Centenary Tribute to Prof Satish Dhawan: The man who steered ISRO into the space trajectory.

Centenary Tribute to Prof Satish Dhawan: The man who steered ISRO into the space trajectory.

Image Credits : ISRO and Wiki Commons.

 The years 2019 and 2020 are special to Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), an institution which has entered the hearts and minds of all Indians. These two years - 2019 and 2020, mark the birth centenary years of the founder of Indian Space program - ISRO, Dr. Vikram Sarabhai and the man who steered and successfully placed the Indian Space program on the right space trajectory - Prof. Satish Dhawan respectively. Prof Satish Dhawan was the key architect who headed ISRO during those early testing and difficult times, which ISRO had to endear, post the sudden and untimely death of its founder, Dr. Sarabhai, on 31st December 1971. Although the foundational seeds for ISRO were sown by Dr. Vikram Sarabhai, it is a matter of fact that the man who is mandatorily to be credited for the current success of ISRO must be Prof. Satish Dhawan, the founding architect of ISRO who succeeded Dr. Sarabhai and steered ISRO to the modern times, where success and ISRO have become quite synonymous. The nation has paid a year long centenary tribute to Dr Vikram Sarabhai, the visionary of Indian Space, however we must not forget that it was Prof Satish Dhawan who lent substance to Dr Sarabhai’s vision and built the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) brick by brick. Today ISRO is rightfully known as an institution of international excellence and scientists from ISRO can rub shoulders with their counterparts in NASA and other reputed space agencies across the world. This day - 25th September, 2020, marks the birth centenary of Prof Satish Dhawan, who was born on this day in Srinagar in 1920 and as ISRO celebrates his birth centenary we as a nation must join them and raise up in reverence to this national hero of ours. 

ISRO, in a befitting tribute, is commemorating the birth centenary of Prof Dhawan by organising a centennial program in his memory, which was beamed live on You Tube this afternoon. The event started with the garlanding of the portrait of Prof Dhawan at the ISRO headquarters by the dignitaries led by ISRO Chairman, Dr. Sivan. Honorable Prime Minister of India shared his message in honour of Prof Dhawan and this message was read by the Chairman ISRO. Other distinguished guests who joined in commemoration of this event and shared their valuable thought included, Dr. Kasturi Rangan, Prof Roddam Narasimh, A S Kiran Kumar, and several other dignitaries including the beloved daughter of Prof Satish Dhawan – Dr. Jyotsna Dhawan.  

 

The best way to begin a tribute to the legendary Satish Dhawan is to recall what the former President of India – Peoples President – Dr. Abdul Kalam and Prof Roddam Narasimh had to say about their ‘Guru’ Prof Satish Dhawan with whom they worked very closely. Dr Kalam worked very closely with Prof Dhawan during his association with ISRO. They said “Professor Dhawan in his professional career has been engineer, teacher, research scientist, technologist, manager, leader and adviser — often all at the same time! His great human qualities, combining intense personal charm with a deep commitment to social values and an extraordinary objectivity in management, have led several generations of students, colleagues and administrators to efforts that they would otherwise not have taken.” In his book “The Wings of Fire” Dr. Kalam has paid flowing tributes to Prof. Dhawan and has quoted several anecdotal references of Prof Dhawan’s par excellence leadership and humane qualities. Coming from the Sainik School background where we were taught that for being a successful officer and a leader, who must command respect and not demand,  “the responsibilities must go from top to bottom and benefits from bottom to top”. Prof Satish Dhawan was an embodiment of this tenet. He stands out in these qualities and therefore it is no wonder that scientists across a broad spectrum, who worked with Satish Dhawan, vouch that Prof Dhawan was a staunch votary and a practitioner of this exemplary leadership qualities. Dr. Kalam, who was the project in charge of the SLV 3 project, which failed in its maiden attempt in August 1979, talks about how the failure and its consequences were directly handled by Prof Dhawan who shielded Dr. Kalam from the preying eyes of the journalists who had assembled to share their pound of flesh by targeting ISRO and Dr Kalam for this failure. Prof Dhawan owned up complete responsibility of the failure and took all those hard and tough questions and brickbats from the media. But then when the SLV 3 was successfully launched immediately thereafter in early 1980, here was Prof Dhawan who ensured that all that glory of success and media highlight on the success of the SLV launch went to Dr. Kalam and he preferred to lie low. Such was his exemplary leadership qualities, which shaped and sculpted the very culture of ISRO.

Similarly, Dr. Kalam quotes other anecdotal reference of Prof Dhavan’s benevolence and true leadership qualities. In one such incident, Dr Kalam says that he was again the beneficiary of Prof Dhawan’s exemplary benevolent leadership quality. He states that he had to attend a mandated meeting in Delhi with Prof Dhawan and others from the Planning Commission, for presenting a roadmap of ISRO and getting it approved. Unfortunately for Kalam, this important and unavoidable meeting coincided with the marriage of his niece. Prof Dhawan on learning why Kalam was quite stressed even after the successful meeting, immediately made arrangements for Kalam to fly from Delhi to Chennai by Indian Airlines and from Chennai to the venue of his niece’s marriage by a special helicopter, which Prof Dhawan had arranged through his contacts in defense. Dr Kalam could make it in time for the marriage of his niece courtesy Prof Dhawan. In another instance, Dr Kalam recalls that the entire team of scientists in ISRO were so very committed to their works, courtesy the infectious work and commitment ethics of their leader Prof Dhawan that almost always most of scientists forgot their commitment to their family, while working on their committed projects. Dr Kalam narrates an incident when Prof Dhawan arranged a car and a person to go to the home of a scientist who had forgotten his family commitment of taking his family on a outing on the birthday of their son. Unfortunately the scientist got so involved with his works that he forgot his sons birthday and his commitment to take him out for a dinner. Prof Dhawan knew of this but did not want to disturb the scientist who was completely engrossed in his works. He therefore preferred to send a car and a person to the scientist home for fulfilling scientists commitment to his family. The family was told that since the scientist was involved in an unavoidable work he has sent the car and the person to take them out for dinner. Interestingly the scientist knew nothing of this and when he was returning home from his office, he remembered his promise, which he thought he had failed to meet and was so very worried. Lo and behold on reaching home, the family thanked him for fulfilling his commitment even when he was so very busy, much to the embarrassment and delight of the scientist. Such was the humane leadership qualities that Prof Dhawan excelled in and therefore it is no wonder that ISRO has inherited this culture and continues to excel in what it does.    

  

Prof. Satish Dhawan was born on 25 September, 1920 in Srinagar to the distinguished parents and his father was a respected Judge, who worked in Lahore in undivided India. Prof Dhawan has an interesting mix of education, which cuts across different disciplines and is a novel mix of sciences, arts, and engineering. Prof Satish Dhawan graduated with a bachelors degree in science in Physics and mathematics from the University of the Punjab in Lahore, (now in Pakistan). He then completed a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering and followed it up with a Master of Arts in English Literature. He then went abroad for pursuing his Master of Science in aerospace engineering, which he completed from the University of Minnesota. He then obtained an Aeronautical Engineering Degree from the famous Caltech - California Institute of Technology, US, which was followed by a double PhD. On completing his doctorate, Satish Dhawan returned back to India in 1951, and joined the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore as a senior scientific officer. His commitment and passion helped him climb up the ladder and pretty soon he became the Dean and head of the department of Aeronautical Engineering at IISC. Under his stewardship, the aeronautical engineering department quickly became the epicenter of experimental fluid dynamics research in India. His achievements in the aeronautical engineering department helped him with a very sharp raise and by 1962, Prof Dhawan became the Director of IISc. He was the youngest person ever to have been appointed to the position of the Director of IISc when he was just 42. This coveted position was previously held by the likes of the great Nobelist Sir C V Raman. Prof Dhawan continued as the institution’s longest-serving director for 19 long years (1962-81) even while he held the additional charge of the Chairman and head of ISRO from 1972 to 1982. 

 

After serving in IISc for nearly two decades (1951-70), Prof Dhawan had taken a sabbatical to Caltech, from where he had completed his double PhD. He was scheduled to spend two years on sabbatical at Caltech during 1971 and 1972 for his committed academic works. However, his plan was short lived. December 31, 1971 was a tragic day for India. The founder and visionary of the Indian Space Programme – Dr Sarabhai died suddenly while holidaying in Trivandrum. Under such compelling circumstances, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi called on Prof Dhawan to return back to India cutting short his sabbatical to take charge of the Indian space program. The circumstances were so very tragic that Dhawan immediately accepted the offer of Mrs. India Gandhi and prematurely ended his sabbatical at Caltech to return back to India. Prof Dhawan, however put two conditions to the PM for his acceptance: that the headquarters of the space program be in Bengaluru and that he be allowed to continue as the Director of IISc. Mrs. Gandhi agreed to both his conditions and Dhawan returned to India in May 1972 to mantle the position of the Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) and to head the Space Commission as the Secretary to the Government of India in the Department of Space, while also retaining his Directorship at IISc. Prof Satish Dhawan shouldered this additional responsibility of heading ISRO but took no  benefits whatsoever from ISRO. He drew a notional salary of Rs 1 for shouldering the responsibility of heading ISRO.

In the early 1970s, India had other social priorities, which among other things included providing ‘Roti, Kapada aur Makan’ to the citizens, the political slogan which had won Mrs Gandhi a major mandate to be elected as the Prime Minister of India. It was also the period when India continued to rely on a scheme called PL 480 under which the Americans sent ship loads of wheat for feeding our countrymen. Therefore, it was quite obvious that during those early years, investment in Indian space program was considered by many as not just a luxury but also a wasteful expenditure. Although Mrs. Indira Gandhi - the PM of India, had personally hand picked Prof Dhawan for the task, yet it was not an easy task to accomplish. There were too many critics who were highly vocal in their criticism of the Indian governments decision to invest in space program. The critics argued that the government had misplaced priorities and that space technology, which was rid with great challenges and failures that are an integral part of Space, is not the right priority for the government to be spending money on. Instead, the critics argued the government must spend on health and education and such other areas. It was under these testing times that Prof Satish Dhawan took charge of the Indian Space program.

One of the first important decision that Prof Dhawan took, after assuming the charge of Indian Space program, was to requisition the services of Dr. Brahm Prakash from the Department of Atomic Energy to head the newly formed Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) at Trivandrum (now Thiruvananthapuram). This was perhaps the best decision, which helped ISRO immensely. Brahm Prakash helped in restructuring the facilities at VSSC into a dynamic structure, which was capable of producing tasked results time and time again. Dhawan worked hand in hand with Brahm Prakash to create the VSSC, which continues to be one of the great technology centres of modern India and has served as the mother institution and has become the birthplace of many subsequent ISRO centres and activities. Interestingly enough Dr APJ Kalam who was working with Aeronautical Development Establishment (ADE), had trained under Prof Satish Dhawan at IISC in designing a hovercraft for the ADE, one of Dr Kalam’s first assignment. Prof Dhawan, however had no connection then with either ISRO or ADE. He had seen the passion and commitment of Dr Kalam when it came to applying himself for the project assigned to him. When Prof Dhawan became the Chairman of ISRO he discussed his plans to requisition the services of Dr Kalam for ISRO, with Brahm Prakash and the duo hand picked A.P.J. Abdul Kalam to lead the project that developed SLV-3, India’s first launch vehicle. They also convinced Prof U.R. Rao to return back to India to head the team that made the country’s first satellite, Aryabhata. When the SLV-3 put a small 40- kg Rohini satellite into orbit in 1980, India truly entered the space age and the major credit for this achievement must go to Prof. Satish Dhawan. 

 

Prof Dhawan was convinced that if the Indian space program is to succeed it needed the continuous patronage of the government. Therefore notwithstanding major opposition from several of his contemporaries and colleagues, he worked towards bringing ISRO under the Government of India and thus created the Department of Space. Knowing well the drawbacks of the government departments, Prof Dhawan had to create a different structure for the functioning of the newly constituted Department of Space. He therefore commissioned a new body called the Space Commission, which enjoyed a separate book of financial powers and this body had a direct link to the Prime Minister. Thus he successfully created specific mechanisms, which could help the newly developed department to address the challenges that ISRO faced. He also ensured that there will be one combined office, which shouldered the responsibility of the offices of Chairman of ISRO, Chairman of the Space Commission and Secretary for the Department of Space and that there will be one person who will head this office, which ensured seamless integration between conceptualization and funding of programmes with delivery of technologies, launchers, satellites and applications. This major policy decision, which he not only conceptualised but also successfully implemented continues to help ISRO in achieving the stiffest challenges even today. His decision to locate the ISRO headquarters away from the national capital, a condition which he had placed before Mrs. Gandhi, has also benefitted ISRO.  Although one of the reasons for Prof Satish Dhawan to position the ISRO headquarters in Bangalore was guided by his passion to be associated with IISc, but there were other reasons too, which made him chose Bangalore. These reasons included the Hindustan Aeronautical Limited HAL and National Aeronautical Laboratory, which were in Bangalore. Prof Dhawan knew that both these institutions will be of immense benefit for ISRO. Prof Dhawan hired staff for ISRO Headquarters, who were young, bright and dedicated professionals, all of who were hand-picked by Dhawan himself. The continuing success that ISRO is now known for stems from this strong foundation, which Prof Dhawan designed and developed. Even today the robustness of this design is visibly seen and appreciated by all the ISRO chairman’s who have succeeded Prof Dhawan. 

Armed with all these foundational edifices, which were developed by Prof Dhawan, ISRO began designing the first Satellite Launch Vehicle – SLV 3, which was indigenously designed and built by ISRO under the leadership of our former President, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam. As discussed earlier in the essay, the first attempt to launch the SLV 3 failed. The improved version of the SLV the Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicle - the ASLV, built by ISRO, also started on a wrong note with many failures. These early failures did not miss the attention of the Indian media and other intelligentsia who went hammer and tongs and highlighted the ‘misplaced priorities’ of the government and its decision to back the ISRO. The media also invented and coined a very catchy phrase to draw the attention of Indian public to oppose the Indian government to support ISRO. They  termed the early launch vehicles of ISRO - the SLV and ASLV experiments, as ‘Sea Loving Vehicles’ and ‘Always Sea Loving Vehicle’, in consideration of the fact that the SLV and the ASLV launch vehicles more often than not failed and ended up in the sea rather than going into the space. It was during those early turbulent years that the grit and determination and the ISRO Culture was incubated and shaped by Prof Satish Dhawan. 

Prof. Dhawan was the first to set up the supersonic wind tunnel in India and pioneer research on relaminarization of separated boundary layer flows, three-dimensional boundary layers and trisonic flows. He also carried out pioneering experiments in rural education, remote sensing and satellite communications. His efforts led to operational systems like INSAT- a telecommunications satellite, IRS - the Indian Remote Sensing satellite and the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), the work horse of ISRO, which has placed India in the league of space faring nations. Most of what ISRO does so well today – the IRS and INSAT satellites with their associated Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) and Geostationary Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) systems — are outcomes of these carefully thought out processes. Prof Dhawan was a great advocate of indigenous development. From the very beginning, he emphasised on the importance of developing indigenous industry and including them in the projects of ISRO. Today, hundreds of industrial units, both in the public and private sectors, manufacture a wide range of space-quality hardware for ISRO to make ISRO ‘Atmanirbhar’.

Today, ISRO receives a national reverence and every Indian is so very appreciative of the achievements of our space scientists, who have made India proud and for this we must credit Prof Satish Dhawan whose exemplary leadership and resilience to stay on course, even under adverse conditions, has made this possible. ISRO now has developed an extraordinary resilience to face any challenge even in the face of a few setbacks here and there, thanks to the early culture and outlook that was shaped by Prof Dhawan. It is therefore befitting that following his death in Jan 2002, the Indian satellite launch centre at Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh, has been renamed as the Prof. Satish Dhawan Space Centre - SHAR. 

Courtesy the ISRO culture, which Prof Dhawan helped in establishing, ISRO today is able to achieve some of the most eye catching successful space programs that have caught the attention, not only of all Indians but also the global community including space experts in NASA and the European Space Agency. These space missions include among others ; Chandrayaan 1 and 2 and the Mars Orbiter Mission, which India could successfully launch in its maiden attempt and that too at frugal cost. These space missions and so also several other successful missions of ISRO have not only inspired many young people and given the nation a sense of justifiable pride in the achievements of the Indian space programme, but it has also provided the nation its rightful place in the international space arena. Amidst the euphoria surrounding such glamorous space successes and events, on this special day, which happens to be the birth centenary of Prof Satish Dhawan, it is our rightful duty that we remember the gentle yet a colossus leader who made all this possible - Prof Satish Dhawan. 

It must also not be forgotten that all through this period, when Prof Satish Dhawan was heading and steering the ISRO, he also served as the Director of the Indian Institute of Science, the position he held from 1962 to 1981. Dhawan loved teaching and research. Perhaps it was his love for teaching that compelled him to pose a condition to the Honourable Prime Minister that he will continue to be associated with IISc and that ISRO must be headquartered in Bangalore and not Delhi, which could have been a natural choice. Dhawan, notwithstanding his immense and stellar contributions to ISRO, always believed that his most productive years were spent at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, which always remained his first and greatest love. Dhawan during his nearly two decades of service as the director IISc, transformed the institution and he also managed to bring some fresh faces to IISc prominent among them include the great Prof GN Ramachandran and Prof CNR Rao. He established several new areas of multidisciplinary research at IISc. 

Prof Dhawan had an extraordinary interest in nature and in particular he admired the flights of the birds. This passion for observing and falling in love with bird flights led him to undertake a comprehensive study the ‘flight of birds’. He was often found roaming around the Pulicat Lake, Nelapetu and other bird sanctuaries near ISRO’s Sriharikota Range, which were frequented by lot many birds. His hobby or a casual interest in observing birds flight turned into a professional study, which resulted in the publication of a classic monograph called ’Bird Flight’. In the seventy plus pages article, which he published in 1991, Dhawan writes humbly in his preface : “I lay little claim to originality and acknowledge my debt to the many distinguished researchers on animal flight who have made the subject a new branch of science. I am no less indebted to the birds...”. Many of the drawings of birds that appear in this monograph were sketched by Dhawan himself.

The handsome and elegant Prof Dhawan had an extraordinary impact on all those who he interacted with, which he never seemed to realise. His impact was so very profound that most of them ended up doing whatever he wanted them to do. Prof Dhawan has received innumerable awards and accolades and primary among them include the Padma Bhushan and Padma Vibhushan awards from the Government of India, fellowships of all the Academies of Sciences in India and several from outside the country. He is also the recipient of the Indira Gandhi Award for National Integration and the distinguished alumnus award from the Indian Institute of Science and Caltech. Prof. Dhawan after serving the nation for more than eight decades left for his heavenly abode on 3rd January 2002. The Indian Academy of Sciences, of which he served as the President, in one of its publications ‘Resonance’, has carried a befitting tribute to Prof Dhawan in its October 2003 issue where stalwarts like Dr Abdul Kalam, Dr Kasturi Rangan, Prof Roddam Narasimha and others have written flowing tributes to Prof Satish Dhawan. Today when the nation is celebrating the birth centenary of Prof Satish Dhawan, which was kick started by ISRO this afternoon,  it is time for all of us to raise in reverence for this great nation builder, who selflessly and tirelessly worked towards our nation building. 

May you continue to rest in peace in the heavenly abode which is now home to you Prof Dhawan and may you continue to inspire generation of youngsters and may several of them tread the path which you have shown. 

Sainik School Bijapur Celebrates its 57th Foundation Day - Admiral Srikanth, our Classmate, was the Chief Guest.

 Sainik School Bijapur Celebrates its 57th Foundation Day - Admiral Srikanth, our Classmate, was the Chief Guest.

This day the - 16th September, marks an important day in the annals of the Sainik School Bijapur and I am privileged to be one the proud alumnus of this school, popularly referred to as SSBJ. It was on his historic day in 1963 that the Sainik School Bijapur was founded and ever since, this day is commemorated as the ‘Foundation Day’ and this year it is a special day for our batch - the batch of 1970-77, since our very own classmate Vice Admiral Srikant was honoured to be the Chief Guest for this years Foundation day. I am therefore motivated to write about our school SSBJ.

Before I attempt to sketch our school, permit me to start with a quiz question for all the readers. The Commanding Officer who led the final assault of the famous Tololing Capture that paved the path for the historic Kargil victory for the Indians during the Kargil conflict in 1999, the Revolutionary founder of the low cost Deccan Airlines, the current Corps Commander of Kashmir -  an extremely sensitive and a prestigious position, the CEO of National Rainfed Area Authority who is also the architect for the scheme for the doubling of farmers income, the Head of the erstwhile Karnatak Special Task Force who along with his men were ambushed by the Sandalwood mafia - Veerappan, but managed to survive his fatal bullet injury, and lastly the eminent Advocate who is currently defending Rhea Chakravarti and is hogging media headlines, have a common connect. Any guesses, what the connect could be? Yes you are absolutely right all the six of them - Col Ravindranath, Captain Gopinath, Lt Gen B S Raju, Ashok Dalwai, IAS, Gopal Hosur, IPS and Satish Maneshinde, respectively, are the alumni of our Sainik School Bijapur, whose 57th Foundation day was celebrated in a new norm. And our motto - Ajeet Hai Abheet Hai, reverberates in the hearts and minds of all the alumni - the Ajeets, of this school each day and every day of their life. Incidentally Honourable Pranab Mukherjee, the former President of India, was the chief guest for the Golden Jubilee Celebrations of the founding of our school. 

I am blessed to be among those very few privileged alumnus of this prestigious residential school - the Sainik School Bijapur (SSBJ), in the state of Karnataka. There are a chain of Sainik School across India and the importance of these schools for the nation can best be contextualised with the recent events, which hogged national headlines - the Rafale fighter planes and the martyrdom of our brave soldiers in the Galwan Valley. Four of the five pilots who flew the Rafale fighter planes from France to India are the products - former students, of the Sainik Schools. One of them, Wing Commander Arun Kumar, is from our school, Sainik School Bijapur.  The Commanding officer of the Bihar Regiment - Col. Santosh Babu, who was martyred along with 21 of his men in a dastardly act by the Chinese PLA in the Galwan Valley, is also an alumnus of the Sainik School Korakunda, Andhra Pradesh.

The Sainik School scheme was launched by the government of India (Ministry of Defence) in 1961 to bridge the gap that existed in the rank of the military officers from  certain sections of the Indian society.  The scheme was conceived by V. K. Krishna Menon, the then Defence Minister of India, with an aim to rectify the imbalance caused by religion, class, and creed among the Officer cadre of the Indian Military and to prepare students for entry into the National Defence Academy (NDA). This scheme was a God sent scheme to most of the lower and middle class parents across India, who aspired for giving the best of education to their wards at almost no cost. I am one of the beneficiaries of the vision of Krishna Menon. My father, a primary school teacher, with a large family (seven children), could never have afforded education in such extraordinary schools had it not been for the free scholarship, which covered all our expenses. During my time, when I joined the Sainik School Bijapur in class 5, in the year 1970, at an young age of 9 years, our education was completely free and we had a scholarship of ₹ 2400/- per annum, which was quite substantial, later it was enhanced to ₹ 4800.  Most of the Sainik Schools, during our time, provided 100% scholarship to the students who were selected through entrance exam. These residential schools were meant primarily for boys ( fortunately they are now open for the girls as well) and were aimed at imparting the best of quality education with majorly military bias. 

Every Sainik School is affiliated to the Central Board of Secondary Education, New Delhi and has a common curriculum, system of selections and examinations. The primary aim of the Sainik Schools are to prepare boys academically, physically and mentally for entry into the National Defence Academy, Khadakvasla (Pune) and also to be the leaders in other walks of life. Currently there are about 31 Sainik schools in India where an estimated 3000 students join every year. The entry into the Sainik Schools is through a competitive entrance exam for admission to 6th class and few for 9th class. Every year, entrance tests are conducted all over India for entry into any one of the 31 Sainik Schools and over 8-10 Lakhs children, from across India, appear for the Sainik School Entrance Exams. The premiership of the Sainik schools can best be seen when we compare the competition for entry into these schools to that of the internationally acclaimed Indian Institute of Technologies - the IITs - in India. There are a total of 23 IITs and for the session 2019, they offered 11289 seats. The number of students who appeared in the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for the entrance test for the IITs is around 10 lakhs each year, which means the competition for entry into the Sainik schools is as stiff or more stiff than the IITs.

Although the scheme for starting of the Sainik school was announced in 1961 but it took two years for the Sainik School to start functioning in Karnataka. The first choice for the location of this prestigious school in the state of Karnataka (then the state of Mysore) was obviously the city of Mysore itself, the capital of the Wodeyar kingdom, which incidentally was fairly well developed in comparison with parts of the state primarily due to the extraordinary works done by the Nation Builder Deewan of Mysore - the legendary Sir Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya. Fortunately for many of us, particularly from the relatively less developed north Karnataka region including least developed districts in the Hyderabad Karnataka area - Raichur, Gulbarga and Bidar, which were under the Hyderabad Nizam, that one of the political leaders of North Karnataka, Shri S R Kanthi expressed his strong views that this school should not be established in the already developed city of Mysore and instead must be located in the lesser developed city and thus was chosen the city of Bijapur for housing the prestigious Sainik School in the then state of Mysore. 

The SSBJ started its operations on this historic day, 16th September, 1963, from the make shift shelters in a small corner of the Vijaya College Campus in Bijapur. The management of the college were kind enough to lend a small section of their building where the facilities like the morning assembly of students, library and the classrooms for the students were housed. The foundation stone for the SSBJ was laid by Smt. Indira Gandhi on 2nd July 1963 and the school started its operation from this make shift building on 16th September, 1963. Courtesy the local political class in Bijapur and the visionary, Shri S R Kanthi and others, land measuring 406 acres was chosen for permanently housing the SSBJ in the current campus on the Athani Road. The students who were initially enrolled in the SSBJ in the Vijaya College campus moved to this new site in November 1966, and this new school campus, where we joined, was formally opened on 17th December, 1966 by Dr Zakir Hussain, Vice President of India. 

The SSBJ, spread across a vast campus of 400 plus acres, provides an outstanding infrastructural facilities, which include among others the best os sporting grounds in the country, athletics, swiming and gymnastics, horse stable, International quality cadets mess, six houses named after the six dynasties that ruled the state of Karnataka - Chalukya, Hoysala, Adilshahi, Vijayanagar, Wodeyar and Rashtrakutas ( there were five when we joined) where around 500 plus cadets are housed and innumerable other facilities that help students hone their intellectual, artistic, creative, scientific and to top it all, military skills. The rigours in which the cadets are trained from a very young age helps them live that often spoken adage - when the going gets tough, the tough gets going. Every batch of the alumni of the SSBJ will have scores of tales to tell including some of the most heroic acts of their batchmates who have joined and are serving in the army and so has it been for our batch where several of our batchmates have joined the defence forces and Vice Admiral Srikant, who was given this years honours to be the chief guest of the Foundation day ceremony of SSBJ, is continuing to serve the Indian Navy. One of our batch mate, Col Ajit Bhandarkar, Shaurya Chakra awardee, made the supreme sacrifice in service of the nation in the true spirit of our motto Ajeet Hai Abheet Hai. Incidentally two years back all of our classmates joined hands in paying our respect to Col Bhandarkar. As a mark of our remembrance, our batch came together to construct a separate entrance dwar, the Ajit Dwar, in memory of our classmate Col. Ajit Bhandarkar, Shaurya Chakra, who was martyred in service while fighting the terrorists in Kashmir. I have separately written a blog where I have described about the valour, which he exemplified while making that supreme sacrifice before he was martyred. 

Ever since the starting of our school - the SSBJ students are referred to as Ajeets, whose camaraderie remains exemplary and the umbilical connect that each of the Ajeets have with other is a given and remains for life long. Every student is given a roll number and is attached to a particular house, when they join the school and this roll number and the house, to which they belong, stays with them for life and the fighting spirit to win and bring laurels to their house and school is legendary. Our batch - the batch of 1970-77, was perhaps the largest at the time of joining (around 96), and our roll numbers were from 491 to 587. The batch consisted people from most parts of Karnataka, including few from neighbouring state of Maharashtra and a handful from North India as well. Ours was the first batch to join the fifth house in school - the Wodeyar house. The other four houses included the Chalukya, Hoysala, Adilshahi  and Vijaynagar. Our school was witnessing widespread construction when we joined and most of the buildings were on the verge of completion, which included the Wodeyar house, swimming pool, auditorium, Gymnasium and the horse stable. Our batch was lucky that most of these facilities were completed and thrown open for use by the cadets within one year of our joining, enabling us to enjoy every single of these facilities from almost the very start of our school days. I have already written about our batch in a separate blog and will not repeat it here. 

I am giving  herewith a you tube video link at the end of the article to the celebration of the 57th Foundation Day of our school and from the 37th minute onwards you can listen to the speech of our classmate Vice Admiral Srikant and I am happy to share a brief bio of admiral Srikant. Vice Admiral Srikant is an alumnus of the Sainik School Bijapur who studied from 1970-77 and was in the Hoysalas House. Srikanth was an all rounder and besides his interest and achievements in academics he also actively took part in school Drama and was very good in sports.  He was always adventurous and while at school he used to catch snakes alive and gave it to biology labs. Never say quits was his great attribute. He was also declared medically unfit post his SSB interview by the Command Hospital in Bangalore, which examined him medically. However he challenged this report by travelling all alone to Delhi where he was once again medically examined and declared fit and rest is history. He joined the NDA and rose to a very high level rank of Vice Admiral a three star General. 

Srikanth served as the Flag Officer, Submarines which again was a crucial position which he held. Srikant has also served in the Indian High Commission in Islamabad, which is considered as one of the most prestigious postings for any military officer. He has also served as a naval attache to the Governor of Karnataka. Srikant has  commanded the destroyer, Indian Naval Ship Delhi. He also held many prestigious Command and Staff Appointments including Command of Submarine Shalki and Indian Naval Ship Ranvijay. His shore appointments include that of Deputy Director, Submarine Operations and Naval Intelligence. He served as Naval Advisor (Islamabad) and Project Manager, Advanced Technology Vessel Program, New Delhi. Srikant held the most prestigious position of the Commandant of  The National Defence College (NDC), Delhi a pioneering institute of its type in Asia. 

On this occasion of the 57th Foundation Day of SSBJ, on behalf of all my batchmates and so also all the Ajeets - our respected seniors and fellow Ajeets,  I take this opportunity to place on record our profound respect to all our teachers and other stakeholders of the Sainik School Bijapur who have been responsible in shaping our careers and ensuring that all of us succeed in life. 

Long live SSBJ and all other Sainik Schools and continue to shape men out of boys who can contribute to nation building.

Ajeet Hain Abheet Hain

Jai Hind and Jai Hind  ki sena. 

https://youtu.be/R3D5tPOQIYQ

Alan Turing - Father of Artificial Intelligence & a Victim of Archaic Law, A Tribute

 2nd Anniversary of Decriminalising Archaic Law (Section 377 of IPC) : Remembering Alan Turing,  the Victim of this Law.

Images : courtesy Wiki Commons, Nehru Science Centre and Turing website.

This day, two years ago, 6th September 2018, a historic and an unprecedented judgment was unanimously passed by the the five member bench (including the CJI) of the Supreme Court of India, which  decriminalised the archaic law - Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. The hype and activism leading up to the judgment day was palpable and therefor it was not wonder that this judgment was covered in the media headlines in a sensation manner. “ INDEPENDENCE DAY - II” hailed the front page headlines of the Times of India. The significance of this judgement can be fathomed by contextualising its impact from the LGBT community - “not an aberration but a variation” (the words so astutely used by Justice Indu Malhotra) -  points of view.

Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code was introduced in 1861, during the British rule in India. Like the British Buggery Act of 1533, section 377 made sexual activities "against the order of nature" illegal. This legislation was drafted by Thomas Macaulay around 1838 and it was brought into effect in 1860 in light of the ‘Sepoy Mutiny’ - the  First War of Independence, 1857. The Section 377 of the IPC in British India was modelled on the Buggery Act 1533, which was enacted under the reign of King Henry VIII. This law defined ‘buggery’ as an unnatural sexual act against the will of God and man. It was only after seventy one years of the British leaving India and India attaining independence that this law was archived. Speaking of this law I am motivated to once again write about an extraordinary genius -  Alan Turing - who had an innate connect with India. He was one of those who was at the receiving end of this archaic law. Alan Turing has an innate connect with India - his father served in India and so did his grand father - mother’s father.

Alan Mathison Turing, the World War II hero and a great mathematical genius and the father of modern computers, belonged to the LGBT community and was therefore at the receiving end of the Section 377. He committed suicide leaving behind the half eaten poison ridden apple behind. Innovative, forward thinking and brave in the face of prejudice, Alan Turing was an ‘enigma’ in his own life time. Science was an extra-curricular passion for Alan, which led him to become an undergraduate at King's College, Cambridge – and it was here that homosexuality became a definitive part of his identity.

Alan Turing’s sexual orientation haunted him all through his life. Not withstanding his WW II heroic contributions, he was publicly ostracised, castigated and put through the most insulting humiliation of chemical castration to avoid imprisonment. The genius Turing could not handle such humiliation and unfortunately took the extreme step of poisoning himself to death with cyanide on the 7th of June, 1954, at a very young age of just 42 years. It is however unclear whether he consumed cyanide laced apple by intent or by accident. The half eaten apple lying by the side of his dead body could not conclusively indicate the death was by intent or accident. However, the half eaten apple, which was lying by the side of his body, has gone down in history as the most valued brand in the form of an unwitting logo of Apple, the company which epitomises the vision of Turing. Whether Steve Jobs the Apple founder who was instrumental in introducing the famous logo for his company was guided by the incident of Turing’s death will also continue to be another ‘enigma’, a term which is inextricably linked to Alan Turing. 

The Turing family including, Alan Turing, have had a historic linkage and tryst with India, the association of which dates back to the early 18th century. Several members of the Turing family, from Scotland, served the British empire in India and Robert Turing was perhaps the first to do so dating back to 1729. Alan Turing also had a very strong India connection. Alan’s father, Julius Turing, passed the Indian Civil Service (ICS) exams in 1896 and joined his duty at Madras (now Chennai) in the erstwhile Madras presidency. Alan’s mother, Ethel too has an Indian connection. Julius Turing, Alan’s father, married Ethel, his mother, in 1907. She was the daughter of Edward Waller Stoney, the chief engineer of the Madras Railway Company. Stoney, designed the Tungabhadra bridge, located in my state - the state of Karnataka - and wrote treatises on mountain railways and bridges. He made quite a fortune in India including building a bungalow at Coonoor near Ooty, which incidentally has been bought by Nandan Nilekani - the cofounder of Infosys and a key architect of the UID - Adhar.

Alan’s parents, Julius and Ethel spent a lot of their time in India, and their first son John was delivered at the Stoney bungalow. It is also believed that Ethel conceived Alan Turing in Orissa, then a part of Madras Presidency. She however, delivered the baby boy -Alan- in England on June 23, 1912.

Alan was a precocious child. He received his distinguished degree in 1934, which was followed by a Fellowship of King's College in 1935 and a Smith's Prize in 1936. He also spent two years at Princeton University enrolled as a graduate student. His remarkable talent came to the fore when British joined the war and Turing took up full-time work at the wartime cryptanalytic headquarters, Bletchley Park.

Turing was an extraordinarily genius mathematician who helped in cracking the enigmatic German codes. During World War II, Turing's work at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire helped Allied Forces to read secret German messages sent by their Enigma machines. For years, the efforts of thousands of codebreakers, working in small huts in the grounds of a large mansion somewhere in Buckinghamshire, was kept as one of the biggest secrets of the Second World War.

The modern day computers and a range of associated technologies and processing devices - that we are inextricably surrounded with - are operated by coded instructions. This cardinal principle, which we now take for granted, was a revolutionary contribution from Alan Turing. He introduced this abstract idea in his publication, “On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem” in the year 1936. Turing referred to these devices as 'computing machines'. However the American logician Alonzo Church called them the “Turing machines”. Alan’s publication pioneered the idea, which are essential to the modern computer—the concept of controlling computers and other computing machine's by means of a program of coded instructions stored in the machine's memory. This work had a profound influence on the development, in the 1940s, of the electronic stored-program digital computer. Most historians of computers often over look the contributions and influence of Alan in the early development of the electronic digital computers and credit only Neumann for this development. 

The end of WW II enabled Turing to shift his focus on his other passion, long distance running. He developed his strength in cross-country running with frequent long distance training and top-rank competition in amateur athletics. He would shock his colleagues with his timing and often ran to his scientific meetings, arriving before his colleagues, who travelled by public transport. But for injury, he was a serious contender to be the part of the British team in the 1948 Olympic Games. He was never secretive about his sexual orientation. His outspokenness costed him dearly.

Turing was working at the University of Manchester when he developed a homosexual relationship with a 19 year old, Arnold Murray. Turing was arrested and was put to trial on March 31, 1952, after the police learned of his sexual relationship with the young Arnold. He was later prosecuted for homosexuality, a criminal offence in Britain. During sentencing, a judge offered Turing the choice of prison or “organo-therapy,” a type of chemical castration via estrogen injection that killed a man’s sex drive. He chose the later. Turing's conviction resulted in his loosing the security clearance and therefore he had to stop work at Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the post-war successor to Bletchley Park. All this played on the psyche of Turing and he became highly depressed and perhaps it was this depression, which led him to his death in 1954. A modest obituary spoke of Alan as a pioneer and a creator of the new electronic calculating machines. He liked long-distance running, chess and gardening, and nurtured an idea that “electrical computators” would one day “do something akin to thinking.” No one at that time could fathom the true nature of Turing’s life and genius. 

Fast forward to 2020. Turing’s profound idea is now central to all modern day computers and other thinking devices, which have ushered us in to the “so called” era of “4th Industrial Revolution”. It is for this reason that we at the Nehru Science Centre have immortalised Alan Turing by crediting him to be the father of modern computers and artificial intelligence and have commissioned his statue in the centre of the “Machined to Think” gallery that provides a birds eye view in to the futuristic technologies that Alan envisaged, which include Robotics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR and AR), the Internet of Things etcetera. 

While we celebrate the second anniversary of the scrapping of the archaic Law - Section 377- by the honourable Supreme Court of India, let us spare a thought for Alan Turing and several other unheard of people who were at the receiving end of this most inhuman law. The homosexual Alan Turing, in flesh and blood, has gone but his unprecedented contributions to the field of artificial intelligence and computers,  will continue to keep him alive through the machined to think devices and innumerable other Artificial Intelligence gadgets that have now become integral to our modern lives.

Long live Alan Turing. 

Dr. Saroj Ghose @ 85 : the Bhishm Pitamah of Science Museums/Centres in India

Saroj Ghose @ 85 : the Bhishm Pitamah of Science Museums/Centres in India

Images : Courtesy Wiki Commons and NCSM.

This day - the 1st September 2020, marks the 85th birth anniversary of Dr. Saroj Ghose, the founding Director General of National Council of Science Museums (NCSM), the premier scientific autonomous institution, which governs most Science Centres and Museums across India including our Centre - Nehru Science Centre, Mumbai (NSCM). Saroj Ghose was born on 1st September, 1935 in the very year in which Bharat Ratna, the Honourable former President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee was born. Incidentally Dr Ghose was quite close to Pranab da who departed for his heavenly abode yesterday and was cremated with full state honours in Delhi in front of the grieving nation. I shall be writing a separate eulogy for the one and only Pranab da, this blog however is a tribute to Dr. Saroj Ghose on his 85th birth anniversary. Age may have caught with Dr. Ghose, but his unending energy, commitment and passion to continue to serve the Museum community and other cultural institutions in in general and the Science Museum / Centres in particular, remain unperturbed. The words of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who famously said, ‘na tired na retired’ so vividly are applicable to the octogenarian, Dr. Ghose, who remains very active even today. The COVID-19 pandemic and the passing away of one of the doyens of Indian political system -  Bharat Ratna, the Honourable Shri Pranab Mukherjee, former President of India, has restrained NCSM from celebrating his 85th birth anniversary in the manner, which beholds his outstanding stature.

 

Dr. Ghose, one of the founding fathers of NCSM - the preeminent one at that - has been an inspiration for most of us the current Directors of NCSM and it is under his tutelage and mentorship that we have grown up and have been indoctrinated with his undying spirit, passion and commitment to serve our organisation. Dr Ghose, the only child of his parents, was born on 1st September 1935. He was a precocious child who completed his high school and matriculation from Narkeldanga High School with record distinction and highest marks. He holds an extraordinary academic career and graduated as an Electronics Control Engineer from the Jadavpur University and immediately thereafter decided to take the path less treaded by engineers - a career in museums. He joined the Birla Industrial and Technological Museum (BITM) - our mother Museum, as a Technical Officer in 1958. Back then graduate engineers were in great demand and had excellent career opportunities not just in private sectors but also in the public sectors, which were coming up across the country under the category of ‘Temples of Modern India’, a term that Pandit Nehru had coined for these Public Sector Companies, which were hiring the best of minds from the engineering background and offered the best of remuneration. The BITM was yet to open its doors to the public, when Dr. Ghose chose to join the museum. The genesis of starting a public science and technology museum - the BITM, in India has an interesting history which is inextricably linked to Dr Ghose.

 

Bharat Ratna, Dr. B.C. Roy, the then Chief Minister of West Bengal, after visiting the Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany, was so impressed with the Museum that he envisaged building a similar museum back home in India and Calcutta (Kolkatta now) was his obvious choice. Dr. Roy, approached Ghanashyam Das Birla - the benevolent industrialist with nationalistic approach, for donating a suitable plot of building and land for establishing a Museum on the lines of the famous Deutsches Museum.  The Birla’s were known for their philanthropy, particularly in the field of education. G.D. Birla willingly agreed to part with the 19 A Gurusaday Road plot of land and their existing building to Dr. Roy for the establishment of the said museum on its premises. Dr. Roy called up then Prime Minister, Pandit Nehru, and sought his help to support his initiative for starting a world class technology museum in Calcutta. The Prime Minister of India, who also happens to be the President of the premier scientific research institution – the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) society, assigned the task of developing the best possible ‘Technology Museum’ to the then Director General of CSIR, Prof M. S. Thacker. Dr. Thacker with support from Dr. Amalendu Bose established the BITM and it was during this period of its development that Dr. Ghose joined the CSIR team of Dr. Bose and worked as a Technical Officer in the development of the BITM. The BITM was formally opened to the public on 2nd May 1959. Ever since BITM, where Dr Ghose spent most part of his service, has played a pivotal role in the Science Museum movement in India and it has served as the mother museum for our organisation - the National Council of Science Museums (NCSM). BITM, therefore, has an extraordinary connect with Dr Ghose and other NCSM employees, particularly those who started their career in NCSM from the precincts of BITM, including Dr Ghose and yours truly. One of the main attractive features of BITM is that it is housed in the historic and architecturally beautiful building, on 19A Gurusaday Road. This historic building with its majestic elevation with a porch and a pediment that is a mishmash of various European architectural styles, was constructed by N. Guinn & Company in 1922. It was in this historic building that Dr. Saroj Ghose started his career, working under the then Curator Museums - Dr Amalendu Bose.

 

Dr. Saroj Ghose, while in service at BITM, completed his Masters - MS in Control Engineering - from the Harvard University and during his stay in US, he was actively engaged with research work at the Smithsonian Institution from September 1964 to January 1965. It is this connect with the Smithsonian institution, which motivated him to pursue his Doctoral work at the National Museum of American History under the guidance of Dr. Bernard Finn, Curator of the Electricity Collections at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Washington DC, and an expert in history of electrical engineering, communication including telegraphy and submarine. Dr. Ghose obtained his PhD from the Jadavpur University. As soon as Dr. Ghose returned back to India from the US in 1965, the then Curator Museums, Dr. Amalendu Bose decided to shift to Bangalore from Calcutta, where CSIR had just completed and opened the second museum - Visvesvaraya Industrial & Technological Museum (VITM). The Visvesvaraya Museum was developed as a centenary tribute to the living centenarian - the legendary Sir M. Visvesvaraya, in Bangalore. Before moving out from Calcutta, Dr. Bose handed over the charge of BITM to the young Dr. Ghose. 

 

At the age of 29 years, Dr. Ghose shouldered the high responsibilities of the BITM. It was during this period that Dr. Ghose realised that the benefits of the BITM, which by then had very well established, is reaching only to the people of Calcutta and that too mostly the well to do section of society. He, therefore, conceived a bold and ambitious plan to try and take science to the door steps of the people who find it difficult to visit BITM. He prepared a well researched and thought out plan, which went on to receive high acclaim from UNESCO, for  the first Mobile Science Exhibition (MSE), which on its approval from the DG CSIR was launched by BITM  on November 17, 1965 at the Ramakrishna Mission School-Narendrapur in Kolkata. Subsequently, the MSE buses became a trade mark of BITM and NCSM and these buses travel across the state of Bengal and India to different schools in remote areas. The extraordinary importance of this remarkable idea can be appreciated from the fact that during the first 100 days of the NDA-2 Government, under PM Shri Narendra Modi, NCSM launched 20 new MSE buses in September 2019, which are an addition to the 23 existing fleet of MSE buses. Millions of students from different parts of the country - small and medium towns and villages, have been benefitted with this programme, which takes science to the doorsteps of the people and the genesis for this profound idea stemmed from the vision of Dr. Ghose. The aim of the programme was to promote learning of science and cultivation of scientific temper among the rural masses.

 

The first two museums under CSIR came up in quick succession in 1959 and 1965 in Calcutta and a Bangalore respectively but then the plan for the next museum, proposed to be set up in Bombay (now Mumbai) received major setbacks. What started as a plan to establish a Mafatlal Museum of Science and Technology, for which the Industrialist had pledged land and money, did not materialise and finally at the behest of Dr. Saroj Ghose, Dr. Amalendu Roy, agreed to the proposal of Dr. Ghose to receive a garbage dumping ground in Worli for the establishment of a Science Museum in Mumbai. Tonnes of city garbage had piled up in this area and the very thought of working in this god forsaken space appeared to be daunting and filled with major health hazards for those who adventured to take up this challenge. By then there were some other administrative issues, which cropped up and the authorities of CSIR rightly or wrongly debated if the Museums could be a part of the CSIR and not surprisingly decided that the museums don’t come under the objectives of CSIR. A task force was, therefore, constituted by the CSIR and the government to report on this issue and as expected the task force recommended that the museums be detached from CSIR and a separate autonomous body be formed, which could work under the aegis of the Department of Education. Thus the two existing museums BITM and VITM and the project in Mumbai were all clubbed under a new scientific institution, National Council of Science Museums (NCSM), which was formed in 1978. NCSM is currently functioning under the Ministry of Culture, Government of India. The separation of the two museums and the staff from the parent body CSIR and the formation of NCSM came up with their own shares of opportunities and agony leading to unprecedented strikes by employees besides other administrative issues. This was one of the most turbulent period through which the newly formed NCSM was passing through. It was during this trying times that Dr. Ghose came up with yet another innovative idea of developing a open air science park at Mumbai. The plan for the development of the major Science Museum / Centre in Mumbai envisaged that it could only be completed latest by middle of the 1980s considering the massive construction of the building and developing exhibits and models to fill up that building. Therefore, the suggestion of Dr. Ghose to start a science park in the first phase, before the main science centre project, was appreciated by Dr. Bose.

 

Unfortunately the Mumbai project, which had started some time in the middle 70s  was already inordinately delayed and therefore urgent action to fast forward the project was a dying need and this need was accentuated after the formation of a NCSM. Any further delay in the project would not have gone down well with the CSIR and the Ministry. It was during this period and the subsequent formation of NCSM that the new idea of Dr. Ghose to develop the project in Mumbai in two phases - first phase to be developed as a open air science park and to keep that facility open to the public and in the second phase to develop the main project of completion of the massive building and development of exhibitions, appeared exciting and Dr. Bose, the Director of NCSM, gave a go ahead for the work on the science park. 

 

The open air Science Park of the Nehru Science Centre, Mumbai (NSCM) a brain child of Dr. Ghose, was a trendsetter for the Science Museum movement not just in India but globally. The first two Government science museums in the country -  BITM and VITM, did not have an open air Science Park, which is now one of the major attractions of most science centres of NCSM including the Nehru Science Centre, Mumbai. Incidentally the science park in Mumbai, spread across six acres of land, was inaugurated on 22nd December 1979. The park remained open to the visitors while the work for the main Science Centre continued. The Nehru Science Centre was formally dedicated to the nation on 10th November 1985, by the then Prime Minister of India, Shri Rajiv Gandhi. The science park of NSCM is the first such science parks in India and most likely it is also the world’s first science park, which has inspired other science centres in US to adopt this unique concept. Incidentally the UNESCO recognised this new concept as an unique informal science learning ambience and the open air science park of Mumbai was featured majorly in one of the UNESCO publications. The science park has several hands on outdoor science exhibits demonstrating fundamental principles of science in mechanics, levers, pendulum, optics, etc. Adding to the attraction of the science park are the vintage locomotive vehicles (precious artefacts) of yesteryears - the Railway locomotive engines (steam and electric), Horse drawn Tram Car carriage, Tramcar, HAL HF 24 Marut Fighter aircraft and the Steam Waggon. These precious historic artefacts were acquired by the NSCM from different sources in India in which Dr Ghose was actively involved. Even to this day the science park of NSCM continues to attract and appeal to a very large audience. The dumping ground of Worli was transformed into the current stage of a lush green area with science park courtesy the vision of Dr Ghose. The proposed Science Museum Metro station, which will connect Colaba to Bandra must owe its credit to the science park project which started in 1979 from the vision and idea of Dr. Saroj Ghose, during the International Year of Children. 

 

Dr. Amalendu Bose retired as the first Director of NCSM in early 1979 and by then NCSM had 3 units under its wing - BITM, VITM and Sreekrishna Science Centre, Patna. Dr. Ghose took the reins of NCSM under the most turbulent times as stated above. There were plenty of issues of staff members which was a result of separation of NCSM from its parent body - the CSIR. Staff agitation was the most common feature in Calcutta, Bangalore and so also in Mumbai during this period. Dr. Ghose had to immediately address these nagging staff problems including union problems, which the staff had formed with allayed fears in Calcutta and Bangalore. He also had to prove to the authorities in the Department of Education that separation from CSIR was beneficial not only to the staff of NCSM but also to the country at large. Dr Ghose had no time to rest and had to plunge into the expansion mode while also addressing administrative problems that plagued NCSM. He started a new concept of setting up Science Centres in different scales, which he classified as National level Centres (in metropolitan cities) Regional level Centres (in state capitals) and District level Centres in small towns and district headquarters. The massive success of the opening of the Nehru Science Centre, Mumbai by the then PM, Shri Rajiv Gandhi, who was very excited to see the NSCM, helped Dr. Ghose not only to establish a personal rapport with the then HRD Minister Mr. Narasimha Rao but it also helped him in upgrading his status from Director, NCSM to DG, NCSM, the position of which he occupied from 1986 until his retirement in 1997 (post the two years extension that he got post his superannuation). 

 

From three units under NCSM, which Dr. Ghose inherited, he scaled up the science museum movement at a rapid pace. He developed two National Level Science Centres in Mumbai and Delhi, both opened by the Honourable Prime Ministers the later in January 1992 by Shri Narasimha Rao. He developed many more Regional Science Centres including two Centres in the west zone at Nagpur and Bhopal and several others. By the time he retired, Dr. Ghose had scaled up the achievements of NCSM from 3 units in 1978-79 to 20 units in 1997. He conceived another major idea to start a massive Science City, the scale of which he envisaged must be much bigger than the four existing national level Science Centres and the result was the establishment of the Science City in Kolkata, which now receives nearly 1.5 million visitors annually and is perhaps the only self sustaining museums in the country. The District Science Centres in places like Purulia, Gulbarga, Dharampur and Tirunelveli have carved their niche in these districts and are immensely benefiting the society. He also started the Central Research and Training Laboratory under NCSM.

 

Dr. Ghose was an exemplary task master and was kind of a terror to many, particularly to those who were found wanting when it came to efficiency and timely delivery of results. But to those who came upto his expectations and beyond he was overwhelmingly supportive and gave them the best of opportunities, which are hard to imagine now. I was one of those lucky ones who received the best of opportunities from Dr Ghose. Within eight months of my joining the council (June 1986) in January 1987, Dr. Ghose provided me an opportunity to undertake air journey, which was a rarity in those days. The official eligibility of air travel during those days was only for the Curators in in senior grade, which would have accrued to me not before another 10 years. Courtesy Dr. Ghose I travelled by Air for video recording the progress of science centre works in Guwahati, Delhi, Lucknow and Patna. The newly appointed curators to the council are put through the probation period of two years and I was under probation from June 1986 to June 1988. It was during this probation period that I received some of the unimaginable incentives from Dr. Ghose, with whom I had the honour to work quite closely. Dr. Ghose had taken up a massively successful Festival of India (FOI) exhibition, which was organised in different Science Centres in US during the period 1985. This exhibition besides appealing to the American audience, it also helped in taking the significant achievements of ancient Indians in the field of science and technology to the western audience. Egged by the success of the FOI in US, Mr. Sam Pitroda, conceived of a larger FOI exhibition to be taken to the erstwhile USSR during the period from September 1987 to March 1988. NCSM was one of the major participants in this exhibition which also included most other S&T institutions of India. This exhibition was organised in Leningrad, Moscow and Tashkent. Even while I was on probation, Dr. Ghose had approved my name for deputation to Moscow for this exhibition for a period of 45 days from middle November to end December, 1987. This perhaps will be the best of my life time experience. Coming from a small town in north Karnataka, that too from a backward district Raichur and from a humble family background, I had not even seen a hill station in north India let alone having to experience snow. What I experienced when I landed in Moscow is something which will eternally remain etched in my memory, a snow cladded capital with -20 degrees centigrade, and the Moscow river completely frozen. Adding to this was an opportunity to see the 1987 Russian revolution celebrations, which took place at the Kremlin on the 17th December 1987. Once every ten years this revolution was celebrated by the erstwhile USSR and incidentally this was the last of the celebration since the USSR broke up subsequently. This is one experience, which no money can ever fetch for anyone. It was during this period that we were also taken to the Panorama Borodino (as it was then called) a panorama museum. It was this museum, which inspired Dr. Ghose to conceive of the Kurukshetra Panorama and Science Centre (KPSC), which features the battle of Kurukshetra that is painted and portrayed in the massive panorama. Although the KPSC was opened post the retirement of Dr. Ghose in the year 2000 by the then PM Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the credit for this project must also go to its visionary Dr. Ghose. KPSC has paved the way for many more such panorama projects in India, which are very popular.

 

When he started planning for the setting up of the Science City Project in Kolkata, NCSM was hard pressed for funds for this project. It was during this period that Steven Spielberg had created history by producing science fiction film on Dinosaurs. His film the Jurassic Park became a global blockbuster and in India this film was a roaring success. The success of the film motivated an American company, Dynamotion, to develop animated life like moving Dinosaurs and show them in exhibitions and this exhibition became a roaring success in US. The American company tied up with an Indian agency, Hariparvat, to bring this exhibition to India. Dr. Ghose had read about this news and immediately decided that NCSM should develop the ‘Dinosaurs Alive’ exhibition featuring some 20 robotic Dinosaurs and open this exhibition in July 1996 at the Science City in Kolkata before the arrival of the American Dinosaur exhibition. Dr. Ghose called for a meeting of Mechanical engineer curators of NCSM and I was the only Electronic engineer curator, who was in this team to plan for this exhibition. This meeting was organised in NSC, Delhi in February 1996 and Dr. Ghose announced that we must develop all the 20 odd Robotic Dinosaurs departmentally in the four major national level science centres and assemble them at Science City and that this exhibition must be opened before the American Dinosaur exhibition which was scheduled to arrive in India by July 1996. Lo and behold, all of us who were tasked with this responsibility including yours truly who was tasked to develop electronics controls and sounds for these dinosaurs ridiculed Dr. Ghose for his ‘Tughlaqui’ dream and felt that it is impossible for us to adhere to this target. But then the fear of Dr. Ghose and so also his infectious optimism rubbed on each one of us and we all worked almost 12 hours a day non-stop and the Dinosaur Alive exhibition, was opened in first week of July 1997, ahead of the target. This was one achievement which none of us who were part of the project ever felt we could achieve. The success of the exhibition at Science City, Kolkata, NSC Delhi and RSC Lucknow was overwhelming and the exhibition earned almost 2 Crore Rupees in revenue for NCSM and this money was used to fund the deficit for the Science City, Kolkata project. This exemplifies the compulsive optimistic approach of Dr. Ghose, which we have all inherited and it is this habit that makes NCSM take up extremely challenging projects such as the National Museum of Indian Cinema, which we have developed on turnkey basis for the Films Division in Mumbai and several such other projects of national importance including the VEM in Varanasi, Uniting India: Sardar Patel Exhibition and many such other projects, which NCSM undertakes. 

 

The Kurukshetra Panorama and Science Centre - the first of its kind in India - that portrays episodes from the epic battle of Mahabharata in the larger than life panorama digital prints that are enlarged from the painstakingly hand painted canvases and commissioned in vast cylindrical building, is an outcome of the vision of Dr. Ghose. During one of his visit to Russia, Dr. Ghose had visited the famous Panorama Borodino - as it was then called in the Center of Moscow. It presented a life like visuals of the panorama of the Battle of Borodino. The panoramic painting, which depicted the battle was pained on a massive canvas which was 115 meters long and 15 meters high. The paintings depicted the decisive moment of the battle. Dr. Ghose was so impressed with what he saw that when he came back to India he immediately visualised a project where he could replicate this idea of a larger than life panoramic paintings, which could portray the epic battle of Mahabharata. He also decided that this panorama must be established at Kurukshetra, the very place where this epic battle is believed to have taken place. Although this project was opened in the year 2000 by late Atal Bihari Vajpayee ji, three years after the superannuation of Dr. Ghose, it owes its genesis to Dr. Ghose. The KPSC, not surprisingly receives visitors in excess of 6 Lakhs every years, and this visitor figure can only be matched by national level science centres.

 

This year -  2020, marks the silver jubilee of the Internet in India, which was introduced in india on 15th August, 1995. It is to the credit of NCSM that within one year of the public launch of Internet in India the National Science Centre, Delhi created history by opening a public facility ‘Cyberskool’ which boasted of a free internet facility for our visitors. This facility was fully funded by Intel and the same was opened by Craig Barrett in May 1996, and I had the honour to be the coordinator for this project. Dr. Saroj Ghose graced the inaugural program. Although Dr. Ghose had no direct involvement in this project, for which I was the project in-charge, yet he is to be credited primarily because of the extraordinary faith that he had in me for handling this project, which had Forex implications and so also some tricky administrative matters of agreement etc to be signed with Intel, Singapore. The ‘Cyberskool’ facility further accentuated the technology implementation in NCSM and today when it comes to implementing state of the art technology in museum design and interpretation, NCSM stands out.

 

Dr. Ghose retired from NCSM in August 1997 but then he continued to remain active in his profession. Post retirement Dr. Ghose shifted his attention to history museums, which until then were adopting traditional approaches with objects and antiquities and 2D visuals hung on the wall and artefacts encased in glass cabinets. This drab and passive presentation in museum display were not helping museums in reaching to a larger audience. Dr. Ghose immediately realised that he could put to use his vast experience of creating interactive exhibits and state of the art technology, which he had seen in NCSM, in the traditional museums to increase visitor participation in history museums. He also had an overwhelming international exposure owing to the coveted position of President of ICOM, which he held for six long years from 1992-98. It was during his presidency of ICOM that he showed the strength of India in the field of Museums to the international museum community. He also exhibited the extraordinary capabilities of India back in producing international quality ICOM publications at half the international cost. He created a NDL - National Digital Laboratory, including setting up state of the art DTP section in NCSM, which designed and printed most ICOM publications from India and my dear friend and colleague of NCSM, Shri S.P. Pathak held a special position with Dr. Ghose for his creation of all these facilities. However, Shri Pathak and I, who were perceived as the favourites of Dr Ghose, had to pay a very heavy price for this.

 

Dr. Ghose put to use all his intellect, international experience and his state of the art technology know how, which he had gathered while serving as the DG of NCSM and as President, ICOM in creating some of the best story telling museums in the country. These museums and projects include Kolkata Panorama for Kolkata Museum Society, Parliament Museum, Rashtrapati Bhavan Museum etc. He was also the Museum Advisor to the President of India. He also played a key role in the development of Gujarat Science City, Ahmedabad. He extensively introduced Digital tools in all these projects to bridge large gaps in collections, provide contextual information and form a well-knit story around individual artefacts. He introduced seem less Multi screen panoramic projections to create immersive visualization, which provided visitors a feeling that they are standing in the midst of an event surrounding them. Long before the modern buzz words VR and IR technology took centre stage in India, Dr. Ghose was able to envisage their utility in museums. He understood that VR (Virtual Reality) can take visitors to a historic past, breaking the barriers of time and space. He extensively introduced Animatronics, with computer-controlled pneumatic/hydraulic movements to create period setting to present historic personalities in life like situations. Fortunately, we are now witnessing that these technologies are extensively being used in conventional art museums and the credit for introducing these technologies must go to Dr. Ghose. 

Dr. Ghose played a pivotal role in the development of the Gujarat Science City, the third Science City in the country, which was established in Ahmedabad by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of Gujarat. He continues to play an advisory role to the Gujarat Science City. Dr. Ghose had prepared the DPR for the Science City project on behalf of TCS who were the main consultants for the project. This was some time during 2000-01 and Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister of India and the project proposal had reached the PM office for its review. Shri Sudheendra Kulkarni was the OSD to the Prime Minister and I had the honour to know him in connection with a project of establishing a modern computer lab facility at the Delhi Kannada School. One fine day I got a call from Shri Sudheendra Kulkarni asking me to meet him in his office in the PMO. Shri Kulkarni discussed about the project and handed me the DPR, which was submitted by TCS to the Government of Gujarat who in turn had sent it to the PMO. I was asked. Y Sudheendra Kulkarni to study the project and submit a precise recommendation on the merit of the project. As I started going through the DPR it took me no time to understand that this was prepared by Dr. Ghose, and later I learnt that TCS who were appointed by the Government of Gujarat to be their consultants for the Science City Project in Ahmedabad, had engaged Dr. Ghose to prepare the report for them. The report had a tell tale mark of Dr. Ghose imprinted all through. As expected the report was quite comprehensive with the scope of the project, which was spread across three 3 phases. In a way the review and approval of the project by the PM office was based on my report, which I submitted to Shri Sudheendra Kulkarni. The Government of Gujarat were supported by the Government of India in the first phase and the vibrant science city that we see now in Ahmedabad is a result of Dr. Ghose’s vision. 

 In recognition of his services to the museums, Dr. Ghose has been conferred with many national and international awards and recognitions and some of these include ; The  'Indira Gandhi Prize' from the Indian National Science Academy, the ‘Hari Om Trust Award' from University Grants Commission for Popularization of Science in 1988. In 2001, NCSTC, Govt. of India, awarded him 'National Award' for the best effort in science popularization amongst children. He received the ‘Padma Shri’ in 1989 and 'Padma Bhushan' in 2007. In 1996, Dr. Ghose received 'Primo Rovis International Prize' from the Trieste International Foundation. The ASTC, an internationally acclaimed Association of Science and Technology Centers, USA, conferred on him the prestigious Fellowship in 1997. He is the only Asian who has been elected as the President of the International Council of Museums twice 1992-98. 

On this auspicious occasion of the 85th birth anniversary of Dr. Ghose, I join the entire NCSM family and all the stakeholders of NCSM and most other museum community in India and abroad in praying for the continuing good health of Dr. Ghose and may he continue to inspire and motivate not just all of us in NCSM but the whole of India.

 

Wishing you very happy birthday Dr Ghose Sir and prayers for your good health and long life with your continuing creative contributions to Indian society.

 

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