have liked. Take for example, an issue concerned with the academic programmes. You may have a view point on what needs
to be done, but you have to go through committees and through
the Senate to obtain approval. Sometimes they may not agree
with your view point. After all, there are no short cuts in a democratic set-up!
rm: That brings me to the question I wish to bring up. During
your time as Director, what were the key initiatives taken which resulted in the achievement of some of the items on your agenda?
72
sps: Well, I am going to need some time now. I have with me

the notes of the last Institute Faculty Meeting which I addressed
in October 1999 and I will use them. If you attended that meeting, you may recall that I gave the title Looking Back, Looking
Forward to the presentation which I made. I said,I am going to
look back and recount some of the things we have done, and I
am also going to look forward a little to say what I think needs
to be done because an Institute doesnt ever stop. It is an entity
which goes on living. During the presentation, I used transparencies and gave a full-fledged professorial lecture of fifty minutes. I had prepared carefully what I wanted to say. Right now,
I will highlight some of the points I made in the Looking Back
part of the lecture.
First, I spoke about the academic programmes and recounted
what had been done. I said that we had taken a fresh look at
the curriculum of the existing B.Tech programme, particularly the core programme. This had not been done for nearly ten
years. A Senate Committee under Professor Narayanan had reviewed the curriculum carefully and certain additions and deletions had been made. Of course, this had been done keeping in
mind our basic philosophy for the ug curriculum. Then I spoke
about the introduction of the 5-year dual degree programme.
I said it was a new concept and we hoped it would grow. I will
not dwell more on it here because I have already spoken about
it earlier. I also mentioned the new M.Sc programme in Applied
Statistics and Informatics, which had already acquired a great
deal of popularity in a short period. And I said that a major initiative that we had taken was the establishment of the School
of Management and the starting of the Master of Management
programme from July 1995. In fact, this was item 1 in my agenda for action.
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rm: Oh! It was high on your priority list?

sps: It was at the top of my list under academic initiatives. I
started taking action on it within a week of taking over, because
the Senate had already given its acceptance.
r m: Did you personally feel that this Master of Management
programme was one that iit Bombay should take up quickly because it was going to be valuable for industry?
sps: That is correct. I felt it would be useful because the curriculum was different from the general management programmes of
other institutes. It had an emphasis on technology management,
an emphasis on production management and was designed for
engineers and scientists. Our management programme doesnt
admit students with Bachelors degrees in arts or commerce because we want a student with a different outlook and a different
background. But to come back to your query, yes I was convinced that the programme was needed because it would fill a
certain niche. In this, I was partly influenced by my experience
at mit. You know the Sloan School of Management at mit is
different from the Harvard Business School. Each has its own
merits. The Sloan School has always emphasized technology as
the driver behind business. So that was at the back of my mind,
that we should have a school which would make a difference. We
have succeeded to some extent, but it is going to be a long haul.
Of course, an important initiative was the establishment of the
Kanwal Rekhi School of Information Technology, kr esit. This
was possible because of the generous donations we received
from Kanwal Rekhi, Nandan Nilekani and others. We got adequate funds to construct a new building, to establish a Chair,
74
to give a number of scholarships, to set up labs and equip class

rooms and so on.
Another initiative was the idea that some postgraduate (p g)
courses would be taught in the evenings. This process was formalized. This way, persons from outside the Institute gather credit
by doing courses, one or two in a semester. Eventually some of
them could qualify for a postgraduate diploma of the Institute or
even a Masters degree, if they join the Institute for one year to
do a thesis. A few students have already benefited from this activity. Personally, I feel that it could have important implications
for the future if we nurture it carefully. So these were some of the
things we did as part of the growth of the academic programmes
of the Institute.
Another major initiative was an increase in student enrolment.
The number of students at the Institute had stayed more or less
constant for nearly fifteen or twenty years. It was about 2600 in
Professor Kelkars time and had increased a little, to about 3000,
in Professor Nags time. Personally, I felt that given the size of
our campus, the size of our staff, particularly our non-academic staff, we could not justify such a low student population. You
may not believe it but there was a time when we had more nonacademic staff than students at the Institute! So we made a conscious decision to add on and by the time I left, we had nearly
4000. These additions took place primarily through the dual degree programme, other M.Tech programmes and the Ph.D programme. As a result, the ratio of ug to pg students increased to
1:1.4. I think this was a significant development.
Then I must tell you about the step which we took, rather all
the iits took, to increase the tuition fees; not a very popular
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move at first sight. But it was consciously done, presented carefully to the iit Council with facts and figures, and finally adopted with no real discontentment. In 1995, the tuition fee was
only rs 1000 per year, a miniscule amount when you consider
that we were spending nearly rs 100,000 per student per year.
The idea behind raising the tuition fees was not to make a profit, but to charge the student a reasonable fraction of the expenditure incurred on him. The plan was to raise the tuition so that
the student would pay about 15 to 20 per cent of the cost of education. This would essentially affect ug students, since pg students get a scholarship. We felt that most parents could afford
to pay an amount around rs 15,000 or 20,000 and that a rise in
tuition fees would make students aware that they were spending something.
r m: And any way, loans or scholarships would be available to
those who needed them?
sps: Of course, anyone who had got in on merit and needed monetary help would have access to a loan or scholarship.
There was a clear provision for that situation. Now a tuition increase has to be common to all iits. One iit cannot act on its
own. So the process is quite long and drawn out. First it has to be
agreed to by all the iit Directors after consultations in the respective Institutes and then it has to be formally approved by the
iit Council. A fair amount of coordination is required.
rm: And persuasion?
sps: And some persuasion too! The instantaneous reaction of
most persons to a proposal to increase fees is always No, no!
Students will protest; so and so will protest. But if you present
76
the facts which I have just mentioned and tell that most universities the world over derive at least 15 to 20 per cent of their educational expenses from tuition fees, then people realize that
there is nothing unusual about what is being suggested.
rm: It seems that iit Bombay took the initiative in this matter.
sps: I was one of the Directors who felt strongly about the matter. First the subject was discussed at all the iits and then jointly
by the Directors. A proposal was then sent to the Ministry to be
put up to the Council. It so happened that I presented the proposal on behalf of the iits at the Council meeting. I must tell
you that we had done some preparatory work before the meeting. That is always useful. By the time I finished making my brief
presentation to the Council, the members were so convinced
that one or two suggested that we should increase the fees even
more than what had been proposed. I said, No. The idea is not
to make money but to show that technical education is costly;
the idea is to charge a reasonable amount consistent with practices elsewhere and at the same time, to make provisions for
those who cannot afford to pay the increased amount. And so
the proposal to increase the tuition fees was adopted. The increase was introduced in a phased manner. If my memory serves
me right, the fees were raised to rs 12,000 in 1997, to rs 17,000
in 1998 and to rs 22,000 in 1999. I must also mention another
feature of the hike. It was made applicable only to new students
entering the Institutes from July 1997 onwards.
r m: Perhaps, we could move on now to the research programmes. In what ways did research activity at the Institute
change during your tenure and what were the initiatives taken
in that respect?
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sps: I think the most important thing that we tried to do was

to give a boost to sponsored research activities. Every effort was
made to see that faculty would interact with outside agencies to
get sponsored research projects. In this effort, the Dean of Research and Development played an important role. Today the
Institute earns a fair amount from sponsored research. In 1995
we were getting only six or seven crores a year. By the time I
left, the amount had doubled to about sixteen crores. What is
worth noting is that a conscious decision was taken to see that
we interacted for larger projects with agencies which had bigger
resources for funding. For example, we interacted with the Department of Atomic Energy to set up the Centre for Software
Verification and Validation. Professors Ramesh and Siva Kumar
from our Computer Science and Engineering Department were
the key persons involved from our side. That project was worth
a couple of crores. Similarly, we interacted with the Aeronautical Development Authority and set up the Centre for Aerospace
Systems Design and Engineering located within the Aero Department. In this case, Professors Suryanarayan and Sudhakar
were the faculty members who took the initiative. These were
well planned moves to establish centres within departments or
attached to departments. The result was that we received funds
and infrastructure to enable our faculty and students to do research in certain important areas. I think these large size projects have had a good long range impact.
rm: If I may put it this way, it is during this time that the one
crore barrier might have been broken?
sps: Something like that did happen. Earlier, sponsored research
projects usually meant a few lakhs or so. Also they generally revolved around a single faculty member. While such projects obvi-
78
ously continued, now we were not afraid to receive a crore or two

and think on a larger scale. For instance, a large project which we
undertook was the setting up of the Geotechnical Centrifuge.
This facility, the only one of its kind in India, involved an outlay
of about eight crores. We got the money from various sources.
Some of it came from the Department of Science and Technology, some from the Defence Ministry, a part from the Institute
funds, and so on. In fact, we took a risk when we decided to go
ahead and build the facility. I remember a meeting with Professor Chandrasekharan of Civil Engineering soon after I took
over.We dont have a promise for the amount of money needed, he said. We dont even have a commitment for half the
amount. I said, Lets not wait any more. The design is ready, the
vendor has been selected. If we do not go ahead now, we will never get this facility built. We will manage to get the money as we
go along. And sure enough, things did work out eventually. We
could persuade others to give money and the Geotechnical Centrifuge has turned out to be an excellent research facility.
The thermo-hydraulic facility set up by Professor Kannan Iyer
and Professor Vedula of Mechanical Engineering is another big
project running into a few crores funded by the Department
of Atomic Energy. The idea is to conduct certain experiments
which will be of relevance for finalizing the design of the Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (a h w r). This reactor will be
built ten or fifteen years hence as part of the third stage of Indias nuclear power programme. Model studies concerning the
heat transfer and flow characteristics have to be performed and
these are being conducted in the thermo-hydraulic facility at iit
Bombay. A few people from barc are coming here to do their
M.Tech dissertation work. So it is not just a matter of setting up a
facility and generating data of interest; the idea also is to have an
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interaction with staff from there coming here and getting their
degrees as well.
Sponsored research work certainly got a big boost during my tenure. The activity grew both in terms of the number of projects
being handled, as well as the size of some of the projects. That
growth has continued ever since and it has been good for the Institute. Consultancy activities also picked up in a big way, particularly international consultancy projects. Such projects were
unheard of earlier. A number of international agencies and organizations started coming here to get consultancy work done.
Now, I should like to move on and speak about some other activities. As the Director, I felt that there are certain times of
the year when the Institute needs to project itself to the outside world. I picked four days for this purpose. These were the
Foundation Day, the day of the Convocation, Teachers Day
and Alumni Day. I picked those four days as days on which we
would do something special and interact with the people concerned. Let me begin with March 10th, the Foundation Day,
the day on which Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru laid the foundation
stone of the Institute in 1959. When I joined in 1965, we used
to have an open house on Foundation Day. We would invite the
general public and particularly school children from Mumbai to
come over. They would be taken around and shown the Institute. Then there were a few years when Foundation Day was not
celebrated at all. Subsequently, for a few years, we used to invite some one to give a lecture on that day and it was called the
Foundation Day lecture. In fact, one year I delivered the Foundation Day lecture. That was in 1988. I had just completed my
study on the brain drain of iit graduates. (r m: A burning issue
in those days!) It was a topic of interest to many and mine was
80
one of the first quantitative studies on the subject. I remember

the Lecture Theatre was packed to capacity on that day.
As the Director, I took the decision that we would have a formal
function on March 10th every year with an eminent person as the
Chief Guest. I also felt that it was a good occasion to introduce
the ceremony of giving Distinguished Alumnus Awards on that
day. The Institute had given awards to some of its distinguished
alumni in the Silver Jubilee Year in 198283. I think about fifteen
alumni had been honoured then. But the practice had not been
continued after that. I felt that the presentation of these awards
should be an annual feature. Every year, the Institute should have
a formal process for the selection. There should be a committee
to receive nominations, to screen them and to decide who should
receive the award. That process was finalized and implemented,
and we started giving the awards from the Foundation Day in
1996. By giving these awards every year, we now recognize and
honour a few of our alumni who have distinguished themselves
in their field of work, both in India and abroad.
rm: I suppose you must have received feedback from those who
were honoured in this way?
sps: Yes, most of them said that it was some thing they really felt
nice about. They communicated this to me either in writing or by
letting me know when they happened to meet me. Recognizing
alumni who have done distinguished work is a practice followed
by good universities all over the world. We should have probably
done it earlier.
Now let me move on to the next Day. The Institute has had a
convocation ceremony every year from 1962 onwards. But over
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the years, the function had become stereotyped. We used to

follow the old pattern, black gowns in which everybody was
uncomfortable and a ceremony which was a legacy of the British times. So I spoke on the subject in the Senate sometime in
1993. I said that there was a waning interest in the convocation and that if we wanted to retain it, we needed to give it a
new touchour touch. Alternatively, we could discontinue the
whole ritual. Those who had completed the requirements for
their degree could simply walk over to the Registrars office to
pick up their degree certificate. Some universities follow that
practice. They do not have a convocation ceremony at all. However, if we wished to continue to have a function, we needed to
conduct it properly. It should be a ceremony where the recipients come, where smiling parents and friends come, where the
outside world comes and we tell everybody that we are proud of
our students and that we are handing over to them a certificate
with certain responsibilities. There was a lively discussion in
the Senate and the general consensus was that we should continue to have the convocation, but with a new look The Senate
decided to appoint a committee for the purpose and as usual,
since I had initiated the subject, I was appointed as the Convener of the Committee to work out the changes. We had an excellent team. I remember, Professor Hariharan was a member
of the Committee. Professor Nadkarni of the Industrial Design
Centre was also a member. Whatever you see today at our convocation, the change in dresses, the seating structure on the dais with chairs at different levels, the video presentation on the
side screens, the music played at the beginning and so on, all
that is a consequence of our report to the Senate.
rm: I myself thought it was an extremely important change to
make. If we have a ceremony, why not do it our way?
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sps: Thats right. I remember you were on the dress sub-committee headed by Professor Nadkarni. He got the dresses designed outside. We had two or three alternatives which we
looked at and then selected one.
r m: I think students also responded very positively to the
change made.
sps: Yes, they were happy and proud. In an overall sense, it is a
much better function in terms of the aesthetics, the dcor and
the precision with which it is carried out. By the way, it is interesting to note that it has been copied by other universities. The
third step which I took was to introduce a function on Teachers
Day, September 5th. Prior to that, I had to go to the Senate to
say that we needed to recognize our good teachers and give them
suitable awards. There was quite a discussion in the Senate on
the subject of whether we should recognize excellence in teaching or not. There were some members who felt that if you start
giving awards for good teaching, some faculty members would
start handing out good grades to all students regardless of performance. However, most Senate members disagreed. They felt
strongly that good, dedicated teaching needs to be rewarded and
that good teachers do not necessarily give good grades.
rm: I dont think ones philosophy can change overnight just
for an award.
sps: Quite right, good teachers remain good teachers regardless of whether we institute awards or not. The report prepared
for the purpose was formally adopted by the Senate. The Institute had planned on giving a certificate of appreciation and a
small amount of money, but then our alumni in America who had
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formed the iit Bombay Heritage Fund came along and raised
the amount to rs 10,000. I believe now the amount has been
further increased, which is fine. It is important to note that the
awardees are picked through a formal procedure laid down by
the Senate in which student input plays a key role. The procedure itself has undergone some modifications from time to time.
That is bound to happen and that is the way it should be. The
bottom line is that the Institute is now recognizing ten faculty
members for their teaching skills every year and quite appropriately, the recognition is given on Teachers Day.
Finally Alumni DayWe had begun to celebrate this day with
our alumni in December every year during Professor Nags time.
During my tenure, we formalized the programme further. I recall that we decided to have the function on the last Sunday of
the year. The day begins with alumni and their families coming to the Institute through the morning, gathering on the Lecture Theatre lawns and in the Main Building for a get-together.
This is followed by lunch and a programme in the afternoon in
the lt. The Director starts the programme by describing some
of the things that have happened during the year and then the
alumni take over. The batch celebrating its Silver Jubilee has a
special role to play and the planning is largely left to them. There
is some light hearted talk and some serious discussion as well.
After that in the evening, the alumni of the Silver Jubilee batch
have their own dinner and celebration. Overall it is a good occasion for alumni to link up with the faculty and to get a glimpse of
how things are changing in the Institute. It is also a good occasion for alumni to link up amongst themselves. Finally, I should
mention that we also introduced another award in 1997 called
the Distinguished Service Award. This is given on Alumni Day to
a select set of alumni who in the Institutes view have rendered
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distinguished service to the cause of the Institute. By starting

to give Distinguished Service Awards, the Institute was following practices adopted by many universities. We were not doing
something unique, but it needed to be done. This concludes my
description of the activities on the four days I had mentioned.
rm: Well, one certainly gets the strong impression that during
your tenure what you set out to do was to give recognition for
certain kinds of services rendered to the Institute or achievements that were not being recognized earlier. And very many of
them have to do with building up the academic strength. That
is something that I remember clearly during your tenure and
it struck me personally that you were anxious that iit Bombay should be a place for excellence in teaching and in research,
and that that standing should be furthered. In the same vein,
I remember that when Professor Devang Khakhar published a
paper in Nature, you congratulated him and at your behest, he
was requested to give a lecture on the background to the paper
and the work described in it. So in my memory, something that
stands out is this attention to academic achievement and this encouragement towards greater achievement, towards excellence.
sps: You know, Rohit, I believe that excellence in your professional work can come about if you have a combination of circumstances. First of all, a person must have the innate ability in
himself. Quite a few have that and certainly at an iit, many have
that in their genes and by virtue of their academic background.
However, they need to be in a state of mind in which they feel like
excelling and for that they need an environment in which they
have the facilities, in which they are encouraged and in which
their work is appreciated. It is the job of an academic administrator to provide such an environment.
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Incidentally, it may interest you to know that the phrase Tryst

with Excellence which the Institute has adopted on the Golden Jubilee Year logo was first used by me in the Directors address which I delivered at the Convocation in 1996. Towards the
end of that address, I said, This Institute has a tryst with excellence. Mind you, the sentence was not there in the written text
from which I was reading. I said it spontaneously. In hindsight,
I suppose Panditjis Tryst with Destiny speech delivered at midnight on August 14th, 1947 was my source of inspiration.
rm: Well, that is certainly an interesting piece of information.
Perhaps now we could revert to the address you gave at the first
Institute Faculty meeting in 1995. There was another thing that
struck me then and still lingers on in my mind. You did say that
we need to give more attention to research because there is not
that much teaching to do. You also said that you were a bit concerned about the teaching activities, that you felt there was a
sense of complacency creeping in and that you had noticed that
some faculty were not as serious about their teaching as they
should be. What had prompted this anxiety?
sps: It is possible that I did not make myself clear. There was really no anxiety as such. All I was trying to say was that teaching
has to be taken seriously and yet there is not so much of it, that
we cannot do research. We have to be busy in our research work
as well, publish more, and obtain more sponsored research projects. After all, the two activities go hand in hand. One complements the other and they are of equal importance.
rm: Could we move on to some other initiatives now?
sps: I think we should come to the issue of funding now.
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(r m: The block grant scheme.) I would also like to describe how

we set up the structure for receiving donations.
I used the opportunity of the last faculty meeting to tell what
had happened with regard to funding over five years. This was
necessary because when I began my term in 1995, I had indicated
that times were difficult. We had to improve our infrastructure,
repair and renovate our buildings and so on, and we did not have
enough funds. What had happened over five years? I spent a lot
of time in that faculty meeting describing the funding pattern
which was in existence prior to the financial year 199394 and
the one that was being applied to the iits subsequently. Maybe
I should repeat that for the sake of record. Prior to 199394, we
had a funding system in which we got just enough money for our
needs. The way it operated was something like this. Every year,
the Institute would draw up its budget by listing what it needed
under various categories, like salaries and pensions, scholarships,
maintenance of infrastructure (roads, buildings, etc), educational costs, electricity and water, and so on. We would also draw up a
list of new things planned for the year, like new laboratories, major pieces of equipment, new educational programmes, etc, and
put down their costs. The money requirement under the first
list constituted what was called as the recurring grant, while
the requirement under the second list was called the non-recurring grant. Both components of the grant were important.
The recurring grant helped in the daily running of the Institute
and in keeping it in a ship-shape condition, while the non-recurring grant helped to start new educational and research activities in the Institute. This budget estimate was sent to the
Ministry and was examined there. Under certain headings like
salaries, scholarships, there would be no discussion because the
amounts requested depended on actual numbers. However, un-
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der certain headings like maintenance, they would invariably

give us less than what we had asked for. We tried to tell them
that because of the heavy rain here, as well as the poor quality of construction in the early years, the buildings on our campus had deteriorated a great deal and we would request them to
give more than their norms permitted. But it used to be an annual battle.
The non-recurring grant would come from the Five Year Plan
allocation and as I said, it was used for new activities, new
buildings, new equipment and instruments, new computers,
new roads, library books and journals, etc. Some of the nonrecurring requirements were met from the sponsored projects
obtained by faculty members. When you get funding for a sponsored project, there is always a component for buying equipment. This equipment invariably stays with the Institute after
the project is over and this is a great help. But a substantial part
of the money required for new equipment and instruments has
to come from the mhrd non-recurring grant. In essence, a good
non-recurring grant was vital for the growth and development
of the Institute and this amount was reduced substantially by
the Ministry in the late eighties and early nineties because the
Ministry itself got less money under the Plan.
In any event, after discussion the Ministry would agree to give a
certain amount, let us say (X+Y) where X would be the recurring
amount and Y, the non-recurring amount. This exercise used to
take place at the beginning of the financial year. Towards the
middle of the year, we used to submit revised estimates based
on actual figures for the year and some revision would be agreed
to. Then the way the actual flow of money was handled was as
follows. The Ministry would want an estimate of how much we
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were going to earn during the year from tuition fees, licence fees
for campus housing, other sources of revenue, etc. Let us say
that this added up to an amount Z. This amount would be subtracted and the Ministry would agree to release (X+Y- Z). So at
the end of the year, you were left with nothing. You had spent
whatever you had received. Next year, it was a clean slate. New
values would be agreed to for X and Y and a new value of Z would
be subtracted. That is the way we were running the Institute
from the beginning till 199394. In fact that is the way all autonomous organizations under the government run.
One of the obvious disadvantages of the erstwhile funding
scheme was that under it there was no incentive to increase the
value of Z. Why increase the tuition fees? Why should one try to
earn money for the Institute or look for donations if eventually
the amount earned was going to be deducted from(X+Y)? That
is why fees were never increased in the past. However, the moment you switch over to an incentive-based scheme, one looks
for ways and means to earn a little more. The Ministry recognized this fact and in 1992, discussions were held with the Directors of the iits and iims. A consequence of these discussions
was the introduction of what was called The Block Grant Scheme
from 199394. Under this scheme of funding, the Ministry said
that in 199394, it would give the Institute a block grant fixed
on the basis of the previous years expenditure on the main items
like salaries, pensions, scholarships, electricity and water, etc.
They would increase this by 6 per cent to account for inflation
and would also add expenses which might occur due to some
unusual situations. The Ministry also said that if the Institute
wanted to start any new activities over and above what was possible through the block grant, it would have to tap other sources.
It could for instance make a proposal to increase the fees joint-
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ly with the other iits and bring it for the consideration of the
iit Council. It could also approach alumni for help. More importantly, if an amount was saved from the block grant plus the
earnings from other sources and that saving put into an endowment fund, the Ministry would match that saving with an equal
amount. This was the incentive part of the scheme. It was a kind
of challenge to the iits and the iims. It was also something new
on the Indian scene. Hence, there was fair amount of discussion
with the Ministry. The Directors were quite confident that the
Institutes could face the challenge of generating funds from other sources and in fact, they welcomed the introduction of the
block grant scheme. So when I took over in 1995, the scheme
was on. It had just started.
I was convinced that apart from increasing our earning from a
number of sources within the Institute, we needed the support
of our alumni and perhaps through them other outside sources. In 1995, we knew that many of our alumni who had passed in
the sixties and seventies had been very successful in India and
abroad. Some of them over the years had even indicated their
willingness to help the Institute. But one first needs to have an
infrastructure or a framework in place, particularly when one is
thinking of large donations. You need to have a list of projects,
small and big, which require funding, you need to go out and tell
potential donors about these projects, and you need to set up
processes within the Institute to receive the money and account
for it. So one of the first things I did in 1995 was to go our Board
with a proposal to create the position of a Dean for Resources
Development (r d). Later on the name has been changed to Resources Mobilization. Be that as it may, the important thing for
the Institute was that we had two outstanding persons as the
first two Deans for Resources Development. Professor Phatak
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was the first Dean for a three year period and he was followed
by Professor Narayanamurthy. Both of them did a wonderful job
in making our needs known and in meeting potential donors.
I am making this remark because I feel that what Phatak and
Narayanamurthy did was unusual for the Indian scene. There is
simply no tradition in the Indian university system of going out
and seeking funds in a systematic fashion from private sources.
At about the same time in 1995, some of our alumni in the usa
were keen to set up an organization which could work for the
welfare of the Institute and act as a receiving house for channeling donations made there. iit Kanpur had set up such an organization and the advantages of doing so were well known. If
set up as a non-profit organization, certain tax benefits accrue to
donors within the usa. There was no reason not to set up such
an organization, but it needed dedicated office bearers to run it.
iit Bombay was fortunate to have alumni who were willing to
spend their time for this purpose. To name a few, we had Anil
Kshirsagar, Raj Mashruwala, Sandeep Pandya, Ram Kelkar, Paritosh Choksi, Mahesh Krishnamurthy and Deepak Sabnis. They
really put in a lot of effort in setting up the iit Bombay Heritage
Fund. They needed quite a few documents and papers from our
side and we supplied those. Of course, it helped that I knew all
of them personally. There was an air of excitement and enthusiasm about the whole venture. I still remember Anil calling me
up in 1996 and telling me that the Heritage Fund had been formally registered and some time later, I recall his calling me again
to say that it had obtained the tax free status from the Internal
Revenue Service. That was an important step and it wouldnt
have happened without the dedication of many of our alumni.
No praise can be too high for what they did then and continue
to do for the Institute.
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To come back to the funding pattern and the effect the above
measures had on the Institute, let me give you the figures for the
financial year 199899. This was the last full year for which I was
the Director. In that year, the total inflow of funds to the Institute was rs 108 crores. Out of this, rs 68 crores was the grant
from the Ministry, sponsored projects brought rs 16 crores and
consultancy rs 5 crores, income from all other sources including tuition fees yielded rs 12 crores, and donations came to rs 8
crores. So you get an idea of how things had changed. The grant
from the Ministry remained our primary source, but income
from other sources and from donations now added up to a sizeable amount of rs 20 crores. Five years earlier, this component
was just a crore or two.
rm: Together they were already nearly 20 per cent!
sps: That is right. They added up to about 20 per cent of the
total inflow. Such inflows make a difference. For instance, our
School of it could be established only because of the generous
donations which we received.
r m: Were the donations of rs 8 crores received in 199899
matched by the Ministry?
sps: No, no. These donations were not supposed to be matched.
The agreement with the Ministry was that if we saved something
from the inflow for a year and put that saving in the Endowment
Fund, then the Ministry would match the amount put in.
rm: So, did that happen? Did iit Bombay then start to have an
Endowment Fund?
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sps: We did establish an Endowment Fund account and put our

savings into it. It grew slowly, but we made a beginning. We also received matching grants from the Ministry for a few years.
Subsequently, the funding pattern for the iits has again been
altered. So in a sense, the block grant scheme is now a piece of
history. Nevertheless I think it was an important landmark because it broke with age old tradition and changed the funding
pattern from one in which there was no incentive to earn, to
one in which there was some incentive. In the process, we got a
little bit of independence to receive money from other sources.
That is really what it comes to. The independence to tap other
sources remains and there is no doubt that it has been good for
the growth of the Institute. One must not forget however that
the Government still remains the primary source of our income.
That fact has not changed.
rm: And should not change?
sps: That should not change. After all, we are an Institute set up
by the Government of India. In return for the generous funding
which we receive, we have a social commitment to implement
the policies of the nation, which are useful to the people at large.
That fact also does not change. I spoke about how we established the office of Dean for Resources Development so that we
could interact more closely and purposefully with alumni. So let
me tell you a little about that interaction. I remember still how
generous our alumni were. For instance, Kanwal Rekhi visited
us sometime in 1997 and I mentioned to him that we had plans
for starting a School of Information Technology with a focus on
postgraduate courses and incubation activities for starting new
ventures.Ill give you a million dollars, he said straight away
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after a little discussion. I have shares here in India which Ill

sell. There was only one stipulation. He wanted somebody to
put up a matching amount. I said, Fine. Well take care of that.
So we were on. We obtained the approval of our governing bodies and eventually, as you know, Nandan Nilekani donated more
than the matching amount. But Kanwal did not even wait for
the matching to occur. Once he knew that we were moving, he
sold his shares and gave his donation. Professor Phatak was the
driving force behind the establishment of the School. You cant
beat him for enthusiasm and devotion to a cause.
The example of our School of Management also comes to mind.
Our alumnus, Shailesh Mehta gave us a million dollars for the
School, a very generous and timely donation. Two organizations,
Hindustan Lever and icici also gave a crore of rupees each. With
these donations and some help from the Ministry, it became possible to launch this new venture. So the flow of money to the Institute had begun and it has continued at a steady pace ever since.
We streamlined processes even for smaller donations. Earlier
if somebody wanted to give a few lakhs for a scholarship, we
used wait for our Boards approval before accepting the money.
That was changed. I remember requesting the Board to authorize me to straight away accept such amounts if I was convinced
that it was a nice, clean donation. We would simply ask the donor what the donation was to be used for and work out the details subsequently.
But I dont want to give the impression, Rohit, that it is only
money that one is looking for. Alumni have an important role
to play in the future of the Institute. I want to emphasize that.
Based on their experience, they can provide ideas for growth
in new areas. Alumni are role models for todays students. They
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look up to them as much as they look up to faculty. For example, when a well-known alumnus visits the Institute and gives a
lecture in the Lecture Theatre, he or she provides inspiration to
the students. In their minds, the students think, I could be like
that one day. We want our alumni to come here, to talk to us, to
feel that this is their Institute and to help in any way that they
can. That is the way it should be. And I dare say our alumni have
done us proud in that respect. I have no doubt they will continue to do so in the future.
I think, I have given you a fair idea of some of the things we did
during my tenure. I have described the new initiatives we undertook in our academic programmes and I have spoken about
the growth of our sponsored research and consultancy work. I
have told you about the new funding scheme adopted, about the
linkages built up with alumni and about some of the donations
which have come from them. I think it would be fair to say that
when I left in January 2000 at the end of my five-year term, the
changes that had taken place had left the Institute in a much
better shape and that the future looked a whole lot brighter.
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MY TEAM
r m: Last time you had spoken about your experiences during

your tenure as the Director, the legacy you had inherited, the
concerns that you had when you took over and also the several
important initiatives you had taken.
sps: Yes, I did. Could I take a few minutes to discuss one of the
main reasons why I think we got so many things done in five
years? I believe I was very fortunate to have an excellent team
of colleagues. This is one of the advantages which accrues automatically to somebody who has grown up with the Institute.
One has colleagues who have also grown up with you. In my
case, my association with many colleagues went back almost
thirty years and that fact helps tremendously when you are trying to do something new. Professor Sahasrabudhe was the Deputy Director right through my tenure and he was a person with
whom I was always on the same reference plane. We agreed on
most issues about the approach we should take and if we disagreed, we would argue things out, arrive at a consensus and
then go ahead. Among the Deans, if you take the case of the
Dean of Academic Programmes, we had Professor Ramchandra
Rao of the Mathematics Department for the first three years.
The dual degree programme was introduced during Professor
Ramchandra Raos tenure. He was the main person behind the
planning of the programme. Professor Rao was followed by
Professor Bose who was a very meticulous person and did everything very sincerely and carefully. As Dean of r & d, we had
Professor Narayanamurthy followed by Professor P.K. Rao. I
have already described Professor Narayanamurthys abilities to
you earlier. As Dean of Resources Development, we had Pro-
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fessor Phatak and then Professor Narayanamurthy. As Dean of

Student Affairs, we had Professor G.K. Sharma, who had almost finished his term when I joined, followed by Professor Dipan Ghosh for three years and then Professor Shevgaonkar.
I still recall the conversation I had with Professor Ghosh when
I requested him to take over as the Dean of Student Affairs.
Ill accept, he said,but on one condition. I was a little surprised. Well, what is it? I asked. He replied,I believe that
we must take very strong steps to see that there is no ragging.
If you do not feel that way or if you feel we should be soft on
that issue, we may not be in tune. I told him,I entirely agree
with you. You can take it from me that I fully support your
view. Having stayed in a hostel in my undergraduate years, I
had seen the ill-effects of ragging and I had heard all the arguments for and against it. No one supports ragging today, but
there are many who say we shouldnt make too much of an issue about it. They argue that there are different types of ragging. Most of the time, it is of the friendly type in which the
senior just wants to come to know the first year student better. The senior might make a little fun of the first year, perhaps
ask him or her to sing a song or tell a joke, something like that.
That is what ragging is all about. This is all that happens ninety nine times out of hundred. We have heard those arguments
on innumerable occasions. The fact remains however, that in
the atmosphere in a hostel, particularly in the evening, there
will always be an occasional incident in which the ragging becomes physical in nature. One cannot tolerate physical ragging
under any circumstance. It scars the mind of the person who is
ragged and causes permanent damage. It is to avoid this one incident in a hundred that one has to be very strict and ban ragging in any form. A total ban is always resented by the seniors,
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but there is no point in trying to explain things to them. They

will themselves appreciate the steps you have taken to stop ragging when they grow older. It is as simple as that.
rm: So you were already in consonance with Professor Ghoshs
view?
sps: Yes, absolutely. It was in his time that we started the practice
of putting up notices against ragging in all hostels. If my memory serves me right, we even wrote individual letters on the subject to each parent. All the rules were implemented strictly and
we were free from the ill effects of ragging. I recalled this story
because Professor Ghoshs name came up. He was without doubt
an excellent Dean. He was basically sympathetic to students and
knew how to deal with their problems and yet he could be very
firm when necessary. With more than three thousand students on
the campus, you can be sure that there are problems all the time,
but he had his way of doing things and doing them well.
As Dean of Planning, I had Professor Nagaraj at the beginning and then Professor Narayankhedkar. Now Professor
Narayankhedkar is from Mechanical Engineering. His predecessors had all been from the Civil Engineering Department
and consequently, he had some misgivings about taking over.
I told him not to worry about that aspect.You probably have
all the civil engineering knowledge needed, I said.The Dean
of Plannings real job is to monitor and control all the jobs of
high value that we give out and see that our money is used well.
Many of the controls which he introduced during his tenure
were very effective. Whatever you do, it is difficult and timeconsuming, and is probably the hardest of all the Deans jobs. In
my view, Professor Narayankhedkar was outstanding.
98
So I come back to repeating what I said earlier. If I achieved anything during my five years, it was because I had an excellent team,
a team that worked. That can happen if you know each other
well. At times it may happen that you disagree with what one of
them has done, but you dont say Why did you do that? You
take it in your stride. Then your colleagues work with confidence
and in an overall sense, things move in the proper direction. I
thought I would mention this aspect because it is important for
the growth of the Institute that we work as teams and that we
draw on the strength of the faculty.
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DI R E C T OR S OF T H E O T H E R IITs
rm: I would like to move on now to your experiences as a Director when it came to dealing with the Directors of the other iits.
I believe this interaction is of central importance. Could you expand on that aspect?
sps: Let me first mention the persons who were the directors
of the other iits. Professor Raju was the Director of iit Delhi. He and I were selected at the same time, so his term more
or less coincided with mine. At iit Kanpur, Professor Malhotra
was the Director and he was succeeded by Professor Padmanabhan. They were previously from Delhi and Madras and I knew
them from earlier times. It was the same story at iit Kharagpur.
We had Professor Chopra as the Director and he was followed
by Professor Amitabh Ghosh. I knew Professor Chopra from his
iit Delhi days because he and I both worked in the area of Solar
Energy and I knew Professor Ghosh even better because he was
a Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at iit
Kanpur. At iit Madras, Professor Swamy was the Director and
he was followed by Professor Natarajan, whom I knew rather
well because he was from the Mechanical Engineering Department and worked in the area of Thermal Sciences. And finally at
iit Guwahati, we had Professor Buragohain who was an alumnus of iit Bombay. He had obtained all his degrees in Civil Engineering from here and I had known him almost from the time
I joined the Institute. These links do help.
The iit Directors meet quite frequently, perhaps five or six
times in a year at one of the iits. The reason for this is that
there are many issues of common interest. There is a Directors
100
Secretariat at iit Delhi and that Secretariat prepares the agenda for the Directors meetings and handles the paper work. So if
you want an item to be taken up, you send it there. It is collated
along with the other items and that forms the formal agenda for
the next meeting. Of course, many things are also discussed informally at the Directors meetings.
rm: It is a separate office, is it? The Secretariat?
sps: Yes, it is a separate office and it is located in Delhi because
the Ministry is there. Many of the decisions have to be ultimately conveyed to the Ministry. Interestingly enough, the body comprising the iit Directors is not mentioned in the Statutes or in
the iit Act. It has simply evolved over time as a necessity. It
plays an important link role because if you want to implement
anything which is common to all the iits, you need to discuss
it with the Directors. They in turn, take it back to their respective organizations for discussion. For example, I mentioned the
issue of raising the tuition fees at the iits. This was an issue of
common concern and was discussed in all the iits. However, the
finer elements of that issue were finalized in the Directors meeting and the draft of the agenda item to be considered by the iit
Council was prepared in the Directors Secretariat.
There are many other examples. For instance, issues concerning
the Joint Entrance Examination (j ee) come up for consideration
regularly. There is a separate board for the purpose consisting
of the jee Chairmen from each iit and the Directors. However, sometimes the Directors find it necessary to discuss the
issues on their own as well. The same is true for the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (g ate). Some other issues are
the funding pattern, the current years budget, new activities
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at the iits, the promotion scheme for non-academic staff, etc.

The promotion scheme for non-academic staff has always been
a difficult issue and will probably never get fully resolved. This
is so because it is a complex scheme introduced many years ago
and has a long history. It lapses after every pay commission report, has to be renegotiated with the unions and reintroduced.
At that time because of the new salary scales, some changes occur which the Ministry wants, which we want and which the
unions want. And you know when we make changes in a promotion scheme, invariably it helps somebody more and somebody
less and does not help some people all that much. Let me give
you an example. At a particular iit, we have a group of employees, say Mechanics Grade A. For some reasons connected with
their past history, it so happens that when they are put into the
framework of the new scales or fitted into the revised promotion scheme, you find that they have to be given a higher scale
then they would otherwise be entitled to. Well, the particular
iit gives the higher scale. When they give it to this group, this
fact becomes known in all the iits. The corresponding group
at your iit then comes to you and says, Sir, we have come to
know that so-and-so persons at that iit have been given a scale
which is better than ours. If they can get it, why not us? This
is an injustice. Now, you can tell them what you like. You can
explain that each iit is different and independent, that the issues involved are slightly different, and so on. It does not work.
As far as they are concerned the natural thing to do is to give
them the higher scale too. (r m: Its the natural thing!) They get
very emotional about it and before you know it, the Non-Academic Staff Association (n asa) takes it up. The Associations
are in touch with each other. So the moment one iit loosens its
guard a little or gives some concession under pressure thinking
that that will quieten things a little and that it would be good for
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overall peace and harmony, the facts become known at the other iits and they are under pressure to do some thing. So these
are the types of issues which get discussed amongst the iit Directors. It is very important to ensure that we do not do some
thing on our own which will have repercussions in the other Institutes. The more you do things on your own for issues which
matter across iits, the more problems you create for the other iits and for yourself in the long run. I think during my tenure, we had a set of Directors who at least agreed on the nature
of the problem. Professor Chopra was the senior most amongst
us and he was a blunt person. Whenever there was some issue
of a promotion for a group of staff or a salary scale or an interpretation of a rule, he used to say, Let us thrash this out. This is
what iit Delhi has done so far, this is what Kharagpur has done,
and so on. What are we agreed on now. I am under pressure to
take this kind of decision at Kharagpur. You will also be under
pressure tomorrow. So let us agree on a common approach; an
approach which is just towards our employees and yet not unduly lenient. In any case let us not do any thing quietly at our iit
thinking that it will buy us peace. That is an illusion. We never
buy peace that way. I thought his arguments made a lot of sense
and in many instances, particularly involving non-academic staff,
I admired his wisdom. Not that he always got his way on every issue at the Directors meetings. (r m: I see.) After careful discussion, we would arrive at a decision and we would agree to stick to
that decision. Professor Raju was another person who believed
in this procedure totally and I think by and large, we found that
it helped us a lot.
This does not mean that all our problems with the non-academic staff got resolved. That is just not possible. You would have
seen that from time to time the staff would indulge in agitations
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and slogan shouting. It is the bread and butter of unions. They

have to show their strength. In iit Bombay, we have been fortunate. The office bearers of our unions have generally been good
persons. Both the Registrar and I knew them well and they were
aware that they could walk in and see us any time. Basically it
is important that you are on talking terms with them and that
you are accessible to them. They must know that they are being heard and that you are concerned about their welfare. That
you may not be able to do everything that they desire is another
matter. As a result, we never had any extreme situations during
my tenure, like at iit Delhi and iit Madras where it was not uncommon for the staff to be quite rough in their behaviour.
To come back to the Directors meetings, I think they play a
very important role in the running and the growth of the Institutes. This is particularly true if the Directors work together
on issues of common concern. I have described some of them.
That apart, there are so many things which we do on our own
at each iit, like starting new academic programmes, establishing a new school, or beginning some initiative with respect to
our alumni. The Directors meeting is a good forum for informing the other Directors of these developments. In turn, it is
a good forum for coming to know of corresponding developments at other iits.
Now let me take up one more issue which came up in my period. This was the issue of salary scales for the faculty. It came up
because the report of the Fifth Pay Commission was to be implemented. For the iits, iims and other autonomous organizations, the Ministry appoints a separate committee to decide the
scales to be given to the faculty in the light of the recommendations of the pay commission.
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rm: Was Professor Indiresan the Chairman of the Committee?

sps: Yes, he was either the chairman or a member of the Committee appointed for the purpose. Generally, the pressure
brought to bear on the iits is that they should accept the same
scales as are to be given in the Central Universities. It is not
easy to convince the Committee that something different,
even slightly different, should be given to the iit faculty. I remember making a strong plea when they visited iit Bombay. I
said,In which institute or university in India do you find that
the faculty members in engineering all have a Ph.D and in the
sciences, they have a Ph.D and a few years of post-doctoral experience? In addition, the iits insist on a very good academic record. If you can find any other university where the faculty
members have qualifications identical to our faculty, then we
would not mind getting the same scales. I remember Professor Indiresan saying, I agree with you, but it is very difficult to
make a case for separate scales. I repeated my arguments and
added, It is very hard for a Director to carry the faculty with
him if small things like this are not done. The financial implications are negligible. You know we are not asking for something
unreasonable. All we are saying is that the scales at the level of
Assistant Professor, Associate Professor and Professor should
be slightly better than those offered in the university system, a
few more increments perhaps. The end result was that the iit
faculty did get a better scale (r m: A vastly improved scale!) and
that was useful. The Faculty Forum certainly felt that the efforts which they had put in and which had been backed by the
Directors had paid off.
r m: So from your description, it seems as if there has always
been a healthy competition between the iits. Yet while they are
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competing, they are also cooperating with each other on issues

of common concern and that is part of the reason for the success of the iits.
sps: Yes, you have put it well. The cooperation and coordination
on certain issues is vital. At the same time, there must be a feeling
of competition. If Kharagpur can have a School of Management,
why cant we? If iit Kanpur can get a donation of a few million
dollars from an alumnus, why cant we?
rm: But no undercutting?
sps: No, certainly no undercutting. We welcome the new initiatives which other iits undertake and they welcome the new
things we do.
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CH A I R M E N OF T H E B OA R D OF G OV E R N OR S
rm: Perhaps we could now move on. Another group of functionaries with whom the Director has to work with are the Chairmen of the Board of Governors. They can be the guiding lights
for the course that an Institute takes. In your memory were there
any specific Chairmen of our Board and were there any specific visions that they had which you felt were important in guiding the Institute?
sps: It will be better if I restrict myself to the two persons who
were Chairmen during my tenure because I came to know them
well. The first was Dr. Chidambaram who was the Director of
ba rc and then the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. I was acquainted with him even before I became the Director because I had met him a few times in barc and elsewhere.
He made his approach clear to me straight away at the beginning. You have a full-time job and I have a full-time job, he
said. As Chairman of the Board, I claim no special knowledge
of the iits, excepting that I know the system, and I know you
and many others at the Institute. So I am going to defer to you
on all routine matters in which proper administrative procedures have been followed. Ill never question your decisions. If
you say this paper is to be signed by the Chairman, I will sign it.
I am not going to even read through those papers. There is no
question of that. The issues where the Board or I come in are
the larger issues, policy matters, issues which have long range
implications. Dr. Chidambaram kept to those guidelines right
through and that was very helpful. I remember at the first or second meeting of the bog after I became the Director, there was
some routine item put up for the Boards approval. Dr. Chidam-
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baram said, Why does this item come to the Board at all. All we
do is to look at it and say okay. This has been the practice all
these years, I said I cannot change it overnight. His response
was No, this has to change. He made it clear that routine items
like approval for people going abroad for conferences and so on
should not have to wait for a Board meeting. Such papers should
be approved by the Director with the authority of the Board. At
every Board meeting, there should be an agenda item informing
the Board of all such decisions taken by the Director. There may
also be some important but routine items like reports of selection committees which by their nature require the approval of
the Board. In that case, he made it clear that he would approve
them as the Chairman and that they should be brought to the
formal attention of the Board later.
rm: This is very enlightening.
sps: This practice had been adopted to some extent earlier. But
now suddenly, a whole lot of papers did not have to wait for a
Board meeting and the Boards approval. The Chairman asked
us to prepare an item for the next meeting listing all such routine items and requesting the Board to delegate the authority to
the Chairman or the Director. This was done and duly adopted.
So this was Dr. Chidambarams practical way of handling matters. Looking back, I would say his motto was Lets get on with
the business. The system has to function.
rm: It has to be based on trust.
sps: Yes, I agree. He was also keen to reduce paper work. You
know, Rohit, paper work will be our bane. Since we are on that
subject, let me give you another example. It turns out that the
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minutes of our Board meetings were written by hand. This is

apparently an old accepted practice and had been adopted in
our Institute from its beginning. I came to know this accidentally when I once asked for the minutes of the first meeting of
the Board. I was curious to know the items on the agenda then
and to my surprise saw the minutes written by hand in a register. There were many thick registers containing the minutes of
all meetings, all written by hand in a painstaking manner. The
minutes were written neatly, so we must have had someone in
the administration with a neat hand. In my mind, I could picture that person writing the words slowly and then someone else
reading them out to make sure there were no mistakes. Then at
the next meeting of the Board, though the minutes had already
been typed and circulated, the written version would be placed
before the Chairman and he would sign below it in the register. When this happened at our first meeting, Dr. Chidambaram said, What am I signing? I think the Registrar told him
that those were the minutes of the previous meeting. To this, Dr.
Chidambaram said,But you had sent me the minutes earlier, a
typed version which I had seen and approved. The Registrar
then explained the process in which finally they were written
by hand in a register. Dr. Chidambaram said,I am all for tradition, but somehow I feel that in todays world, this is an anachronism. We should not have somebody sitting down and writing
out the minutes. I suggest we dispense with this practice. Does
it need the Boards approval? I think someone present said that
it would probably be desirable to have the Boards assent. The
Chairman said, Fine. Put this down as an item considered at todays meeting with the approval of the Chairman and record in
the minutes that the Board decided that henceforth a typed output of the minutes would be adequate. And so from that day onwards, that is what is happening!
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rm: So much more efficient.

sps: Exactly. Apart from streamlining routine processes, Dr.
Chidambarams advice on policy matters was invaluable. What
is also important is that he was very accessible. I could speak to
him on the phone at any time. In this way, I could inform him
about some tricky matter and tell him what we planned to do. I
would say, I am informing you about what we are doing because
there may be a discussion on this matter later or you may get
some feedback on it. I think the Institute was very fortunate to
have a person of Dr. Chidambarams stature as Chairman.
Dr. Chidambaram was succeeded by Professor M.G.K. Menon.
Quite frankly, I was a little worried when I came to know that
Professor Menon was going to become the Chairman of our
Board. He was a famous man. He had been a Minister in the
Central Government, a Member of Parliament and prior to that
a Secretary to the Government of India. But he put me at ease
in the first meeting which we had over lunch in Delhi soon after
he took over. Fortunately I knew him a little. I had met him a
few times at meetings of the Solar Energy Society of India with
which he was associated. I had also met him on the occasion of
receiving the Bhatnagar award. Right at the beginning, he made
it clear that he expected me to take care of all routine things by
following properly laid down procedures. The Board was to be
kept informed. Professor Menon was a real visionary. He was a
great supporter of the iit system and foresaw an important role
for the iits in the growth of the nation. He was a store house of
knowledge on the development of science and technology. Thus
when an item came up for discussion at the Board meetings, he
invariably prefaced his remarks with a little bit about the history of the subject in the Indian context. He would always tell me
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to have just two or three important items on the agenda, policy

items involving the setting up of a new school or centre, starting a new academic programme, interaction with alumni, something like that. Such items excited him and he was keen to know
the details and to make suggestions. Generally, he would request
the faculty member from the Institute directly involved with the
subject to make a presentation. The other items were relatively mundane in nature or for the information of the Board. He
would dispose of these items in a few minutes.
rm: Even on the national scene, Professor Menon has the same
reputation.
sps: Yes, he does. I said a few moments ago that he was very
supportive of the measures we took. I must add that he was also very appreciative of the things we did and often said so. It always felt nice to receive his appreciation because he was older
than us and was so widely respected. When I look back at the
three years I worked under him, I feel that I was extremely fortunate to have received his guidance. Professor Menons term as
Chairman continued for three more years after I left. Thus, Professor Misra was also lucky to have worked with him.
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OF F ICI A L S I N T H E M I N I S T RY OF H R D
rm: In the course of your duties as Director, there would have

been many officials whom you had to deal with and establish a
rapport. For example were there any persons in the Ministry of
Human Resource Development whom you recall who were very
supportive of iit Bombays cause?
sps: In the Ministry, the highest ranked official is the Secretary.
He is almost always from the ias. In my five years, there were
three secretaries, Mr. Giri, Mr. Dasgupta and Mr. Kaw. Mr. Giri
and Mr. Kaw were there at the beginning and end of my tenure
for relatively short periods, whereas Mr. Dasgupta was the Secretary for about four out of my five years. Mr. Dasgupta was a
very nice soft-spoken person from the Maharashtra cadre. He
was genuinely interested in the iits and tried to help us in every
way possible. But you know Rohit, iits are a very small part of
the whole education scene and since there are no serious problems at the iits, the Secretary to the Ministry has very little
time for you. If you ever visit the Ministry in Shastri Bhavan, you
will understand why this is so. If I may say so, mhrd is a chaotic place. Throughout the working day, there are people of all
shades streaming in and out to see the Minister, the Minister of
State or officials of the Ministry. Apart from the Secretary, there
are officials like the Additional Secretary, Joint Secretary, Financial Adviser, Educational Adviser, Joint Educational Adviser and
so on. The people who come to see these officials have problems that need attention. In many cases, they have sent written requests and have not received any replies. In some cases,
the problems are genuine in nature and in some cases not so. Be
that as it may, the net result is that the top officials have very lit-
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tle time to discuss any thing in depth. They are constantly involved with day-to-day crises. If you have no problems involving
violence or strikes, no problems with the unions, no court cases,
etc and if your educational calendar is moving on schedule (admissions, examinations, results all on time), then they are happy. In India, these are their immediate concerns today. The long
range issues are kept on the back burner for as long as possible.
And then, as I have mentioned earlier, the officials keep changing. Next to the Secretary, the person whom we have to contact
quite a lot is the Financial Adviser. During my tenure, there were
four Financial Advisers in the Ministry, one after another, all for
relatively short periods.
The only official who was in mhrd right through my tenure, was
Dr. Awale. He was the Joint Educational Adviser dealing directly
with the iits. He was also the Secretary of the iit Council. Dr.
Awale was one person who was accessible and in most cases, he
knew the background of the problem you were discussing. One
could also speak to him on the phone at any time and this was
very helpful. In general, he was supportive of the iit system, not
iit Bombay alone but the system in general. It was good to have
some one like him there, somebody who knew the system and
wanted to help it to the extent that he could.
rm: Well, we have had a treasure chest of recollections from you
on your five very eventful years as the Director.
sps: Yes, five reasonably eventful years. I may have meandered
occasionally during our conversation, but I believe I have conveyed the essence of what was achieved. Of course, I must remind you, Rohit, that while initiating all these new activities,
one has to keep the Institute running smoothly on a day-to-day
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basis. This is a difficult and time-consuming task in itself and I

will not describe it in any detail. It will suffice to say that there
are always routine meetings to be conducted, routine papers to
be signed and some problems or the other which require a fair
amount of fire-fighting skills. You have to do all this work systematically and regularly and not let it pile up. The new initiatives you undertake are over and above all this regular work.
rm: Thank you very much. In the next part, we will move on to
a slightly more philosophical note, your reflections on various issues pertaining to iit Bombay.
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C HAP T E R II
33
REFLECTIONS
ON TE ACHING A N D R ESE A RCH
rm: So we now come to the segment of our conversation where

I would like you to take a somewhat removed view of the recollections that you have spoken about and offer your opinions on
some of the activities you had undertaken; your views on some
of the aspects of iits functioning.
First of all, I would like to start on a personal note and ask you
about your teaching and research. Your teaching has always been
renowned for its clarity and lucidity. I would like to know how
your teaching style has evolved over the years and what sort of
things have contributed to that evolution?
sps: Let me start by saying that right from the beginning, I have
enjoyed teaching and I continue to do so over all these years. If
you enjoy something, that is the first step towards doing it well.
If you do not enjoy an activity and do it as a sort of burden, you
are never going to do well at it. (r m: Right.) So I repeat, I wanted to be a teacher and I have enjoyed being one. Let me take the
example of the undergraduate course in Heat Transfer which I
taught for the first time in 1966. I still teach parts of it occasionally. In 1966, there was no prescribed textbook for the course.
In the previous year, Professor Stepanchuk, who had come as
an expert under the agreement for assistance with the ussr ,
had taught the course. While teaching, he had followed a book
written by a Russian author. The book contained a lot of useful information, but in my view was not suitable as a textbook.
As it happened, there were a few books on this subject in our library. Most of them were written by American authors and in
fact, I had used one of them partly while studying at mit. So I
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got these books issued and made my first set of lecture notes
from these books. Since I taught the course for many years, I
modified my notes every year and gradually they acquired coherence and continuity. My teaching style also evolved through
the years. At first, I used only the black board and chalk and
today also for a course which involves a fair amount of analysis, I would use essentially the same technique. I feel that this
is the most effective way of communicating with a class up to
a strength of about 60 students. (r m: Yes.) I would prefer the
class strength to be around 30 or 40, but even up to 60, a big
black board with chalks of different colours is really what you
need. You have to use the board well, start at one end at the top
and then move down and across from one panel to the next.
The need to take recourse to other techniques arises when you
have to show a complicated sketch or picture or you have to illustrate a process that shows changes occurring with time. In
that case, it is best to use images or movie clips projected from a
computer or another device. It is unwise to use power point presentations completely for delivering lectures in a course. This is
particularly true when the course involves analysis and requires
derivations. You have to remember that it is not just information that you are conveying, but a thought process. In order to
do that effectively, you have to proceed line by line on the board
rather than just project the matter on a screen. So it may seem
old fashioned but the black board and the chalk perhaps coupled with some projections is probably the most effective way
to teach a subject involving mathematical derivations and analysis. After teaching the course on Heat Transfer for three years,
I felt I should write a textbook on it and I began to do so in
1968. (r m: That was very early.) At that time, there was no book
on the subject written by an Indian author. I decided to give it a
try. I finished writing the book in 1969 and it was published by
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Orient Longmans in 1970. When I look at it now, quite frankly

I hide it. It is written in a very amateurish way. But it was cheap
and began to be used as a textbook.
rm: That may be the better judgement!
sps: Yes, maybe. Of course, I have revised it a few times and improved it quite a bit. It is in its fourth edition now and is used in
many colleges and universities in the country. The point which
I want to make is that when you write a book, you are forced to
clarify every aspect of the subject in your mind. You may get away
in the class. If you have good oral communication skills, then occasionally you can even delude a class of sixty students into thinking that you know what you are talking about. But it is not so easy
when you are writing. A written page is merciless. If you have not
understood something, if your logic is not right, you cannot put
things down on paper. First you have to study the topic from various sources, discuss it with your colleagues and clarify everything
in your own mind. Only then can you put things down properly
on paper. There is nothing like writing a book to clarify your basics about what you think to start with is a relatively simple subject. Actually teaching an undergraduate course (if you want to
really understand it) is time consuming and challenging. In iit,
it becomes even more challenging because many of the students
are excellent. In the first year in which one teaches a course, one
finds students asking a lot of questions to which one does not
know the answers. That is bound to be the case. But even in later years, when one thinks that one has encountered all the questions possible and one knows the type of queries to expect, even
then it is not unusual to have a student come up with a question that can make you think. And that is the pleasure of being
at an iit; the students do not accept what you are saying. There
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is always somebody ready with some unusual question. Very often that student will not ask the question in the class. After the
period is over, he or she will meet you and say, Sir, you made this
statement. But I dont quite follow you or agree with you. Under
certain circumstances, what you say would not hold. And the
person would go on to describe the situation for which my derivation might not hold. In such cases, my response was to say that
I would think over the query and that the student should meet
me the next day. Then on the next day, I would clarify whether I
was right or wrong, or whether the student had found a situation
which was an exception. Whatever it is, at the end, having clarified the situation, the student is happy, you are happy and more
importantly you now see the larger ramifications of the problem
you were presenting in the class.
rm: So the teacher remains a student at heart?
sps: In a manner of speaking, yes. That kind of attitude helps
and that is what makes teaching exciting and challenging, particularly when you have good students. Let me say one more
thing. You have to take your teaching duties seriously. You cannot say I know this topic and just walk into a class to teach it.
Before every lecture, whatever be the topic and however many
times you may have taught it, you need to be alone for a few
minutes and plan out what you will cover during the hour. You
need to feel a little nervous. (r m: Hmm.) You need to ask yourself whether you are proceeding at the right pace, whether you
need to solve a particular numerical problem or give it to the
class to solve. You must walk into the class with your mind focused on the challenge of doing well and with the attitude that
you want to do well. Once that is the case, than teaching is fun.
Fortunately, with me, it has always been that way.
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So far, I have only mentioned the undergraduate course on Heat

Transfer. Apart from that course, I also taught the undergraduate course on Thermodynamics in the seventies for many years
and enjoyed teaching it even more because it is in my view a
very beautiful subject with philosophical implications. Then I
moved on to a course on Solar Energy. That was a new subject
with hardly a book written on it. Once again I went through the
same process I had adopted while teaching Heat Transfer and after about five years, I wrote my own book on the subject. While
writing this book, I had to consult the research literature quite
a lot. It was first published in 1984 by Tata McGraw-Hill and is
now in its third edition.
rm: I think your thoughts on teaching have echoed mine almost
to a word. I have also found that the greatest danger is complacency. One cannot afford to get complacent before a lecture. As
you say, you have to have that edge of nervousness and prepare
for it. Could we move on now to your research, which is also
very well commended? That commendation is of course embodied in the Bhatnagar award that you received in 1983. What was
the body of work that resulted in the Bhatnagar award and what
was the role played by the academic environment at iit Bombay which perhaps nurtured your research?
sps: The work which I did in Heat Transfer as well as Solar
Energy formed part of the package which was considered for
the Bhatnagar award. To start with, I did some basic work in
Heat Transfer in the area of mixed convection. Mixed convection situations arise in practice when the effects of both forced
and free convection are important. These situations had not
been studied much till the late sixties. My research in this area was both experimental and analytical and it received good
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attention. I worked also on the effects of free stream turbulence on forced convective heat transfer across tubes and on
natural convection heat transfer from fin arrays. Fins are used
extensively in practice for enhancing heat transfer in natural
convection. We studied different configurations with different
orientations and developed correlations useful for design purposes. In all these areas, I had a long term plan of action and
executed it from one year to the next through a series of Ph.D
and M.Tech students. So in any year, I generally had one student
working with me in each of these areas. Then another area of interest was the measurement of thermodynamic and transport
properties of various substances and the prediction of properties of mixtures. In this connection, you will recall that earlier I had mentioned the work on thermal conductivity of liquid
mixtures. I was also interested in the measurement of thermal
conductivity of insulations and the study of the heat transfer
process within fibrous insulations. We built the standard guarded hot plate apparatus for making this measurement and interacted quite a bit with various industries. All the above work was
considered for the Bhatnagar award. Finally I should mention
some important research done later. This was our experimental work on forced convection laminar flow inside tubes having
twisted tape inserts and our work on condensation of refrigerants on low finned tubes. We measured the heat transfer coefficients for a number of refrigerants and a variety of tubes and
came up with a comprehensive correlation with a physical basis
valid for a number of fluids.
The work on Solar Energy started later and was concerned
with thermal applications. Most of it was done with the help of
M.Tech students and was developmental in nature. One of the
major projects undertaken was to build a half ton capacity solar
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cold storage unit. We cooled a room about 15 sq. metres in floor

area to a temperature of 5 to 8 degrees Celsius with the help of
an absorption refrigeration system which had ammonia as the
working fluid. The heat energy required for the absorption system was supplied by a solar flat-plate collector system consisting of 48 collectors on the roof of the cold storage unit. The
collectors had booster mirrors and could heat water to a temperature of 90 degrees. We completed some other projects as
well, but this was the project which attracted attention because
the solar cold storage unit was one of the first built fully in India. The system worked reasonably well, but the collector area
required for 24 hour operation was excessive and consequently
the unit was not economically viable. This work was also considered for the Bhatnagar award.
r m: And the environment at iit Bombay? Do you think it
played any special role towards the quality of the research that
you did?
sps: I think the environment was important from two aspects.
First of all, after the first three or four years, by 1968 or so, I
started to get good Ph.D and M.Tech students to work with me.
Good students are critical for doing research. Indeed, you attract them once the word goes around that you are sincere about
guiding students and that you have interesting problems to work
on. One often hears faculty members complaining that they do
not get students for doing research and those that come are not
up to the mark. While this may be true once in a while in some
departments, the fact is good students will want to work with
you once they know that you are a serious research worker. I was
very fortunate to have excellent students, at the B.Tech, M.Tech
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and Ph.D level, all through my research career. Almost without

exception, they have done well later in life. In fact, many of them
are still in touch with me.
I was also fortunate to be associated with some fine colleagues
in the Thermal Engineering Group of the Mechanical Engineering Department. I have already mentioned a few of them, Professor Parulekar, Professor Jaganmohan, Professor Jagadish and
Professor Gaitonde, earlier. Apart from them, we had Professor
Achutan, Professor Sharma, Professor (Mrs) Parikh, Professor
Narayankhedkar and others. With all of them, I had close interaction and in many instances, we co-supervised students. Because
of the closeness, there were no barriers between our laboratories
for borrowing or lending and I think this was very beneficial.
rm: Do you have joint publications with them?
sps: Oh yes, of course! We had many joint publications. I think
about half my papers in journals and at conferences were written jointly with my colleagues and almost all my papers had a
student as co-author.
rm: When you look back on these years as a faculty member of
the Mechanical Engineering Department, which aspect of your
work, do you think, gave you the most satisfaction?
sps: As a faculty member, the two main elements of your work
are teaching and research. It would be difficult for me to choose
between the two. But if had to, I suppose I would say that teaching gave me more satisfaction. This was particularly so because I
wrote books. That is my individual reaction.
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rm: And as the Director? While you were Director, which elements of the job gave you the most satisfaction?
sps: Well, I suppose the initiatives that we took with respect to
our academic programmes and the establishment of the schools
of management and information technology gave me the most
satisfaction. Next to that would come the recognition of individuals for what they had done for the Institute, recognition given through the best teachers awards, the distinguished alumnus
awards and the distinguished service awards.
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AT T H E I N S T I T U T IONA L L E V E L
rm: Moving from the personal to the institutional level, I would

like to ask you a few questions about the way in which you view
the institution, iit Bombay. First of all, are there some particular ways in which iit Bombay has been able to carve out an identity distinct from the other iits? Can we claim to have certain
features of our operation which are really quite different?
sps: This is an interesting question. The six iits have so many
things in common that very often we do not recognize that in
some ways they are also different. After all, geographically they
are in different parts of the country. You cannot get away from
that fact. The iit in Delhi is in the north, and so is Kanpur. On
the other hand, Kharagpur is in the east, Guwahati in the northeast and Madras in the south. We are in the west. Thus, the iits
in Delhi and Kanpur have a kind of northern outlook, while
Kharagpur has a Bengali or an eastern outlook. The iit in Chennai is dominated by the four major southern states. I do not want
any one to think that these are disparaging remarks. That is not
my intention. These are simply statements of the ground reality.
In contrast, the city of Mumbai has always been a cosmopolitan
city and that is reflected in our outlook and the nature of the faculty here. I feel that this factor distinguishes iit Bombay from
the other iits and has worked to our advantage.
The other thing which I have noticed from my visits to the other
iits is that there is less of a hierarchical feeling amongst the faculty at iit Bombay than say at iit Delhi or Madras or Kharagpur. Kanpur perhaps is somewhat different considering the way
it was started, but certainly Kharagpur, Delhi and Madras have
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a very hierarchical outlook. There the Head of a Department

is somebody; a Professor is somebody. Associate and Assistant
Professors are persons who are a shade below and are treated
accordingly. These kinds of distinctions do not influence us in
Mumbai, certainly not to the same extent. Once a person joins
here as a faculty member, we do not look upon him or her as an
Assistant Professor or an Associate Professor or as a Professor
and deal accordingly. We look upon the person first as a faculty member, who is our intellectual equal and has impressive academic attainments.
r m: Indeed, in relation to what you said, I remember that in
the early nineties even at iit Bombay it was the practice to refer to Professors as Professor so-and-so and Assistant Professors
as Doctor so-and-so. I think it was in your term that a resolution
was adopted at an Institute Faculty Meeting to refer to all faculty members uniformly as Professors.
sps: That is correct. We discussed it at a faculty meeting when I
was in the chair. I believe my views on the subject were clear and
we adopted a resolution which reflects the spirit of what I have
been saying earlier.
rm: If we look back on iit Bombays growth and development
over fifty years, would you be able to identify a certain spell of a
few years which we could say was the golden period in iit s history so far?
sps: I dont think it would be correct to use a phrase like a golden period just now. We are approaching our Golden Jubilee year,
but that does not mean we have had a golden period or that we
in the midst of one. What I would say is the following. As an in-
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stitution moves along, it goes through ups and downs. Right now,
we are on an up. iits are being looked up to, the brand produced
by us is being saluted, and the newspapers are full of news about
us. People respect an iit for its academics, for its research, for
its development and for its interactions with industry. They are
proud of our alumni. So this is very much a period of an up. Internally also, there is a sense of satisfaction because this is the
highest we have gone up in public esteem so far. But I would hesitate to say that this is a golden period. I think we can do better,
probably much better.
rm: Time will tell.
sps: Yes, that is a good way to put it. Time will tell. Perhaps, fifty
years down the line, people might call this a golden period.
rm: Perhaps we could move on now to the ways in which the academic flavour of iit Bombay has evolved over the years, especially with the additions to its early core engineering strength.
We had the traditional engineering departments like Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering, etc, and the science departments in place fairly early on. But then, we started to see the
introduction of new centres and interdisciplinary programmes,
such as the Industrial Design Centre, the Biomedical Engineering programme, the Biotechnology programme and others not
traditionally associated with engineering. In the course of the
introduction of these new disciplines, would you be able to remember the general reaction of your faculty colleagues in the
Institute?
sps: The Industrial Design Centre (i dc) was the first addition
in 1969 or thereabouts. What I remember is that the building
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opposite Mechanical Engineering in the corridor was originally built to be an Annexe for the Mechanical Engineering Department. Suddenly one day in 1969 when it was ready for occupation,
we were told that it would not be available for Mechanical Engineering and that instead a new centre was to come there. Some
of us who had been allocated lab space in the Annexe were a little
upset, but there was nothing we could do about it.
There was really no consultation or discussion with the faculty
about starting a new activity like Industrial Design in the iit.
Not that there would have been any opposition to such an endeavour. By and large, my experience has been that faculty colleagues
have not had much to say about the start of an activity outside
their department. Indeed, their thoughts are mostly centred
around the working of their department. Even today, it is much
the same. If something new is to happen within a department,
the immediate reaction is How is it going to affect me? Will my
funds be affected? Will my lab space be reduced? Will my teaching load increase? That is the way faculty members look upon
the introduction of anything new. So if you start a new centre like
idc, which does not affect them directly, I do not think there are
any strong feelings either for or against such initiatives.
The start of the interdisciplinary programmes, one by one, in
the late seventies and early eighties elicited a little more discussion because they had to be physically accommodated in
the existing departments. Also in some cases, like the Energy Systems Engineering programme, or the Corrosion Science
and Engineering programme, there were some commonalities
with existing courses. Thus in the Senate, some of the conservative members felt that there was no need to start these new
M.Tech programmes at all. Everything that was proposed could
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be done within the ambit of the existing departmental postgraduate programmes.

When the School of Management was proposed and the matter
was discussed in the Senate, there was again no real opposition.
However, an important and valid point made was Is it appropriate to have a School of Management within an Institute of
Technology? Quite a few cogent arguments were presented saying that we were diverting from our mandate. A few colleagues
did raise this issue. It was countered by those in favour by stating that the proposed school would lay emphasis on technology
management and production management. Also, unlike other
schools, it would admit only students with a background in engineering and science. Because of this, the courses would be focused in a particular direction and quantitative methods would
be given more importance.
To come back to the general tenor of your question, in general,
the faculty does not have much to say when new programmes or
activities are proposed, but in the Senate some members do raise
valid points which sometimes help in refining or modifying the
proposal in a worthwhile manner.
rm: The next thing I would like to touch upon is the role of Humanities and Social Sciences. You have always been reputed to
be very supportive of the subjects in this area. Perhaps you could
give us an overview of the activities in Humanities and Social
Sciences at the Institute and the shape that you think they could
take in the future.
sps: You are right, Rohit. I have always maintained that we need
a good programme in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The
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Department should not only play a strong role in the undergraduate curriculum, but have an active on-going programme
of research. This feeling comes partly from my background of
having been at mit. mit has very strong departments in economics, philosophy, linguistics, anthropology, literature and so
on. Having seen the role of these subjects in the undergraduate
curriculum there and having undergone an undergraduate programme in India in which there no subject in the humanities
and social sciences, I feel that I missed something.
I think I mentioned earlier that in the beginning, the Humanities and Social Sciences Department at iit Bombay was seen as
a kind of service department. There were only six faculty members, two for teaching English, two for philosophy, one for economics and one for teaching the Russian language. Basically
their job was to teach their subjects to about three hundred undergraduate students in the first and second years. I think they
repeated their lectures two or three times a week. This role was
considered appropriate for them till Professor Kelkar came in
1970. He took stock of the situation and it was during his four
years that the department was expanded to about 16 or 17 faculty members. Apart from teaching the core courses in the first
half of the undergraduate programme, they also started to teach
elective courses in the final year. Suddenly the department acquired a certain status and this has remained over the years.
The interesting thing to note is that in spite of the discouraging ambience, some of the early teachers in the h&ss Department were outstanding. I still remember Mrs. Swamidasan who
used to teach Philosophy. One would see her quite often sitting
down under the mango tree at the end of the corridor near the
Chemical Engineering Department and discussing something
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about her subject with one or two students whom she had met
on the way home. That image of her sitting down and explaining something very patiently remains etched in my mind. Later on I came to know her well because we were members of an
Institute committee. The teachers at that time were good dedicated people and they needed the boost they got during Professor Kelkars time. Subsequently the Department has not grown
much over the years. Today it runs a M.Phil programme in Planning and Development which is doing reasonably well and there
are a fair number of research scholars working for their Ph.D
degrees. Considering these activities and the potential for doing much more, the Department is relatively small. There are
only about three or four faculty members in each of the areas,
Economics, Sociology, Psychology, Philosophy and English. In
my view, these are sub-critical groups. I believe we need a larger department which interacts vigorously in research projects
with the other departments, schools and centres. In addition,
it may be worthwhile to separate a discipline like Economics
and create a separate Department of Economics. This view
has not been articulated before, but I believe it needs serious
consideration. The proposed department could have a faculty
strength of say ten to fifteen members, run a postgraduate degree programme of its own and focus its research in areas of interest to an institute of technology. Indeed, I feel that such a
department could play a very useful role in the overall growth
of the Institute.
rm: That is to say, along with the technology-oriented School of
Management?
sps: Yes, something like that. It would result in more interdisciplinary research in the Institute.
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rm: Perhaps we could move to a different topic, but remain as

it were on the social front. We have the new reservations policy for the obc class and its implementation in the iits and in
other centrally funded educational institutions. There has been
a great deal of controversy and discussion on the issue. I would
like to have your opinion on it in a small capsule. What prospects does it offer for iit Bombay? Should we see it as an opportunity or as a threat?
sps: Perhaps, I should comment first on the word new which
you used with regard to the reservations policy. It is not new.
The reservation policy has been with us for more than twenty years and we have implemented it for the sc and st category.
We are now being asked to implement it for obcs. Let me make
my position clear. An Institute like ours which is funded largely
by the nation, has a commitment towards bettering the lot of all
people in the country. I feel that the policy which we are being
asked to implement is something which we should do, not just
because we are being asked to do it but because it is our duty to
do so. I look upon it almost as a sacred duty. That is my personal view. Now whether we should phase out the implementation
over three years or implement the policy in one year is a matter
of detail. It is obviously linked to the availability of infrastructure, classrooms, laboratory facilities, hostel space and so on,
and availability of staff. But first and foremost, it is important
to accept this as a commitment and a duty, and not even use the
word threat. It is not a threat; rather it is a challenge. It is a matter of giving equal opportunities to all our citizens.
By the way, the students coming to the Institute under the obc
category will not be poor students in an academic sense. The information that I have is that even without any reservation for
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them today, a fair number get selected in the general category.

Now if we reserve a separate percentage of seats for them, a
slightly larger number will get admission. We may have to lower
the admission standard a little compared to the general category, but not to the same extent as we have to do for the sc and st
students. So we should not be under the illusion that we are going to admit inferior students because of the obc reservation.
As I said a moment ago, we have to look upon the issue as a challenge to our abilities and if we do that there is nothing that can
come in the way of its successful implementation.
rm: Well thank you for your very clear statement on that issue.
There is so much apprehension around these days that it helps
to have a clear vision of how we should treat it.
I would like to move on now to a discussion on the flavour of the
Institute as it stands today. When I say flavour, I mean academic
flavour. As we have seen, in the early days, iit Bombay was primarily a teaching Institute. However, over the years, it has been
trying to strengthen its research programmes and gain recognition as an Institute for research and development as well. To
what extent has that transition been made? How far do you think
we still have to go in establishing that kind of reputation?
sps: Oh, a long way! You see I am now bench marking myself
against the best institutions in the world, not against Indian institutions. I have to do that and if I do, then we have a long way
to go. Whatever the criteria we use, be it publications in good
journals, citations, awards or patents, our research output is still
way below that of world class universities. We are on the right
track; we are moving and faculty members recognize the importance of what we are aiming for. But it is going to be a long and
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slow haul. The important thing is that we need to monitor the

process continuously and not let it halt or slide back. That is
rather important. There is a danger that if you dont monitor
what is happening, you can get side-tracked. By monitoring, I
mean keeping a watch on parameters used for measuring performance in research. The Dean of r & d is the person who should
be overseeing this process and in particular, he should be noting
the bottlenecks which are impeding our forward movement and
trying to remove these bottlenecks. I think the hope of moving forward is best achieved by helping younger faculty because
they have the energy, they have the drive and they have the willpower. If we keep that in mind, we would probably do a whole
lot better.
rm: I was struck by what you just said. You said we are on the
right track, but it is going to be slow. Why do you feel that way?
sps: There are a number of reasons. First of all consider iit s
budget. It is a little over one hundred crores a year. By Indian
standards, that is a big budget on a per student basis. Out of that
amount, perhaps 20 or 25 per cent goes into buying equipment
and instruments. Now compare that with a world class institute
of a corresponding size, say Caltech. Caltech is a very rich institution. I visited it about ten years ago and I remember finding out that its budget was about fifty times ours even though
its strength in terms of students is a little less than our iit. Now
you may say that the comparison is not a fair one because a rupee here is like a dollar there. That argument is partly valid when
one considers the cost of living. But when it comes to buying
equipment and instruments, the argument fails. A scanning electron microscope or a transmission electron microscope costs
the same in the usa as in India. A computer costs the same. In
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fact, very often the cost in India is higher because of import duties, shipping costs, etc. So money does play an important role
in giving a boost to research and it is important to note that it
is one of the constraints. If we want iit Bombay to come up to
the standard that Caltech has set, say fifty years from now, we
should be willing to spend money like Caltech is spending for
continuously updating its research facilities. Then we can hope
to attract better students and more post-doctoral fellows, and a
higher quality of work will follow. It is a vicious circle. iit has
partly broken out of it. It is not as if we are not getting any students for research; it is not as if we have no money for building
up research facilities. Something good is happening, but a lot
more needs to happen and that is why the pace is slow.
rm: I suppose we need to wait for a wealthier India.
sps: We need to wait for a wealthier India. Yes, that is one way
to put it.
r m: Remaining on the r & d front, one of the initiatives that
has been taken at iit Bombay is the setting up of various centres, some independent of the departments. These centres were
meant to stimulate interdisciplinary research and bring departments together. For example, I am speaking of the Centre for
Studies in Resources Engineering (c sr e) or the Advanced Centre for Research in Electronics (a cr e). There have been a number of centres of this kind. Looking at them over the years, do you
think they have succeeded in serving their intended purpose?
sps: Yes, to a certain extent they have. Before I proceed to amplify that statement, let me clarify some thing. In our Institute,
the word centre has a variety of meanings. We have centres like
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the Regional Sophisticated Instruments Centre (r sic) and the

Computer Centre. The rsic is largely funded by the Department of Science and Technology. It has now been re-named the
Sophisticated Analytical Instruments Facility (s aif) and has a
set of analytical instruments which can make certain sophisticated measurements. This is an important service provided to
persons doing research within iit and in the surrounding area.
The Computer Centre is another service centre. Earlier its role
was more important when we had a main frame computer. Now,
of course, there is less need for a big computer at one location.
Then we have centres which are really like postgraduate departments like the Centre for Environmental Science and Engineering (c ese). And finally, we have research centres like csr e
which are independent entities set up with the intention of promoting research in a new or interdisciplinary area. We also have
centres embedded within departments like the Centre for Formal Design and Verification of Software (c fdvs) and the Centre
for Aerospace Systems Design and Engineering (c asde). These
have been established initially with funding from a particular
government agency in order to promote r & d in a specific area.
Your question pertains to centres like csr e.
rm: csr e and acr e.
sps: csr e has performed well. It has taken up a number of projects at the national level and has focused on using remote sensing techniques. Because of this, it has acquired a name on the
national scene. But to say that it has done everything that could
be expected of it would be incorrect. Perhaps if it had been
linked more closely with some departments, then there would
have been more infusion of an academic content in its work.
That might have helped. Perhaps more research staff and more
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equipment might have helped. In hindsight, one can raise many

perhaps issues. However, in an overall sense, csr e has served
and continues to serve the purpose for which it was set up.
acr e was established in the early seventies with help from the
Ministry of Defence. Similar centres were set up in other iits
as well. Unfortunately over the years, its role got blurred and
the electronics content of its output, both basic and applied,
was rather limited. I think the Institute took a wise decision
when it decided to close down the Centre and use its physical
space and staff for initiating a new centre in Nanotechnology
and Science.
rm: I would like to move on now to iit Bombays interaction
with the wider world, keeping in mind that one part of its mandate is to serve industry and the national effort by developing or
helping to develop technologies. How do you feel iit Bombays
interaction with industry has progressed over the years? For example, do you think there have been success stories that have
been commensurate with initial expectations?
sps: Oh yes! The Institute has done well. No question about it.
One measure is the volume of business conducted through consultancy work done for industry. The number of projects executed by faculty members has increased tremendously over the
years. The number of international projects has also increased
markedly. Prior to 1990. I do not think we had even done one
project abroad. More importantly, in a variety of ways people
talk about the work done here. Take for example, the Industrial Design Centre. It has been involved in many unique projects.
The first modern petrol pump outlet in Mumbai was designed
by a group from idc. It is on the road from the Sahar airport ter-
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minal to the Santa Cruz terminal. The ubiquitous post box was
designed by idc in the seventies and then re-designed more recently. The logo of the Posts and Telegraph Department was also designed by idc. These are visible products. Consider the
work of our Centre for Environmental Science and Engineering.
Faculty members from cese have been involved in preparing
reports concerning the environmental impact of many national and local projects. Similarly faculty in the Civil Engineering
Department has been requested to submit its opinion on many
transportation problems and construction issues. Some of the
issues are controversial and it is not unusual for the Institute to
take a stand based on its technical assessment. I can say confidently that our consultancy efforts are definitely valued.
Our faculty has also been active in many projects of national importance. Consider for instance, the development of
the Light Combat Aircraft (l c a). The Aerospace Engineering Department has done a number of projects for it. Some of
the projects done by our faculty members for the space programme, particularly by the Micro-Electronics Group, have
been highly appreciated. Projects done in Mechanical Engineering and Civil Engineering for the Department of Atomic Energy are also noteworthy. So in many ways, the Institute
has done useful work for industry and for government departments, both in strategic and non-strategic areas and the volume
of that work continues to grow. The only thing we have to guard
against while doing consultancy work is not to get trapped into doing routine work which is of a repetitive nature. You see,
Rohit, such work earns you money, but after a while it is nothing more than that. Let us say you have a machine or an instrument which measures some property and industry needs the
measured value. It could be the viscosity of a liquid or the com-
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pressive strength of concrete. I am just mentioning two examples. I could pick out dozens. You happen to have the machines
and industrial firms come because they value the test report issued by the Institute. It opens up many doors for them. So they
come over and over again for getting such testing work done.
On paper it sounds good. The Institute earns money, the faculty member concerned earns money and even the technical staff
in the laboratory earn money. But in reality, it is not the kind of
activity in which the Institute should be involved. Such work
is best left to test houses. The same remarks also apply to Continuing Education Programmes (c ep). The Institute conducts
a number of ceps all round the year. These programmes help
in the dissemination of knowledge and also earn good revenue.
However, the Institute has to avoid the trap of conducting programmes which are below a certain level.
To sum up, iit Bombays interaction with the outside world
through consultancy work, through sponsored research and
through continuing education programmes has grown steadily
over the years and we have done well.
rm: And while we are on the subject of iit Bombays relationship with the wider world, we come to the tricky question of
iit Bombays projection in the media. How have the media, the
press, television and so on been portraying us? What impressions have you gathered over the years about this aspect?
sps: As far as the media were concerned, till about 1975, we hardly existed. (r m: Is that so?) I dont recall reading anything in the
newspapers reporting something that had happened at the iit.
Of course, there was hardly any television coverage then. The only real exception was the convocation in 1972 when Indira Gandhi
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was the Chief Guest. My recollection is that there was a report

on the convocation and a photograph on the front page showing
Mrs. Gandhi handing over a medal to one of the awardees.
rm: It was because of Mrs. Gandhi.
sps: Yes, of course. It was because of her presence. But honestly, till 1975 or thereabouts, the press and people in general were
not too concerned about us. If the iit was mentioned in a conversation, people would say, Yes, thats a good college. They have
a difficult entrance examination and a four-year programme. At
the end of it, some of their students go abroad. Very little was
reported in the press. In fact, it was not unusual to get confused
with the itis (Industrial Training Institutes)!
rm: Was it? Oh, but there is quite a difference!
sps: True, quite a difference. But the fact is the confusion did
occur. It happened to me once. I met somebody and when he
asked me what I did, I said that I was at iit. He said,Yes, there
is an iti in Byculla. I said, No. Ours is in Powai and it is an
iit. My statement made no impact. So the point I am trying
to make is that we were not that widely known and certainly, we
were not much in the news. In a way that is not so bad. When
you are growing, it is better if you dont have many people looking at you all the time. The change began in the eighties. People started to take notice of us. Now the comments which one
heard were not just that the iit was a new college somewhere
in Powai, but that it was a college from where a lot of students
went abroad after graduating. The tone of the comment depended upon the person concerned. If it was a parent whose son or
daughter had been to iit, gone abroad for further education,
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and perhaps settled there, then the comment usually was that
iit was a nice place. Their child had received a good education,
got admission abroad easily with an assistantship and was now
doing well. On the other hand, if it was a parent whose ward had
not got through the jee, it was not unusual to receive an earful.
What good was the iit doing? they would say. All it did was to
give its students a degree and than they all went abroad. Why
should the nation spend money on it? These were the points of
view being expressed and that is how the issue of the brain drain
started coming into focus in the eighties. People started to talk
about it. The comment, Some of your students go abroad gradually changed to A lot of your students go abroad to All your
students go abroad. It was a little disconcerting and it happened
quite often, as soon as you identified yourself as being from an
iit. No amount of arguing helped. You could say that all iit
alumni did not settle down abroad. A fair number did, but a fair
number were in India as well. But we made no impact. The press
loved the brain drain story and played it up from time to time.
It was with this background that I conducted the study on the
brain drain of iit Bombays B.Tech alumni.
r m: I was about to ask if that was a part of the stimulus for
your study.
sps: Yes, that was the stimulus. It does not feel nice to be repeatedly told by people outside the iit system that all your students go abroad when you know that is not the case. At the same
time, the fact was we had no solid data of our own. Sometime in
1985, I received a letter from Dr. Rajeswari of the Department of
Science and Technology (d st). It was a general letter addressed
to all the iits asking if anyone at the iit would be interested in
conducting a study on the brain drain. I contacted her immedi-
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ately and on her advice, wrote a small proposal. dsts approval

came within a few weeks. It was a small project lasting for two
years. I had one assistant to help me and the total budget was
not even rs 2 lakhs. What we did was to study the whereabouts
of iit Bombay alumni who had obtained the B.Tech degree over
five years from 1973 to 1977. This amounted to a population of
about 1300 persons. Through a systematic unbiased process, we
located the current addresses of a very large number and arrived
at the result that 30.8 percent were settled abroad, while 69.2
percent were in India. The percentage error in this result was
estimated to be plus or minus 2 percent. The study was not confined to just finding out where our alumni were, but what they
were doing. Through a questionnaire, my co-investigator, Professor Indira Mahadevan of the Humanities and Social Sciences
Department, and I also found out how many of our B.Techs had
studied further, how many had obtained Ph.Ds, how many were
running their own enterprises, what kind of jobs were they pursuing, and so on. The study was widely appreciated and discussed
not only because it gave us a clear indication of the magnitude of
the brain drain, but because it gave us valuable information on
what our alumni were doing after passing out. Subsequently, for
many years when questions regarding the brain drain were asked
in Parliament, the results of our study were quoted. Incidentally,
a similar study was conducted at iit Madras at about the same
time by Professor Natarajan. It was a more general study, not a
specific study like ours, and was targeted at all students, graduates and postgraduates, who had passed from the institution.
Professor Natarajan contacted only a small number of the population under study and his results were more approximate. My
recollection is that he gave an estimate of about 25 percent for
the brain drain of all alumni from iit Madras.
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After completing the B.Tech study, I obtained funding from dst

for conducting a similar study of our postgraduate alumni. We
tracked the careers of those who had obtained M.Tech and Ph.D
degrees from our Institute over a 15 year period from 1973 to
1987. The study showed that the magnitude of the brain drain
was 13.4 percent for the M.Techs and 9.8 percent for the Ph.Ds.
Based on these results, it was calculated that the overall brain
drain for iit Bombay was a little over 21 percent, about one in
five, quite a far cry from the wild statements being made that all
our alumni had settled abroad. The results of our studies were
widely cited. They helped to paint a clearer picture of the brain
drain and they were useful in blunting some of the uncalled-for
criticism of the iits. Indeed, I believe, the time is ripe to conduct similar studies again because nearly 20 years have elapsed.
r m: Could we do a fast forward now? I would like to ask you
about the way iit Bombay has been perceived in the last few
years, especially after the rise of the iits to some sort of prominence. During these years, you were, of course, the Chairman
of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board. So what was the view
from the outside?
sps: Well the last few years have been different. We have probably got more good publicity than we deserve and the press has
moved from one extreme to another. Once they get hold of a
topic, they cannot have enough of it. Because of the it revolution, many of our alumni have started their own ventures in
Silicon Valley and in India and they have done well, exceedingly well. And because of that, the brain drain is not an issue any
more. It is the success of our alumni, wherever they are, which
is being talked of in glowing terms. An iit product is a kind of a
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brand name now. It feels nice to read some of the things written,
but I think the media are overdoing it. They are talking and writing a little too much. Take the Joint Entrance Examination as an
example. It was always a difficult exam and getting through was
a tough proposition. It is so today. The main difference is that
there is far too much discussion on the nature of the papers and
their duration. There is a lot of publicity when the results are
declared, there are write-ups on the coaching classes and interviews with the All-India rankers, and so on.
In an overall sense, the public view the iits in a more mature
manner and they agree that iits have contributed to the nations
growth. There is no question about that. Names like Narayanmurthy and Nilekani are household names. People know that
they are iit alumni and that they have built up a giant company
like Infosys right here in India. As Chairman of aerb, if I was introduced to anybody as the former Director of iit Bombay, there
was instant recognition. One noticed a great deal of respect for
the institution. In educational institutions abroad, there is certainly an awe. I think the programme 60 Minutes shown on cbs in
June 2003, had a lot to do with this feeling. Its nice to know that
there is all-round respect for the iits today, not just iit Bombay
alone, and many now agree that it was far-sighted decision to establish them. Most people have also welcomed the governments
decision to set up more such institutions.
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rm: We have covered a wide range of subjects under this chapter,

reflections. What remains to be covered are your thoughts
on students and on alumni. The questions which I would like to
put to you are: What changes have you seen in students over the
years, for example, in their attitudes to work? How have faculty
responded to these changes? And what have faculty-student interactions been like, as you remember them?
sps: Well, let me organize my thoughts as follows. Ill speak
about students as I saw them when I joined in 1965 and students
now, let us say in 1999, the last year that I was fully associated
with the Institute. I think the change one notices most in students today is that they are more worldly, more savvy, when they
enter the Institute as compared to the sixties. They are far better informed than they were in those days. There is a plus side
to this and a minus side too. If you are better informed, well
you probably know what you have come for and what to look
for here. And that is good. If on the other hand, you think you
know what you want, you are not too amenable to change of
any kind or to new ideas. You are not willing to listen to others.
And that is a minus. But I must stress that this change is part of
an overall change in our urban society. Students today are also
more knowledgeable about their rights, which is a good thing.
On the other hand, they have less respect for teaching as a profession than they used to have earlier. This is worrisome, but it
is not their fault. It is a reflection of what is being said in society.
They hear remarks around them and then naturally, they convey their feelings through their mannerisms and the way they
speak to you. So students have changed. But changes are inher-
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ent. They are going to occur. There is no point in saying they are
good or bad, they are right or wrong. We have to live with them
and adjust to them.
Now coming to the issue of interaction between students and
faculty members, I shall speak of the interaction which takes
place outside the class room. I think it is important to recognize first that iit Bombay is located in a big city with many attractions and activities. Even in 1965, Powai was not very far
from the city and in addition, a fair number of students used
to have their homes in the city. My guess is that about 50 or 55
percent had their homes in Mumbai or Pune, or had close relatives there. Because of this nearness, the weekend was a time
when students would disappear from the hostels. Hostels always had a deserted look on Saturdays and Sundays. That is so
even today, although the percentage of students from Mumbai
and its surroundings has reduced considerably. Real interaction
between students and faculty is possible on a residential campus
only through programmes, cultural or social, which occur during the weekends, either in the evening or during the day time.
That has never been a highlight of the calendar at iit Bombay.
You organize something on a Saturday evening, the chances are
you wont be too successful in rounding up students or faculty
to take part in it. On a week day, there are other compulsions.
Many students may have a test on the next day or an assignment to submit because of which they find it difficult to participate. The net result is that student-faculty interaction outside
the class room at our Institute has never been a feature of campus life. It has always been weak and has, if anything, become
weaker over the years. I am stating this as a fact. I am not passing any value judgement on it. That is the way it is. It would be
fair to say that here the interactions between faculty members
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and students have always been more business like and generally
restricted to office hours. Students meet you by appointment
or drop by your office and many faculty spend a fair amount of
time in such discusions. However if by student-faculty interaction you mean that the two sit around over a cup of tea and discuss everything under the sun, then that kind of thing does not
happen too often at iit Bombay.
In spite of this overall state of affairs, there have been some faculty members who have had close associations with students.
They have always been a small number. They have enjoyed having students visit them at home and in turn have taken part in
many hostel functions. Some have been wardens of hostels for
long periods and enjoyed the work involved. In this connection,
the first name which comes to mind from the old days is that of
Professor Isaac. He was the warden of Hostel 3 for a long time
and if you dropped in at his house in the evening, it was quite
common to meet a few students. He enjoyed having students
around him and the feeling was mutual. The other name which
comes to my mind is that of Professor T.R.R. Mohan of the
Metallurgical Engineering Department. I remember that when
alumni who had passed in the seventies came to visit the Institute later, they would invariably ask for Jimmy Isaac or Mohan.
Thats nice, isnt it?
I said a few moments ago that student-faculty interaction outside office hours has probably decreased over the years. One of
the reasons for this is that faculty involvement with the outside
world has increased enormously over the years. In the sixties,
there was hardly any sponsored research or consultancy. As a result, faculty members rarely had any reason to travel outside the
Institute on this account. Also, very few faculty members were
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members of Government committees or of selection committees requiring outside visits. I remember that as a professor in
the seventies, I used to have to go out only about once or twice
a month and this was a lot compared to other faculty. Today the
situation is very different. A typical faculty member interacts
with a number of government agencies, educational institutes
and private organizations. This is due to the increase in consultancy work, sponsored research and continuing education programmes organized outside the campus. It is also because of
the advice sought by government and municipal agencies and
by other educational institutes wanting faculty to come over to
deliver lectures. So for a variety of reasons, the commitment of
the faculty to the outside world has increased. It is necessary
because it is a part of the overall activities of the Institute, but
it probably has had the effect of decreasing student-faculty interaction further.
rm: So in this scenario, there shouldnt really be a great danger
of students feeling neglected compared to the past?
sps: I think as a general statement what you are saying is correct; students shouldnt feel that way. But I must hasten to say
that that all students cannot be lumped under one category as
if they are all the same. We admit an amazing variety of students. They come from different economic classes, from different communities and from different regions, and it is a fact
that a few of them withdraw into their shells when they come
here. They dont want to project themselves. Very often they are
shy, diffident and self-conscious. They feel that if they say something, somebody will react and so they tend to withdraw, stay
within themselves and sometimes even physically, stay within
their hostel room as much as possible. We need to identify such
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students and see that they are taken care of, that they come out
of their shells and their personality blossoms. It is my belief that
every student who comes here has something in him. It is a question of finding out what it is. To come back to your question,
while I agree with your statement that students in general do
not need us beyond the normal academic interaction, there is a
small number, perhaps only 5 or 10 percent, who do. We need to
identify them and see that they are not neglected. If we can do
so, we would be really doing our job.
rm: Perhaps the danger of that sort of neglect is greater now because we are all so absorbed in our various assignments.
sps: Thats right. That danger is there and thats where the Dean
of Student Affairs, the wardens, student counselors and a number of other people whom we have appointed are important. Fellow students are also very important. It is they who notice such
persons more readily. They can facilitate the task of identifying
students who need help. I think that in this particular respect
we can do a lot more with our students.
rm: Every time something like a tragedy happens on the campus, the collective conscience is aroused and a lot is said of the
pressure under which students have to perform here. Do you
think that this pressure or this exacting atmosphere is a thing
of the recent past or has it always existed? Have there always
been students who have suffered?
sps: Some pressure has always existed and will continue to exist. It is a fact of modern life in a competitive atmosphere and
we cannot wish it away. Having made that point, may I say that
the number of tragic incidents on the campus is small. The
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media makes a lot out of each incident and people say a lot of
things because one doesnt like to see a young person take his
or her life. It affects all of us and makes us introspect. But, I repeat, the number is small. Lets face it. If you have 4000 students on the campus, there will always be some with problems.
They may have problems associated with their academic performance or with their personal lives or something else. The important thing is to have mechanisms to identify such students
and help them resolve their problems.
r m: Do you think the proportion of students who face these
problems has increased?
sps: No, not at all.
r m: One of the reasons that is cited for this withdrawal into
their shells by some students is the internet and the unlimited
access that we have on campus. In some ways, this is a matter of
pride for iit Bombay. In how many measures do you feel that
the presence of internet is a blessing and in how many measures
is it a curse to the student?
sps: My first comment on your query would be that the internet is now a necessary part of our modern technological lifea
necessary tool. It is, in a manner of speaking, a necessary evil.
You cant manage without the internet any more. For those who
are young, it is a tool with which they have grown up. Just like
waking up, eating food and going to sleep every day, there is the
omnipresent computer which they access all the time. They access it for obtaining information, for contacting people, for entertainment and for all manner of things. In that sense, it is a
blessing. However, the important thing is that an educated per-
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son learns how to handle his time and does not spend unnecessary time on an activity like surfing the internet. He uses it
where it is necessary and doesnt spend his time where it is not
giving too much in return. In short, he views the internet as a
tool which is his slave and does not let it enslave him.
There is always talk on the campus that we should restrict internet access for students, particularly at night, and some measures have been implemented. Quite frankly, I do not believe in
such censorship. Let us not do such things. In the long run, they
do not work out. I think ultimately we have to rely on the good
common sense of the majority of our students and they have that
quality in ample measure. Maybe from time to time, we need to
have people lecturing on the subject of using the internet optimally and not wastefully. That could help.
But what does one do with the few students whom we spoke of
earlier, who stay aloof and lead a withdrawn life sitting in their
hostel rooms? For such students, unlimited access to the internet can be a curse because we know that some of them spend
hours watching movies or playing some games. I think the only answer is to identify them, counsel them, try to alleviate their
worries and get them back into the mainstream. It is not an easy
job, but it has to be done on a one-to-one basis.
rm: We move on now from students currently on the campus to
students who have left us and are now our alumni, many of them
distinguished. One point of concern when I read interviews given by some alumni in the media or read what they have written
is that they attribute their success more to what they learnt in
their hostels as they put it than to what they picked up in the
class room. Sometimes, these are alumni who have made it big
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and are now in the spotlight. This notion seems to strongly influence fresh students coming in every year. How do you react
to this notion and what is your stand on this?
sps: Yes, I have read these views expressed by alumni of all iits.
The book on iitians written by Sandipan De is an example of
what you said. Though the book has many laudatory things to
say about the iit system, there are many places where the point
is made that the real learning was outside the class room. For
that matter, if you read the book Five Point Someone by Chetan
Bhagat, you find similar thoughts being expressed. In fact the
book treats the academic world at iit Delhi with contempt. I
think these books do not take a holistic view and convey an incorrect impression.
Of course, one learns a lot in the hostels and on the playing
fields; nobody denies that fact. I myself stayed in a hostel for
four years during my undergraduate days. I cherish my stay
there and the lifelong friendships which developed as a result.
In a hostel, one learns to live with others, one learns about the
diversity of India and one learns to manage ones problems on
ones own. A stay in a hostel makes you more independent and
teaches you to manage without good food! If there are some
social or cultural programmes in the hostel or in the Institute and you are part of the organizing team, you learn the art
of managing such events or if you are part of the fund raising
activities, you learn the business of finding sponsors. So in a
variety of ways, residing in a hostel is beneficial for ones future. Having noted that fact, one has to also recognize that the
B.Tech degree is ultimately given for the scholastic ability displayed through the prescribed course of studies. Quite frankly,
if somebody says later that all his learning was in the hostel, he
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is talking rubbish. Generally the alumni who make such statements are persons who have not remained in the area of engineering and technology. They are obviously intelligent and have
been admitted to an iit through the jee. It is also likely that
they have good personalities and good communication skills.
Somewhere along the line during their stay at iit, they realize
that they were not meant for a career in science and engineering. Consequently, the moment they get their B.Tech degree,
they drift to a career in areas like marketing, advertising or other areas which they could have gone into with any other type of
Bachelors degree, say a degree in the arts or commerce. (r m:
Quite.) When they look back and ask themselves the question:
Have I needed my knowledge of Physics anywhere? The answer is Not really. Have I used my understanding of Chemistry anywhere? or Have I ever had to use any techniques of
differentiating and integrating expressions learnt in Calculus?
Not really. Then what did I learn at iit? Obviously I learnt
nothing of value in the class room. Whatever I learnt was in the
hostel and through extra-curricular activities. This is the kind
of logic which makes some alumni decry the content of what
is prescribed in the curriculum. I believe that in making such
sweeping statements, they still miss certain important points.
The B.Tech curriculum has courses in the humanities and social sciences and if you care for those courses and the electives
offered, you can learn a lot about society at large, about literature or some area in the social sciences. These studies broaden
your view and help you later on in life.
Consider for a moment a student of the Institute who after obtaining his or her B.Tech degree goes on to do a Ph.D. I dont
think you will find such a person saying that my years at iit were
wasted from the point of view of their academic content. The
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four years here are not just a matter of passing a few courses
in Physics, Chemistry or Engineering and learning a few techniques. The purpose of the four years is to get a grounding in the
basic sciences and engineering sciences, to develop certain analytical skills, to learn the art of doing creative design in engineering, and in parallel to get a feel of some aspects of the humanities
and social sciences. Ultimately as one absorbs this knowledge,
one begins to appreciate how nature can be described in terms
of certain fundamental laws based on experimental evidence.
Once you see the larger picture, you cannot possibly say My
four years of study were wasted.
r m: One may not have had to perform an integration or directly use ones knowledge of physics, but surely the analytical skills one has learnt come in use even if one ends up doing
something entirely different.
sps: Absolutely. I think such statements by alumni need to be
taken with a grain of salt. I believe they get a little carried away
and are not thinking back clearly or in depth about the four-year
curriculum which they underwent.
rm: Well your response brings me to another interesting point
concerning our alumni, namely that a few alumni from the iits
(including iit Bombay) who have made it in their areas of endeavour seem to be getting all the attention for the last six or
seven years. They are in the limelight and are our so-called poster boys. On the other hand, the many, many alumni of our Institute who have done useful things and done very well seem to
have been neglected and are hardly mentioned. Would you like
to point out the sort of contributions made by these alumni?
How do you think this problem can be addressed?
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sps: You have touched on a problem which has also bothered

me. The limelight so to speak is only on a select few alumni. Not
that I have anything against them. Out of them, I know almost
all who passed from iit Bombay. They are very nice persons;
they have done well in their life and will continue to do well.
Quite obviously one cannot fault the press if these alumni get
credit for what they have achieved. There is nothing wrong in
that. What is of concern is that the others do not get noticed,
even some of the others. This particular fact came to my notice rather vividly when I did my studies on our B.Tech, M.Tech
and Ph.D alumni. I was thrilled and amazed when I read their
responses and came to know the range of activities with which
they were associated. I said to myself, What a group! What a set
of persons! And here I am knowing just a person here and a person there. Quite literally, there were hundreds of alumni contributing in different ways wherever they were located. What
was even more vivid was that so many of them were in India.
Some were directors of big companies and some were entrepreneurs. Some were engineers and managers in senior positions
and some were professors. Some were working for a social cause
with a non-governmental organization and some for the government, and I could go on and on. The media hardly ever talked
about them, but in their own quiet way they were serving the nation. Earlier it was assumed that all our successful alumni were
abroad. That notion has now been corrected to some extent.
Let me give you some data, Rohit. There are probably about
2000 iit Bombay alumni in Mumbai and its neighbourhood;
that number is more than 5 percent of the students who have
passed out of the Institute since its inception. It is not a small
number. A large number of these alumni are extremely successful. You meet them everywhere, the most likely place being the
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airport. Whenever I am traveling, I invariably find that somebody walks up to me and says Do you recognize me? Sometimes I do, but very often I have to say I am sorry, I dont. The
person concerned than says I am so-and-so and I passed in this
year. Usually they tell me about their work and where they are
located. They are also keen to know how things are going on in
the Institute. We chat for a little while and then we go our way.
This is how one gets a picture of so many of our alumni working
in India. Let us be very clear. If iit Bombay is anywhere today,
it is as much because of all these unsung heroes as it is to the famous few who are in the limelight.
We have tried to address the problem of alumni who are not so
visible by laying more emphasis on the organization of Alumni
Day in December. This has helped us to bond better with them
and with each other. Senior faculty members of the Institute have
also been making it a point to link up with alumni groups in other
cities in India. Pune and Bangalore are good examples. However, I do not think we have really tapped the wealth of talent available with our alumni. I am not talking of money now. Donations
given by alumni are one way of acknowledging their debt to their
alma mater. I am talking of their intellectual talent, their administrative talent. Alumni can be requested to contribute in a variety of ways by coming to the campus, interacting with present
students and sharing their experiences. In this way, they can give
something back to the Institute and they are more than willing if
only we contact them. If we ask them, they never say no. This is
one area we need to work on, that is to build better bridges with
our alumni and involve them more with the Institute.
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C HAP T E R III
33
THOUGHTS FOR THE FUTURE
T HOU GH T S F OR T H E F U T U R E
r m: We will now move on to the third part of this interview

that I call the vision. We are celebrating fifty years of the Institute now and on such an occasion, one likes to think what the
future should be like over the next fifty years. If we wish to be
conservative, we could perhaps restrict our thoughts to the next
twenty-five years. In what directions would you like to see iit
Bombay move in this time span? What are some of the things
that the Institute might do in the future as it grows? What steps
do you think should be taken in order for that progression to
be effective?
sps: Earlier while describing the initiatives taken during my
tenure as Director, I had mentioned that I had given the title
Looking Back, Looking Forward to the talk I gave at the last Institute Faculty Meeting which I addressed in September 1999.
I will use my notes of that lecture and speak about what we
could be doing looking forward. Of course that was eight years
ago. Some things have changed and so have some of my views.
Therefore I will build on the ideas expressed then and modify
them suitably.
Let me focus first on the academic and research activities. In
a broad sense, the immediate thing to do at our Institute is to
take vigorous steps to grow in the areas of biosciences, biotechnology and bioengineering. For too long have we, in India, held
the outdated view that the field of life sciences falls outside the
purview of an institute of technology. In fact, I see this as a
major growth area with new academic programmes and vastly improved research facilities being established. One of the
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last things I did as Director was to set up a Committee for the

purpose. The Committee recommended that we integrate the
existing activities in biotechnology, biomedical engineering,
biochemistry and biochemical engineering and set up a School
of Biosciences and Bioengineering. If I remember correctly, the
Committee also suggested a large infusion of funds and an increase in the faculty strength. The School has been formed and
some integration has taken place. But it is not yet a satisfactory state of affairs. The various activities still remain as separate
entities, each on their own. So long as they remain that way,
they will grow and do well but in a limited way. It is when they
combine their resources that they will prosper and the School
will take off and really get going. To give you an example of the
change of thinking which I would like to see taking place, whenever we describe our B.Tech programme, we say, A fair amount
of time in the first two years is devoted to the teaching of the
basic sciences, namely Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics.
I keep correcting that statement and saying it should be Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics and Biology. Personally I feel that
many of us, who obtained their Bachelors degrees in Engineering in the last century, missed a lot by not being exposed to the
life sciences at all. We were taught a little bit of Botany and a
little bit of Zoology in school up to Class 4 or 5, and that was it!
It didnt help us at all.
Another area in which we will have to grow is in the field of Energy Studies. We started our interdisciplinary programme in Energy Systems Engineering twenty five years ago and I have been
connected with it from its inception. It has done well. Now the
time has come for it to grow in size and in the range of its activities. The nations need for energy is growing and our economic
growth is closely coupled with satisfying this need.
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There are other areas too which need to be strengthened. One

of them is the area of Nanoscience and technology. I am glad
that we have taken necessary steps in this area recently. We have
set up a new Centre for Research in Nanotechnology and Science. This will help to consolidate the on-going work in many
departments. I am also very happy that we have obtained a large
project from the Government of India for working jointly with
the Indian Institute of Science on the development of nanomaterials and the associated technology for utilizing them. We
need to move ahead rapidly and explore additional avenues in
this field.
As far as the academic programmes of the Institute are concerned, we have the B.Tech, M.Sc, M.Tech, Ph.D and the dual
degree programmes, and on a smaller scale the M.Des, M.Phil
and M.Mgmt programmes. Personally, I would like to see the
five-year dual degree programme grow in stature. I think we are
well poised for that to happen. Unfortunately the dual degree
programme gets clubbed with the four-year B.Tech programme
and its curriculum is constrained by the courses offered in the
B.Tech programme and the two year M.Tech programme. That
is not the way it should be. I would like to see the dual degree
programme prosper on its own. At the end of five years, we
award the student, a B.Tech and M.Tech, a B.Tech in a broad
area and M.Tech in some specialization within that broad area.
If we follow this path, our research output will increase enormously, the students who are products of the dual degree programme will be more inclined to do research and we would also
be recognized more as a research institute. I know I am repeating what I said earlier, but I believe this is an important point
which needs to be re-stated keeping in mind the nations needs
and our mandate.
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th o u g h t s f o r t h e f u t u r e
rm: Would there be a case for introducing five-year dual degree

programmes in the interdisciplinary areas you mentioned, for
example energy systems or Nanotechnology?
sps: Yes, certainly there could be. There could be a five-year programme leading to a B.Tech in a discipline like Mechanical Engineering or Electrical Engineering and a M.Tech degree in Energy
Engineering or a five-year programme leading to a B.Tech in
Metallurgical Engineering and Materials Science and a M.Tech
degree in Nanoscience and Technology. One can think of many
other combinations too.
Let me move on to the next point which I want to make. I think
as the Institute grows, it needs to develop a more international character. Again this is something that is happening. We see
a few foreign students coming here to study for the B.Tech,
M.Tech and Ph.D degrees. We also see quite a few foreign students coming here to study for a semester or two and getting
credit for the courses taken. But in an overall sense, the number is still very small. I would like to see this number increasing
more rapidly. This is going to call for a conscious effort on our
part in which the Dean of International Relations will have to
play an important role. It is not a matter of signing mous with
universities abroad. We need to project ourselves abroad and
convey the message that iit Bombay is the place to come to
for a learning experience. Students from other countries should
want to come here in the same way that many of us had the urge
to go abroad for receiving higher education many years ago.
rm: What would be the catchment areas?
sps: The catchment would be the countries in our neighbour-
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hoodBangladesh, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, the Middle

East and others. Hopefully, in the not too distant future, our relationship with Pakistan will improve to the point that students
from there will come in good numbers. In the case of Pakistan,
it will be a two-way learning experience. Apart from that I would
like to see a few students from Europe and Africa, and certainly some from usa. I am convinced that the presence of a larger
number of students from foreign countries will change the outlook of the campus community for the better. Personally, I feel
that about 10 percent of our student population should be foreign students. Today, my guess is that the number is only about
2 or 3 percent.
rm: Arent there any government regulations which restrict the
intake of foreign students at the Institute?
sps: No, not at all. I dont think the Ministry of hrd will come
in our way. The only thing we have to ensure is that we do not
reduce in any way the commitments for admitting our citizens.
r m: Are there any other areas in which the Institute should
move ahead?
sps: Yes, there are. Let me mention a few. I think the Institute has a great scope for expanding its distance education
programmes. This is an area in which we have made commendable progress in the last five or six years by setting up the Centre for Distance Engineering Education (c deep). Our faculty
members have made video recordings of a large number of undergraduate and postgraduate level courses and these are now
available for use in other institutions. They are also being telecast. Every semester, we are also sharing live class room expe-
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rience with a number of distance learning centres and through

web-based interaction.
rm: This class room with recording facilities is a living example.
sps: Yes, it is. While we have done a lot in the area of distance
education, I think we could and should be doing a lot more to
meet the countrys needs for high quality education at the postgraduate level. I have in mind the Institutes postgraduate diploma programmes. Although we have successfully offered
postgraduate diplomas in various specialized fields over the
years, these programmes have always been run for a few years
and then closed because there was a limited demand for them.
I am referring to programmes in Dock and Harbour Engineering, Plastics Engineering and so on which the Institute has offered in the past. In todays setting, however, there are certain
subjects for which there is a large and continuing demand. The
distance mode is well suited for teaching these subjects. I am
referring to postgraduate diploma programmes in Information
Technology, Software Engineering or similar subject areas. I believe we should offer these in a big way. The two semesters of
course work required for obtaining a diploma in these specializations involves theory and laboratory work and can be offered
in the distance mode in distance learning centres. The diploma
programme does not require a thesis. However, there could be
a requirement of a small project or seminar report at the end
and for this the student should come to the campus during the
summer for two months or so. This would also give him an opportunity to know the Institute a little and interact with the
concerned faculty. With careful planning, we could easily ensure
that about 150 or 200 students receive their diplomas in these
and allied fields, and as I said, we would be serving an important
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national need. By the way, as an aside, may I say that the distance
education mode of conveying and receiving information is a subject in itself for doing research, very much an evolving area. (r m:
Absolutely.) It is of particular relevance to India because of the
rapid rise in student population and the corresponding shortage
of well-trained faculty for teaching.
Now let me move on to a new topic for discussionthe student
mix in the Institute. This is something which I have always been
concerned about. I do not know if you are aware, Rohit, that although the number of women students on the campus has increased over the years, the percentage has not changed much. In
fact, the available statistics show that the percentage of women
students has remained a little over 10 for the past six or seven
years. Today in 20062007, we have about 4500 students and
the number of women students is about 450. It is of interest to
study the wide variation in the percentage of women students
passing out through our different degree programmes. I carried out such a study along with my colleague, Professor Parikh
for the years 1999 to 2005. In the B.Tech and dual degree programmes (admission through jee), the average is only 5 percent!
In the M.Tech programmes, the percentage is about 10, while
in the M.Sc programmes, it is around 28. For the other Masters programmes (M.Des, M.Phil, M.Mgmt, and M.S) as well
as the Ph.D programme, the average percentage is 17. This data
is quite revealing. In particular, the low percentage of women
entering the Institute through jee should be a cause of concern
when we consider what is happening at the national level. The
number of women students joining undergraduate programmes
in engineering all over the country has increased dramatically.
Professor Parikh and I conducted two studies, the first in the
late 80s and the second in the late 90s, with the objective of
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quantifying the increase. Today, in a typical engineering institution in Mumbai, say vjti, women constitute 20 percent of
the student population. In comparison, the percentage about 25
years ago was probably around 5. If you look at southern states
like Kerala or Tamilnadu, in many engineering colleges women
today make up 50 percent of the class in many branches. I have
often described this increase as a silent revolution with far-reaching implications comparable in some respects to the green revolution and the white revolution. This silent revolution originated in
the southern states, has spread to the western states and is now
gradually making its presence felt in the north and the east.
rm: This is something like in medicine.
sps: Yes, but in medicine it occurred earlier. In engineering, the
increase in women enrolment has come much later. But let me
come back to the point I was making that the low percentage
of women students entering our B.Tech and dual degree programmes is a cause of concern. Consider a group of a few hundred very bright young women and men who have passed their
12th exam and are keen on a career in engineering. About half of
this group will be women and half will be men. The women are
as talented as the men, and certainly as capable of going in for
engineering as men. Yet in spite of this equality, today the position is that if 100 students out of this group qualify through the
jee, only four or five will be women and the remaining 95 or 96
will be men. A very large number of talented women, probably
more talented than some of the qualifying men, are not joining
an iit. In time, the percentage of women qualifying through
jee will undoubtedly increase, but the present trends indicate
that it will take a long time and that the iits will lag behind
other engineering institutions in the country in this respect.
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For this reason, I feel that we need to set in place some proactive policies which will accelerate the process of women coming to iit. Other engineering institutions have more women
and we should certainly have them as well. Among other things,
we should make it known widely that we have a fine residential
campus with hostels for women. We should also make it known
that women who come here receive the best education in the
country and that there is plenty of extra-curricular activity for
an individual to develop her personality.
r m: Could you outline some more proactive measures that
could be taken by iit Bombay to encourage the enrolment of
women?
sps: Well, I suppose an obvious measure is to waive tuition fees
and to offer more scholarships which would cover living expenses. I see no reason why we cannot do that. These would be steps
in the right direction. I believe some states like Gujarat and Rajasthan are already helping women students in this manner.
rm: Any other factors influencing the low enrolment through
the jee?
sps: Yes, there are. Let me bring another dimension into this
discussion. One of the reasons why the number of women entering through the jee is low is that while girls receive encouragement from their parents to study upto 12th and beyond, they
probably do not get that extra push needed to get through the
jee. On the other hand, boys do. The extra push is needed in the
form of money to be spent on tutorial classes or the money and
time spent in going to a place like Kota. A large number of the
boys who qualify spend a whole year after 12th in a place away
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from home preparing for the jee. Mind you, these boys are good
students to start with. The Kota experience makes them ready
for our entrance exam. It trains them so that they will be able
to get into an iit. Parents are not inclined to do the same thing
with girls and that is why a very small number make it through
the jee. While making these remarks, it might seem to you,
Rohit, that I approve of the presence of the tutorial classes
empire. I dont! But the reality today is that we cannot wish them
away. Ideally, I would like to see meritorious girls and boys prepare for the jee on their own as in the old days and secure admission to an iit without a break after the 12th exam.
Another fact which needs to be recognized is that engineering
is still seen as a mans domain by older people. We need to make
it known that it is not so any more. One needs to demonstrate
how successful some women engineers have been. We need to
show the variety of engineering activities they are engaged in
all over India. This is where iits can play a role. We can request
our women alumni to go out and speak at junior colleges or high
schools and tell girls to take up engineering studies at iits. One
can think of other innovative measures as well.
Finally one more point needs to be made. It has been suggested that in order to speed up the process of women taking up engineering careers, there should be a quota reserved for women.
It has been suggested that 30 percent of the seats should be reserved for women. Frankly I am not in favour of such a reservation. The winds of change are already there. What we need is to
take a variety of proactive measures to speed up the process. If
we do so, I think we can reach a goal of 20 to 25 percent at our
iit in another 10 years.
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rm: The new directions for growth which you have mentioned
will call for more faculty. How do we meet this need?
sps: Of course, growth in activities implies that iit Bombay
will require more faculty members. They are the key. In the coming days, if any thing is going to hold up iits growth in academic
programmes and research activities, it is going to be the quality and strength of our faculty. It is not easy to get faculty and we
need to work in different ways to try and encourage young qualified persons to come to this Institute. Today, we have only about
400. With the increase in student population which will come as
a result of the implementation of the new reservation policy regarding obcs and because of other increases, I foresee that after
25 years we may need a faculty strength between 600 and 700.
That is a tall order when you also consider the fact that on an average 3 to 4 percent of our faculty retire every year. Remember,
we have to hire that number every year just to keep the faculty
strength constant and that is proving to be quite difficult.
What we need to do is to create more attractive conditions here
with more incentives so that bright young people with excellent
credentials will want to join. Now most persons will say that the
first and obvious thing to do is to change the salary structure and
offer higher salaries. This is not possible for us to do on our own
because we are part of a system, the iit system. The basic salary and the allowances which go with it for each designation are
fixed by the Central Government and paid from the grant given
by the Ministry. But we can offer something more by way of incentives over and above what we are already giving. The existing
incentives are not inconsequential when we consider that almost
nothing was offered 20 or 30 years ago. Today when a young faculty member joins, we ensure he gets office space and internet
168
access both from his office and his residence on the campus. We
allot the faculty member some laboratory space for his research
work if he is doing experimental work or try to provide him with
adequate computational facilities if his work is computer oriented. In addition, we provide a seed grant of rs 10 lakhs so that
he can get going with his research and write proposals to funding agencies. In addition, there are excellence in teaching awards
and a few awards for excellence in research and in technology development. These are paid from donations made by alumni.
The question is, what more can we do in order to attract outstanding people as faculty members and wean them away from
tempting offers from the usa, from multinational r & d laboratories set up in India and abroad, from it companies all over
the world and so on? I think we need to have a scheme by which
certain faculty members can be paid honoraria of the order of
rs 20,000 or 30,000 per month in addition to their regular salary. This top up would be made from endowments created for
the purpose from donations and would be paid to faculty who
meet high benchmarks set in terms of teaching standards, research output, book writing, etc. The government would not
be averse to the Institute making such payments because the
money would come from endowments set up from donations.
Of course, the amounts paid would be taxable. Thus a faculty
member getting an honorarium of rs 20,000 per month would
effectively get about rs 14,000 if he is in the 30 percent income
tax bracket. Whenever one creates such arrangements, there
will always be some heartburn because some faculty will get the
extra amounts and others wont. It is therefore important to announce the benchmarks well in advance and to have transparent procedures for deciding who gets the awards. In order to be
an effective mechanism, it is important that a reasonable num-
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chapter 1i i
ber of faculty benefit from such a scheme. Personally, I would

like to see at least 20 percent of the faculty benefit monetarily in this manner. The corpus for the endowment fund would be
quite large, probably around rs 40 or 50 crores. However, I believe the amount can be raised and the scheme I am describing
is doable. It is worthy of serious consideration. It will also remove the age-old notion that everyone of a certain rank gets the
same salary scale regardless of the department, the nature of the
duties and the performance of the person concerned. Instead
what we are now saying is that everyone gets a certain salary,
but those who perform better will get an added amount which
is not negligible.
rm: The notion you are suggesting is almost reactionary.
sps: I suppose it is, but it has to be done. However, I repeat,
those who get more must deserve it and the process by which
they are selected must be well laid out and executed in a fair
manner. Then the scheme will achieve its purpose.
One can think of other monetary incentives as well. For example, I have read that in some universities in China, faculty members who publish research papers in journals of good standing
are paid a certain amount. There is no reason why we cannot
adopt this incentive. We could also start the practice of reimbursing the expenses incurred by a new faculty member while
joining the Institute. I remember that iit Kanpur offered this
incentive to all new faculty who joined at the beginning in the
sixties. I believe it worked well.
r m: Any other thoughts that form part of your vision for the
Institute?
170
sps: Let me now come to activities to which I would like to see

the Institute contributing more in the future. I am referring to
work which can be described under the heading of technology
development, technology transfer and the establishment of industries based on new products or processes. I will begin by recollecting something which happened in Boston in the early sixties
when I was a graduate student there. At that time, a number of
new companies were set up along Route 128 which is an expressway partly circling the Greater Boston area. One of the reasons
why this happened in Boston was the presence of mit nearby.
The new companies were always in the news because the products which they were making or the processes they were using
were the latest in terms of technology development. Many of
them were based on research work done and developed at mit
and in many instances, mit professors were closely associated
with these companies. It was exciting to read about the growth
of the companies and to see the important role mit played in this
story of industrial development. Something similar happened in
Silicon Valley in California about 30 years later. This time also,
universities in the region like Stanford and Berkeley played a very
important role.
In my vision, I see a similar role for iit Bombay in the years
ahead. We need to go much beyond what we have been willing to
think we are capable of in the Indian context. In the developed
countries, technology driven enterprises have been the engines
of wealth and job creation. Everybody accepts that. And technology oriented universities have played a key role in the emergence
of such firms. Hewlett-Packard in California is an excellent example. Can we not think big along similar lines? Whether the
field is information technology, software development, the development of new materials, biotechnology or some other field,
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chapter 1i i
it is vital that as an Institute we set an example for creating new

businesses out of the technologies we develop through our r & d
work at iit Bombay. That is a role which I see for our iit.
rm: Isnt that what our Society for Innovation & Entrepreneurship (s ine) is all about?
sps: Yes, sin e is a good step in the right direction. We began
with a business incubator in the School of Information Technology and then expanded its role to set up sine which is an incubator for all kinds of technologies developed at iit in various
departments. We have taken other steps as well. We are encouraging and helping faculty members to file for patents wherever possible. On the student front, we have a number of annual
activities like Tech Fest, Cross Roads and Yantriki which encourage innovation and entrepreneurship and spread the message that one needs properly laid out business plans to build on
r & d work. Through all these activities, the objective is to create businesses whose origin lies in something done initially here
at iit Bombay.
rm: In a way, a spin-off?
sps: Yes. A spin-off from what has been originally developed as
an idea here. I see this as an important role for the Institute. We
have started to do something in this direction, but we need to
push the process faster. I would like a lot of industries come up in
and around Mumbai based on research work and technology development done here. It is a part of the vision I have for the Institute. We would then be fulfilling one of the responsibilities which
we have been assigned as part of our charter when we were established. You may recall that the Sarkar Committee which original-
172
ly recommended that the iits should be set up had said that we

should develop like an mit. There may not be a Route 128 here,
but there is Navi Mumbai and so many places in and around here.
If we have the ideas and the technologies, locations can be found
where these activities can be set up.
rm: There could be a technology park that is driven largely by
ideas emanating from iit.
sps: Quite right.
r m: Do you feel that in the next couple of decades or so, iit
should strive consciously to build up more of an image for itself
as a research-oriented institution rather than as one that is excellent in teaching and also does some good research on the side.
Do we need to somewhat divorce ourselves from the notion of
producing very good graduates and have ourselves recognized as
a research-oriented institute?
sps: I would like to see that happen. I would like iit to be recognized first as a research institution. At the same time, I am
not saying dump the B.Tech programme. What I visualize is a
strong B.Tech programme, but of a limited strength. We do not
have to expand its numbers. Through the jee, a certain number will continue to be admitted to this programme. But the future lies in a research orientation. If we want that to happen, we
need to give due importance to the five-year B.TechM.Tech
programme and the remaining input from the jee should join
for this programme. It is through this programme and our 2 year
M.Tech programme that we will get our research done because
students do a one-year research project. Once these students
have done a one year project and got a taste of research, a sub-
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chapter 1i i
set (say 40 or 50 every year) would want to stay on for a Ph.D.

Then we are getting somewhere. As it is, the student strength
in our doctoral programme has increased quite significantly in
the last few years thanks to many initiatives taken by the Institute. The above mentioned additional input from the dual degree programme would be one more step towards strengthening
our research activities. So I am very clear that we need to move
towards the bias of a research-based institute. We should certainly have a 4-year B.Tech programme. We have done well with
it, we get good students for it and we have created a new brand
with it. It has served its purpose and still has a purpose. But let
us not think that the Institutes scope is limited to having a dominating 4-year B.Tech programme alone. If we were to compare
ourselves to others in India, I would suggest that we move more
towards the Indian Institute of Science model with the difference that we should have a vibrant 4-year B.Tech programme
with a strength of maybe 250 students being admitted to the existing six or seven disciplines every year.
rm: Any model on the international scene?
sps: I will have to fall back to my usa background. The two institutes which come to mind are mit and Caltech. mit is the
bigger institute of the two. In my time, the student enrolment
was about 6000. Today, I believe it is around 10,000. There are
about 4000 undergraduates working for Bachelors degrees,
about 2500 enrolled for Masters degrees and about 3500 doctoral students. Thus the entering freshman class has about a
thousand students. In contrast, Caltech is a smaller institute.
It has a total enrolment of about 2200, admits only a little over
200 students to the freshman class every year and has an undergraduate student population of less than 1000. Masters and
174
doctoral students total about 1200. Caltechs real strength lies

in its post-doctoral programme. It has about 600 post-doctoral fellows. This is a very large number considering the overall
size of the institute. The post-doctoral fellows are the ones who
give muscle to the research output of Caltech. So if you were to
ask me the route which iit Bombay should follow, I think it
would be a little of mit and a little of Caltech. In terms of total enrolment, after a few years, we should probably be closer
to mit. On the other hand, like at Caltech, I would like to see
the enrolment for the 4-year B.Tech programme remain at a little over 1000. With the additional research bias through the
dual degree programme, I hope we will add on significantly to
our Ph.D enrolment and eventually like Caltech, I hope we will
have a sizeable post-doctoral population.
rm: Do you think iit Bombay can progress in that direction? Is
it possible to make the transition independent of the other iits?
And would we not need the permission of the government?
sps: Well, I would say that we can definitely move in the direction I have described. It will need some working on and discussion. But I think it is possible. You must recognize that I am
not talking about starting a new degree programme. What I am
saying is that within the existing degree programmes, we start
giving a bias in one direction. In fact, I have a feeling that if
these issues are discussed with the other iits, in the iit Council and with the Ministry, they will not only approve the direction which we are proposing to take but will appreciate it. Other
iits may in fact follow our lead as they did in starting dual degree programmes after us. Today, the role of the Indian Institute
of Science is appreciated as a university with a focus towards research in science and engineering. It is considered the leading
175
chapter 1i i
research university of its kind in India with standards approaching the best in the world. Obviously for a country of Indias size,
one world-class institution is not enough. We need more universities of this type and the iits are the best bet among those
existing for attaining this level of excellence. The path I am suggesting is feasible and will find wide acceptance. It will place the
Institute on a stronger footing and we will be fulfilling our commitments to the nation even better.
rm: Well, this brings me to my next question. Would there not
be some difficulty in projecting this transition to the general public? After all, the iits are known for their B.Tech programmes.
Before making the transition, one must convince the public at
large that the transition to a research institute is desirable.
sps: As far as the public is concerned, I dont think there is
much of an issue at all. The public is concerned with the number of students we admit through the jee. So long as we do
not decrease that number, the general public is not going to be
troubled. Let us say, today we admit 500 students, some for the
B.Tech and some for the dual degree programme. Next year, if
we wish to take some more in the dual degree programme as
compared to the B.Tech programme, the public will go along
so long as we do not decrease the total number admitted and
we explain the reasons for our change. Now I am not suggesting any decrease in the number of admissions we make through
the jee. If anything, if you keep in mind some of the other suggestions which I have made for the future, we will have a gradual increase in the intake.
As far as the Institute is concerned, what is probably of more importance is that we should have the assent of the faculty. They
176
need to be involved in this policy decision through a series of

steps taken at the Institute level. I think if we have their approval,
everything will fall into place. I am really quite optimistic because
I believe the faculty would like to spend more time on research.
I have given you a fair idea of where I see the Institute moving in
the next 20 or 25 years. I dont think one should look much beyond that for the time being. That much crystal gazing is perhaps enough. Whatever the specifics, the overall vision which I
have always had is that the Institute must never forget that it is a
place where excellence thrives. On that there cannot be any second thoughts, any compromise. Whatever we do, we should be
known for the quality of the work we do. Whether we develop a
new academic programme or do research on a new process or a
product, whether we graduate a B.Tech or M.Tech student or develop a new technology, people should say That is an iit Bombay product. It has the stamp of excellence written all over it.
rm: Well on that optimistic and clear note, I would like to thank
you once again for all the time you have spared and the effort you
have put in for addressing my questions. I am sure iit Bombay
will move along some of the directions you have outlined for us.
sps: I should like to thank you, Rohit, for giving me this opportunity to recollect, to reflect and to look ahead to the future.
When we started, I had imagined that I would need a couple of
hours or so to answer your questions. I guess I am more talkative
than I think or maybe I just got carried away. Be that as it may, I
have enjoyed this long conversation and I hope it provides you
with some useful inputs for the iit history book.
33
177
((*((
A B OU T T H E AU T HOR
suh as p. suk h atme is currently Professor Emeritus in the

Mechanical Engineering Department of the Indian Institute of
Technology, Bombay. He received his schooling at St. Columbas
High School, New Delhi and obtained his Bachelors degree in
Mechanical Engineering from Banaras Hindu University in 1958.
Subsequently he obtained the degrees of Master of Science and
Doctor of Science from mit in the usa. He joined the newly established iit Bombay as a faculty member in 1965. In a career
spanning four decades, Professor Sukhatme also served the Institute in many administrative capacities as the Head of the Mechanical Engineering Department, as the Deputy Director and
finally as the Director from January 1995 to January 2000. He
then served for five years as the Chairman of the Atomic Energy
Regulatory Board of the Government of India.
Professor Sukhatme is known for his contributions in teaching
and research in the areas of Heat Transfer and Energy. As a faculty member at iit Bombay, he supervised nineteen students
for their Ph.D degrees and published 70 research papers. He also authored two text books in Heat Transfer and in Solar Energy which are widely used all over India.
Professor Sukhatme was instrumental in starting an interdisciplinary postgraduate and research programme in Energy Systems Engineering at iit Bombay in the early eighties. This
programme has now evolved and grown into a separate Department of Energy Science and Engineering. He was also the driving
force behind establishing the Shailesh Mehta School of Manage-
180
ment and the Kanwal Rekhi School of Information Technology

during his tenure as Director of iit Bombay.
Professor Sukhatme is the recipient of many honours and awards.
He was awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science
and Technology in 1983. He is a Fellow of the Indian Academy
of Sciences, the Indian National Academy of Engineering, the
Indian National Science Academy and the National Academy of
Sciences. He was awarded the title of Padma Shri by the Government of India in 2001 and was the first recipient of the Lifetime
Achievement Award of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. He was also conferred the title of Doctor of Science by the
Banaras Hindu University in 2001.
A B OU T T H E I N T E RV I E W E R
rohit m a ncha nda studied at the University of Oxford where

he obtained his D.Phil in the area of physiological sciences. He is
a Professor in the School of Bio-sciences and Bio-engineering at
iit Bombay and does research on electrical signaling in the nervous system. Apart from his professional accomplishments, Professor Manchanda achieved distinction at a young age by writing
a novel, In the Light of the Black Sun, which was published by Penguin India and for which he received the Betty Trask Award. More
recently, he has written a narrative history of iit Bombay entitled Monastery, Sanctuary, Laboratory 50 Years of iit Bombay.
181
A BBR E V I AT ION S
Pertaining to iit Bombay and the iit System
acre
Boa rd
C ou nci l
cdeep
cese

cep
cr ab
csr e

dd
dpgc
dugc
gate
h & ss

idc

jee
kr esit

lt
mhr d
nasa
pgapec
pgpc
rsic
saif
sine

som
ugapec
ugpc
182
Advanced Centre for Research in Electronics

Board of Governors
Council of the Indian Institutes of Technology
Centre for Distance Engineering Education
Centre for Environmental Science and Engineering
Continuing Education Programme
Committee for Reviewing the Structure of Academic Bodies
Centre for Studies in Resources Engineering
Deputy Director; Dual Degree
Departmental Postgraduate Committee
Departmental Undergraduate Committee
Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering
Humanities and Social Sciences
Industrial Design Centre
Joint Entrance Examination
Kanwal Rekhi School of Information Technology
Lecture Theatre
Ministry of Human Resource Development
Non-Academic Staff Association
Postgraduate Academic Performance Evaluation Committee
Postgraduate Programmes Committee
Regional Sophisticated Instrumentation Centre
Sophisticated Analytical Instruments Facility
Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship
School of Management
Undergraduate Academic Performance Evaluation Committee
Undergraduate Programmes Committee
Other Abbreviations
aer b
asme
barc
bhel

bhu
Ca ltech

dst

iim

iti

mit

obc
s asmir a

sc

st

tifr

vjti
Atomic Energy Regulatory Board

American Society of Mechanical Engineers
Bhabha Atomic Research Centre
Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited
Banaras Hindu University
California Institute of Technology
Department of Science and Technology
Indian Institute of Management
Industrial Training Institute
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Other Backward Classes
Silk and Art Silk Mills Research Association
Scheduled Caste
Scheduled Tribe
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute
183

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FOU R DE CADE S AT I IT B OM BAY

RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS

Four Decades at iit Bombay Text copyright S. P. Sukhatme, 2009.

of the material recorded in my interviews. However, there is

my views on what I would like to see happening at the Institute

rm: A very good afternoon to you, Professor Sukhatme. Thank

rm: A very new environment. You have compared it with bhu.

Take my example. I work in the area of thermal sciences. In my

rm: A good sort of training, I suppose, born out of necessity. You

years of my career as far as teaching is concerned. The students

cerned. I think within the limitations he had and the operational

ed a high-level Senate Committee. It was headed by Professor

B.Tech degree programme was a five-year programme then. If

and examinations on the other. After a study of what was being

treated as a service department. During his tenure, Professor

Whether you have more of humanities or less of humanities,

neering Research Institute at Durgapur and left for a five-year

ingly fine person dedicated to the interests of the students, the

lieved that things can only be corrected by disrupting activities,

approval. After that he must have gone to the Chairman of the

r m: Professor Hariharan in his interview has recounted that

So he knew Delhi and the way the Government functions well.

example, repair and maintenance work gets delayed. Year by

rm: Now we could perhaps take up your recollections of some

B.Tech programme or even admit a smaller number of students

year, a course or two may be different. And then in the fourth

School. He had indicated as much earlier. It was near the end of

nology Management and Production Management. The report

Now I come to a person who made an impression on me because

was Professor Parulekar. Like many others at iit Bombay in

mixtures from the k-values of the components. Till that time,

rm: We will now make a departure from the kinds of things we

cal infrastructure which existed. When you do not get adequate

Professor of Mechanical Engineering. That was being written

sps: Well, I am going to need some time now. I have with me

rm: Oh! It was high on your priority list?

to give a number of scholarships, to set up labs and equip class

sps: I think the most important thing that we tried to do was

ously continued, now we were not afraid to receive a crore or two

one of the first quantitative studies on the subject. I remember

the years, the function had become stereotyped. We used to

distinguished service to the cause of the Institute. By starting

Incidentally, it may interest you to know that the phrase Tryst

(r m: The block grant scheme.) I would also like to describe how

der certain headings like maintenance, they would invariably

sps: We did establish an Endowment Fund account and put our

after a little discussion. I have shares here in India which Ill

r m: Last time you had spoken about your experiences during

fessor Phatak and then Professor Narayanamurthy. As Dean of

but there is no point in trying to explain things to them. They

at the iits, the promotion scheme for non-academic staff, etc.

and slogan shouting. It is the bread and butter of unions. They

rm: Was Professor Indiresan the Chairman of the Committee?

competing, they are also cooperating with each other on issues

minutes of our Board meetings were written by hand. This is

rm: So much more efficient.

to have just two or three important items on the agenda, policy

rm: In the course of your duties as Director, there would have

basis. This is a difficult and time-consuming task in itself and I

ON TE ACHING A N D R ESE A RCH

rm: So we now come to the segment of our conversation where

Orient Longmans in 1970. When I look at it now, quite frankly

So far, I have only mentioned the undergraduate course on Heat