Social Responsibility at IIIT

As is my wont, I take a walk around the campus looking for imperfections and there are plenty of them. Last month, I was pleasantly surprised by a sight.

The food courts had just opened in the workshop building. I was walking around to find how students are responding to the brand new eateries. Then, I found a bunch of children from the labour huts huddled around a few of our students note books in hand and reciting ABC. These students were all girls.

Some of our girl students have started this initiative to educate the children of people who are building our campus with their sweat and toil.

The children are offered sweets and chocolates as an incentive to attend these classes regularly (a midday meal scheme in disguise).

This is the spirit which will set the Institute apart.

My good wishes for these young students and young teachers.

Tragedy Strikes

On 11th April 2011, as I was preparing to leave for Delhi to attend a e-governance forum, I heard the tragic news: Three of our students are missing in the Derras Dam. I was shell shocked for a moment. I prayed that the missing students are alive. I gave up my plans to go to delhi. I proceeded to Derras with Ajit.

In Derras, the forest guard told us that the accident has happened in Jhumka Dam. We went to Jhumka Dam. It was sprawling with police men, news men, village people and some of our students. One of the bodies has been recovered and was sent to hospital. We waited for about 3 hours before the two more bodies were recovered. I went to the campus to sense the mood spent an hour there and instructed everyone to help the police, doctors and the parents.

On 13th, we had a condolence meeting. It was attended by large number of students. It was a emotional event and many of the students and faculty were weeping silently.

A few days later, we had a Shanti Homa.

The incident is more or less forgotten by now though the campus still remembers the tragic event which hit the Institute so early in its life.

Deities and Demons

The ICC world cup just got over and India won the world cup after 28 years. The first time India won the world cup was in 1983. Few of us were lucky to experience the event.

I has just finished 5 years in IIT. We are really desperate to get out the IIT. My father was posted in a village. I was there before I was to proceed to Mumbai (Bombay then) for my first job in Nelco. The Prudential World Cup was in progress in UK.

No one gave any chance to India. However, I gave a faint chance for India's win. India was still learning the art of ODI cricket. In the first match Gavaskar played through all the sixty overs and scored 60 and perhaps thought he had done quite well. Shehwag today scores that many runs in 6 overs. India had visited West Indies before the world cup. They had done remarkably well. Mohindar Amarnath found a way to handle the West Indies Quickies by Hook shot.

In the first match India beat West Indies. It was a shocking game for both India and West Indies. West Indies was shocked that they lost. India was shocked they won. When Ravi Shastry took the last wicket, the cricketing world was truely shell shocked.

The match with Zimbawe was another shocker. When I tuned in the Radio, India was 17 for 5. I thought, this is end of India in the world cup. I switched off the radio and did other things. When I switched on again after about 2 hours, Kapil had scored over 170 runs and India was still batting. India went on to win that match. It was victory from the brinks of defeat.

India won and lost to west indies and Australia in the league stage. Then, there was semifinals against England. England started celebrating victory even before the game began. They thought it was a cake walk. In one over Sandip Patil scored 24 from bob willis. That one over gave victory to India.

In the finals, India could score only 181. We all thought India has done well to reach the finals and even a loss is not bad. India bowled out India to every ones surprise.

That month I had my ears glued to the radio for 10 hours a day. I had kept extra batteries in case I will run out of battery and miss the BBC commentary. The thrill was beyond imagination.

The cricketers were living deities at that time.

Many of them fell from grace subsequently. Kapil cried on BBC over match fixing in 2000. We saw that happen to former IPL Boss Lalit Modi.

It is important to keep your feet on ground both when you succeed and when you dont.

Capacity to Receive

When Subroto Bagchi delivered the First Commencement Lecture, he mooted an idea Capacity to Receive. I have been experiencing the importance of this idea everyday in personal, organizational and societal context.

Usually capacity is an idea which is associated with giving. If you have money or material or knowledge you can give what you have. The capacity to give has also a willingness component. In India, we do not seem to have that willingness component. Imran Khan built a cancer hospital in the name of his mother. Saurav Ganguly has built a restaurant. That is an example of willingness or lack of it to give.

My focus here is on Capacity to receive. If I am a teacher and knowledgeable about by subject, I have the capacity to share / give my knowledge with my pupils. However, the pupils need a capacity to receive this knowledge. Not everyone receives this knowledge and uses it well in their life. Once-in-a-while I meet a student who tells me how he benefited from something I taught a long time ago. There are many who do not say a thing implying perhaps they did not receive much from the class.

I see examples of lack of capacity to receive in many places. The Government builds infrastructure. Do the citizens have the capacity to receive and use the infrastructure well? In Bhubaneswar, we find the traffic lights donated by corporate houses like Infosys and Nanclo but most often they do not work. There are at least a few traffic policemen around a traffic junction. The traffic light is supposed to regulate the traffic without human intervention. This shows the lack of the capacity among the citizens and the traffic police department to receive and make good use of Traffic lights donated.

The world bank and other donor agencies give money to build Dams and Canals. However, the agriculture productivity has not improved a lot. This shows the lack of capacity among our farmers to receive the water and improve agriculture productivity.

For last 25 years the government has been pouring money among the poor in KBK districts. The improvement among the poor is not very perceptible. Once again this shows the lack of capacity among the people to come out of poverty with the money given by the government.

In our Institute we build facilities like labs, sporting facilities, libraries etc. We organize events for learning and talent spotting and development. One can argue that the facilities are not sufficient. The amount of facility given is our capacity to give. However, how well the facilities are used are an indicator of our capacity to receive. When we organize an event, we find only a few students willing to participate in those events.

I observe numerous examples of lack of capacity to receive among the IIIT community.

Improving our capacity to receive is critical for our success as individuals, institute and society. In addition to asking for more let's be critical of how well we are receiving what is given to us.

Aiming and waiting for Perfection

When I joined IIIT in 2007, I shared my office with Prof. Ajit Das and M Y Rao my secretary. I used to have an office which was bigger than room three of us were sharing. I moved to my room only after six months. In IIIT, at that time there was no Internet, Library, Canteen or any amenity one is used to. It took time to build some of these features.

Subsequently, when we moved to Gothapatna Campus, the story repeated. We moved to a half constructed building. There was no electricity, no phone, no fax, no Internet. Prof Das and I shared a room. We tried hard to bring such facilities aend eventually over time these happened.

When I spoke to the students in the inaugural function, I said IIIT aims for perfection but does not wait for perfection. I am convinced that if you wait for perfection, it will never happen. Get there and make perfection happen is the principles we follow at IIIT.

So, you will see plenty of imperfections in IIIT. It is there in infrastructure, people, processes. We are aware of these imperfections and make effort to bring perfections. It causes inconveniences for people affected but we believe that is way to go.

Since ours is a residential campus, there is no need for transport service. However, we run a bus service to the city for convenience of the students. However, it is a 40 seater bus and gets crowded some times. Should we run 10 buses ensuring a seat for every student or run a bus based on our estimation of average load which may be inaccurate. We have chosen to run a imperfect transport system but aim for perfection by adding capacity or requesting Municipality to extend the City Bus service. Eventually, we will have a near perfect transport system.

Above is one example of our principle of Aiming for Perfection but not Waiting for Perfection. There are many instances. When I was chatting with Subroto Bagchi, he said it is a great idea and write a blog on this.

So here is the blog.

Moral High Horse

A few years ago, I had an opportunity to meet Ratan Tata in a conference in a conference in St Gallen Switzerland. He was the speaker in a session and I was a delegate. When I reached the hall there were a handful people and Ratan Tata was there. I told him we started our career from the same place. He looked startled. I told him that he started his career as the chairman of Nelco and I started as an Assistant Engineer. He was excited and he asked me if I knew about Abhyankar, Mahasur and others. I told him that I worked under them designing UPS, DC Drives and AC Drives.

Last month, he was in news for two reasons. He addressed somewhere in Uttrakhand and talked about how he refused to pay bribe and never got to start a Airline. It was telecasted and several channels had discussions on morality in business. A couple of weeks later the Nira Radia tapes were released and Ratan Tata featured there too. His stature seems to have fallen a bit after the release of these tapes.

Personally, I have very high regards for Ratan Tata. However, one lesson emerges from the episode. To practice morality and ethics is a perfect virtue. However, to sit on the moral high horse may not be a good idea. For when you fall from it, you seem like a villain when you are a hero.

In academic environments, we tend to climb the moral high horse. At the same time heating, copying and plagiarism is quietly practiced by students and teachers alike. The BPUT exams require one invigilator for every 20 students. This indicates the expectation of the unethical behaviour when the situation demands. One professor friend from UC Davis, recently told us he does not invigilate in exams; he expects the students to be honest when unsupervised. I wonder when we can expect that from our students.

Our Serious Experiments with FOSS

I have followed Linux since 15 years ago. The first time I tried to install, it took me more than two months to get a working system. Linux and FOSS software have evolved since then.

Our labs use Ubuntu. I learnt about Ubuntu about 3 years ago when my son came back from his college with Ubuntu loaded on his Notebook. The usability focus of Ubuntu is really amazing. The resistance to virus is a great feature. No need to look for drivers: all drivers are built in. I use Ubuntu 95% of the time. Windows takes the rest.

Our programming labs for C and C++ have been using GCC on ubuntu from the start.

Recently, we faced the issue of using Autocad for Engineering Drawing. I knew about Q-CAD which has a community edition available on Linux. I told Prof. Bamadev to try this. He was reluctant to start with. But I prevailed. He told me he does not have ubuntu on his machine. I gave him a VDI image of Ubuntu and made in work in his machine. I demonstrated how to make it work.

The next day when I visited the Lab, I found students using Q-Cad for Engg Drawing Lab. Bamadev told me that he had worked late into night working with Q-Cad and is comfortable now. The students had no clue about what they were missing as this was their first CAD software.

Our efforts will be to adopt FOSS as far as possible for following reasons: free, different, and innovative.