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The Annual Reunion Magazine Of IIT Bombay Greater NY Chapter Alumni

Vol. 2017

REFLECTIONS

Annual ReunionSunday September 17th, 2017Hyatt Regency, 2 Exchange Place, Jersey City, NJ

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ubs.com/team/feldmangroup

CPWA® is a service mark of the Investment Management Consultants Association, Inc. in the United States of America and worldwide. CIMA® is a registered certification mark of the Investment Management Consultants Association, Inc. in the United States of America and worldwide. Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards Inc. owns the certification marks CFP®, Certified Financial Planner™ and federally registered CFP (with flame design) in the U.S., which it awards to individuals who successfully complete CFP Board’s initial and ongoing certification requirements. ©UBS 2013. All rights reserved. UBS Financial Services Inc. is a subsidiary of UBS AG. Member SIPC. D-UBS-568EF42A

Commitment. An investment that benefits us all. We celebrate the good work of IIT Bombay, and support its commitment to future generations of scholars and leaders.

Jason I. Feldman, CPWA®, CIMA®

Senior Vice President -Wealth Mgmt Advisory & Brokerage Services Senior Portfolio Manager, Portfolio Management Program j.feldman@ubs.com

Dilshad T. Chowdhury Registered Client Service Associate dilshad.chowdhury@ubs.com

Carlos M. Raimundo, CFP®

Wealth Strategy Associate carlos.raimundo@ubs.com

The Feldman Group UBS Financial Services, Inc. 1285 Avenue Of The Americas 16th Floor New York, NY 10019-6031 888-804-8467

Advice you can trust starts with a conversation.

IITBAA GNY Chapter

PRESIDENT’S MESSAGESeptember 17, 2017

Friends and Fellow Alumni,

Welcome to the 2017 Annual Reunion of the IIT Bombay Alumni Association Greater New York Chapter. On behalf of your Executive Committee, I am honored to welcome you here today.

The GNY Chapter is proud to keep this tradition of meeting annually for over twenty years now. We hear some new perspectives from our own alumni but also those from other IIT’s and other colleges who have rich experiences in areas of the business, education, research, and government. The 2017 program reflects the richness of such experiences.

The GNY Chapter is one of the largest IIT Bombay Alumni Chapters – both inside and outside India. It is also generous in supporting IIT Bombay. In addition to our individual donations, last year the GNY Chapter donated $7,500 from its account to assist current IIT Bombay students with their ongoing education and/or research.

The GNY Chapter is one of the most diverse with its membership including from the first batch in 1962 to the most recent batch in 2017. Our meetings are enhanced by this diversity. Additionally our events also benefit from participation by alumni of other IIT’s as all our events are open to all.In April 2017, IITBAAGNY celebrated Pi Day. In spite of a major winter snow storm over sixty of you showed by to meet and greet each others and answer some interesting pi day questions.

In June 2017, we held our Annual Family Picnic at Duke Island Park, Bridgewater, NJ. The rain gods smiled on us that day as we had a beautiful blue-sky picnic day. Over 100 hundred of you showed up with your family and friends. The highlight was the participation of two graduates – Bonnie Dias and Sudhir Sharma from the first IITB class of 1962. They joined IITB before the JEEE! In November, we will have the Diwali Dhamaka – fun filled evening of music and good food to close the year. At that event we will also recognize the winners of the 2017 Youth Achievement Awards, which is open to high school children of all IIT Alumni in the Greater New York area. This will be the third year of this GNY initiative.

Our monthly “Chai-Pe-Charcha” continue to be a great success. They are informal, vocal, and opinionated – just like the student days.

Thanks to you, we are one of the more vibrant IIT Bombay alumni chapters in US. In particular, I would like thank the volunteers and their spouses who so generously give their time to support this Chapter. Please volunteer, bring your ideas and help this Chapter grow.

D. C. Agrawal President B.Tech.(Hons) Mechanical Engg ’69; Hostel 4

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06Today’s Program

07 Speaker’s Bio

10Student Exchange Experience

by Avni Patel

12Reflections on Smoking at IIT

Bombayby Sagar Shah

14Reflections - 9/11

by DC Agrawal

17Seeing Safe Driving and Self-

Driving as Going Hand in HandBy David Cullen

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T Ramblings on Self Improvement by Vignesh Rege 18

2016 -Youth Award Essay by Parth Patel 21

IIT Gandhinagar: An Oasis in India’s Higher Education Desert 26

EDITOR’S NOTEAs we said last year - at its core, this magazine is for us and by us, IIT Bombay alumni, and inside it you will find stories, analysis, opinions, advice, and creative work that alumni wanted to share. In keeping with our view of what this magazine should be, this year the theme is reflections, where in our alumni reflect back on their life or topics of interest. We hope you find some of it useful, and enjoy reading it, as much as we enjoyed putting it together.

Don’t forget to write to us with any comments and feedback!

Please send them to nivvedan@iitbombay.org or newyork@iitbombay.org

Nivvedan, Sagar & Tarana

*The content, opinions and views expressed in the articles are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of IITBAA-GNY or IITBHF.

Executive CommitteeD. C. Agrawal ’69 - PresidentNivvedan S ‘14 - Vice PresidentAnurag Chaturvedi ‘92 - TreasurerTarana Gupta ‘09 - TrusteeSagar Shah ’08 - TrusteeRaj Singh ‘88 - Ex-OfficioKicha Ganapathy ‘67 - Ex-Officio

Advisory Committee Brijesh Agarwal ‘85Shweta Bhandari ‘02Sushil Bhatia ‘66Vinay Karle ’96Sreedhar Kona ‘97Ruyintan (Ron) Mehta ‘70Uday Nadkarni ‘78Jude Netto ‘66Jignesh Patel ‘92Kumar Shah ‘70Suhani Shorewala ‘14Gagan Singh ‘95

Spouses CommitteeMala GanapathyJeanne KarleVrinda MasterSonurita ParmarMita PatelSunaina Singh

GNY-PointTarana Gupta - DesignerNivvedan S - EditorSagar Shah - Editor

OFFICE BEARERS AND VOLUNTEERS

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10:00 am Registration - Coffee / Tea / Light Snacks

10:20 amIntroductionDC Agrawal ‘69- President IITBAA – GNY Chapter

10:30 am“Safety First / Evolution of Autonomous Driving”Bharat Balasubramanian ’73 – Ex-VP, Group Research and Advanced

Engineering-Daimler Benz. Executive Director, Center for Advanced

Vehicle Technologies - U of Alabama.

11:30 am Experiences in the Big Data Industry Jaswinder “Jassi” Chadha ’90 IIT Delhi. President and CEO, Axtria

Entrepreneur, Angel Investor, Ex-Board Member TIE Global

12:15 pmLunch / Networking

1:30 pm Does Higher Education Take India Higher – Value added by IITs?Atul Singh Professor, U of California, Berkeley and IIT Gandhinagar,

Editor Fair Observer

2:15 pm IIT Bombay UpdateDevang Khakhar - Director

Ravi Sinha – Dean, Alumni and Corporate Relations

3:00 pm Closing RemarksNivvedan S ’14 Vice President, IITBAA – GNY Chapter

Program Sponsors include: UBS, Bel Air Investment Advisors; and Ujala FoundationTO

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MLeadership Conference

September 17th, 2017 1:30 pm Does Higher Education Take India Higher – Value added by

IITs?

Atul Singh is the founder, chief executive officer and editor-in-chief of Fair Observer. a crowdsourced multimedia journal.

Singh teaches political economy at the University of California, Berkeley and at the Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar where he also teaches world history.

Singh has a diverse background. He studied philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford on the Radhakrishnan Scholarship and did an MBA with a triple major in finance, strategy and entrepreneurship at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated from Lucknow University and got his law degree from BPP Law School, London. He has worked as a corporate lawyer in London for Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer.

Atul Singh

10:30 am“Safety First / Evolution of Autonomous Driving”

Dr. Bharat Balasubramanian (Dr. B) retired in 2012 as Vice President of Group Research and Advanced Engineering responsible for Product Innovations and Process Technologies after nearly 40 years as a research and development engineer for the Mercedes-Benz brand in Stuttgart, Germany. He has been at the forefront of most of the major advances that have occurred in automotive technology over the past 20 years. After his retirement Dr. B joined the University of Alabama, College of Engineering as a professor in mechanical engineering and electrical & computer engineering as also executive director of the cross-discipline Center for Advanced Vehicle Technologies (CAVT). Dr. B’s mission is to prepare UA students for their careers in the automotive industry in Alabama and the Southeast, and the University of Alabama and industry for future automotive challenges.

Dr. B is a 1973 Mechanical Engineering graduate from IIT Bombay. He has a Masters and Doctorate from University of Karlruhe, Germany.

Dr. Bharat Balasubramanian

ChairmanDelphi Automotive PLC

11:30 am Experiences in the Big Data Industry

Jassi is President, CEO and Founder of Axtria, a Big Data Analytics company that provides cloud platforms and services to help companies make better data-driven decisions. Axtria has been recognized as one of the fastest growing technology company in US and India. Prior to founding Axtria, Jassi was founder and CEO of marketRx, a life-science analytics company that was acquired by Cognizant in 2007.

Jassi is member of Board of Ocular Therapeutics [NASDAQ: OCUL], Board of Sikh Research Institute (SikhRi), and Board of Directors of Panjab Digital Library (PDL). Formerly, he was on Board of Trustees of TIE Global, Vice President and Board of PAN IIT USA, Board of NJ Young Presidents Organization (YPO). He is an active angel investor and participates on the board of director of several private companies. He is the winner of E &Y “Entrepreneur of the Year” award, “Top Forty under Forty” by NJBiz Magazine, and honored with “Lifetime Achievement Award” by Pharmaceutical Management Science Association. Jassi was named to the PharmaVOICE 100, which recognizes the 100 most influential people in the life sciences industry. Under Jassi’s leadership, Axtria continues to grow and has been recognized as one of the fastest growing tech companies in US. Axtria was recognized by INC5000 (#32 in 2014, #511 in 2015 and #938 in 2016), Deloitte Fast 500 (#91 in 2015 and #183 in 2016), 2015 Red Herring 100, NJTC Most Innovative Company, NJBIZ Top 50 (#15 in 2014, #11 in 2015 and #3 in 2015).

In recognition of his service and achievements, Jassi was awarded Distinguished Alumni Service Award by IIT Delhi in 2008.

Jaswinder Chadha

BIOGRAPHIES

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D-III/D-10/2017 June 21, 2017

Dear Alum,

I am happy to report significant progress at IIT Bombay since I last wrote to you in 2016. You will be glad to know that the Institute has moved up from 219th rank last year to 179th rank this year in the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings. Overall, the Institution improved on its 2017 performance by 40 places.

Among the major developments in the Institute this year, a team of IIT Bombay students received the award during ‘Transform Maharashtra’ campaign, an initiative led by Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, as a part of his efforts to engage the youth. The competition was launched by the Chief Minister in IIT Bombay during the Mood Indigo in December 2016.

Pratham, a microsatellite developed by IIT Bombay was launched by Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota on 26th September 2016. Signals are being successfully received from the satellite at our ground station.

I am very pleased to inform you that the student team from Innovation Cell of IIT Bombay has won the “Grand Award” at the 25th Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC) that was held at Oakland University in Michigan, USA on June 2-5, 2017. The IIT Bombay vehicle, SeDriCa, left the other teams behind by a wide margin.

We celebrated our 54th Convocation in August, where over 2500 degrees were conferred on graduating students. Dr. Rajendra Singh, Chairman, Tarun Bharat Sangh and winner of Stockholm Water Prize 2015, was the Chief Guest for the occasion and he delivered the Convocation Address. IIT Bombay is the mentor institute for the new IITs at Goa and Dharwad. IIT Goa was inaugurated on July 30, 2016 at the hands of Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar in the presence of the then Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and Chief Minister of Goa, Laxmikant Parsekar. IIT Dharwad was inaugurated on August 28, 2016 at the hands of Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar in the presence of Chief Minister of Karnataka K. Siddaramaiah.

The IIT Bombay incubator, SINE has been recognized as a Centre for Excellence (COE) under the National Initiative for Developing and Harnessing Innovation (NIDHI) program of Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. SINE has also been approved funding of Rs.43 crores for setting up the COE. SINE proposes to set up the COE in the new building premises identified for SINE. Around 60,000 sq.ft. has been earmarked by SINE to house at least 60-70 start-ups at a time. SINE will also provide state-of-the-art equipment and incubation facility which will include dedicated labs, co-working space, fabrication and prototyping facilities, intellectual resources etc.

It was indeed a pleasure meeting many of you on campus and during the chapter meets around the world. Several hundred of you visited the Campus on Alumni Day in December 2016. I want to thank you for staying in touch.

In an important development, the Institute is establishing a ‘Centre for Learning and Teaching.’ Our Distinguished Alumnus Mr. Pramod Chaudhari contributed Rs.2.51 crores to help set up the Centre. It will carry out research and development on Teaching and Learning and also work closely with the academic units, students and faculty to enhance teaching methodologies and learning outcomes. I also want to thank you for making a record number of donations to IIT Bombay in the last year. This was possible because of the popularity of important programs like YFA (Young Faculty Awards), Student Scholarships, and the creative teamwork of all our alumni volunteers involved in the efforts.

Do stay in touch.Regards,Devang Khakhar

Director’s Message

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students may have been personally competitive, they were rarely overtly competitive and generally worked together. When I was originally planning my exchange to IIT Bombay, I was thrilled to come across The Center for Technology Alternatives for

Rural Areas (CTARA). I looked forward to the opportunity to contextualize my background in civil and environmental engineering within development based work. My academic experience within CTARA greatly shaped my stay at IIT. As a department, CTARA is based in experiential education through field visits and the application of theory. This provides insight into the nuances of development projects and the intersection of politics and technological solutions to implement societal change. One course in particular, Rural Environmental Services: Planning and Design, provided a context-based approach to learning. The course focused on designing a water provision and wastewater treatment system for Mowad, a town about two hours from Nagpur near the Madhya Pradesh border. During our field stay, we met with the town’s government as well as conducted civil and social surveys to form the foundation of our work. The first time I felt a sense of belonging at IIT was after a class field

stay as part of this course. A 15-hour overnight train full of card games, singing, and story-telling has a way of transforming classmates into friends. Several field visits and outings like this seemed to have formed a sense of camaraderie among the CTARA students, and I was happy to be part of such a community.

Refreshingly, academics form only part of the picture of student life at IIT. The campus is not only brimming with some of the brightest minds in India but also complete with a wealth of stimulating activities. I had not imagined that I would be doing Zumba to Daddy Yankee songs or (poorly attempting) parkour on the bike rack by the lecture hall on a semester exchange to India. Nor did I expect to find fellow rock climbers among both the exchange students and IIT students. It was exciting to find sites to climb outdoors around Mumbai and appreciate the unique beauty of the city from a different perspective. The diversity in student activities is on par with universities in America. I often heard that this type of vibrant life outside of school is not the norm on all campuses in India. At IIT, there are student interest groups to cater to everyone, whether they enjoy competitive quizzing on literature or performing classical Indian music. One of the experiences for which I am most grateful is joining the campus athletics team. I have not been on a sports team

since high school, in which sports was a big part of my experience. Thus, not only did the team provide a fun alternative to jogging around the track by myself, but it also evoked a sense of nostalgia for more carefree times. What is more impressive than the breadth of activities available is the

caliber of talent students possess and the amount of time they put into their extracurricular pursuits. For example, I had heard throughout the entire semester about the Performing Arts Festival, but it was only when I saw the elaborate sets for the performance, professional quality trailer videos, and multiple dance sequences that I understood the magnitude of the expression “PAF God hota hai.” Along with the fervor surrounding PAF, it was easy to get swept up in the nostalgia of many of the graduating students for whom “insti”, as they so affectionately called it, held formative memories. While I am sure I could not fully appreciate the inside jokes or sentimental thoughts shared in the valedictory functions, I could tell without a doubt that IIT Bombay holds a special place in the hearts of its students. And after four months of an alternate reality from my life in the states, it will hold a special place in my heart too.

By Avni Patel Behind the chaos of JVLR and mayhem of Mumbai lays IIT Bombay’s campus of over 500 acres – a lush oasis in the concrete jungle. After living there for a semester, a friend’s insight that IIT is the “best piece of real estate in Mumbai” resonates. Indeed, the air is distinctly cleaner, ambiance calmer, and scenery considerably greener than the city outside. It is this serenity of the campus amidst the backdrop of the bustling excitement of Mumbai that makes IIT so ideal. With the call of an Uber or Ola, auto rickshaw, or (for the more adventurous) the Mumbai local, the city is yours to explore. And, after a day of taking in all of the sights, sounds, smells and tastes the city has to offer, the comfort of your hostel room above a mess with four meals a day awaits. Somehow, each and every person I met seemed pleased to be on campus. I guess that positive energy was contagious, and over the course of several months IIT Bombay transformed from an abstract idea in my mind to a home away from home on my exchange from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City.

Before my semester exchange, IIT Bombay was just a highly intense, competitive university that was home to the cream of the crop

engineering students in India. My general perception of the Indian educational system had been formed through tangential exposure and of course 3 Idiots. As a second generation Indian American, the Indian culture has been seminal in my upbringing. Throughout my childhood and adolescence, my family and I had come to India regularly. When I would visit, I noticed that our family friend’s children in the 10th and 12th standard seemed to be in a quarantine of a sort as they studied for board exams. In a sense, their academic obligations served as an explanation for their absence from any fun outings or travel as a sickness might.

I had seen billboards of top scorers and even recall being disturbed by a front-page newspaper article about suicides following publication of board results. While the pressure at some elite institutions in the states can be grueling, the stress and intensity seemed to pale in comparison. Thus, I was interested to observe first-hand the differences in the student life and educational pedagogy between universities in America and at IIT. Instructional methods in my courses were similar to those in America with most classes conducted as lectures using PowerPoint presentations. However, my expectation that education would be memorization-

based held true for most of my experience and that of other exchange students. It seemed futile to have to engrain to memory things that could easily be looked up and did not provide a measure of a meaningful or conceptual understanding of content. In addition, the interaction between students and professors was more formal than that I experienced while as an undergraduate at Duke University or thus far at The Cooper Union. This underscored a more hierarchical relationship rather than a collegial one. I imagine that a shift in pedagogy can and will come with time, especially as many faculty members have pursued graduate education in the United States and other nations abroad. Their experiences can inform not only their teaching methods, but also changes in curriculum and evaluation. Another expectation I had was that IITB would be an academically competitive environment. Several students definitely took a course load that seemed humanly impossible with seven or eight courses including labs. However, while the spirit of competition that I had expected was interwoven in even dance performances like PG Cult and in the Performing Arts Festival, I was pleasantly surprised that most students were more than happy to help one another in academics. While

IIT Bombay:

An Outsider’s Inside Look

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By Sagar Shah

When I think what has affected my life a lot recently, smoking comes to mind. Its been 30 months I smoked my last cigarette. I feel proud that I could do it. I know so many of us smokers are unable to do it. I know my wife is very happy with it. Though sometimes I do go down the memory lane and it brings back the start of this habit.

“Smokers Die Younger”- I saw this on a packet of cigarettes in my third year at IIT Bombay and it appealed to me like Maverick did in Top Gun. Shelling out a hundred bucks spontaneously,

I smoked half a pack at lakeside with a couple of my friends. A cigarette in my hand, I felt like a man! One may say it was my choice to smoke. What concerned me was the ease with which students took to smoking then. Now come my opinions from 8000 miles away with presumptions on what might have changed. As a freshman, I was scared to hell to smoke before seniors; now it’s a matter of pride to smoke in the corridors. Alcohol and smoke go hand in hand now. And there are no barriers between juniors and seniors now. Earlier, we used to avoid smoking with seniors, which is not the case now. Every IITian begins by thinking he will never get addicted. Smoking at staff canteen post lectures was a daily ritual then. Attending meetings for the various organizational bodies at Shack, having the lovely morning snack at Kresit, the juice at Bhavani snacks near H-5, or the famous chai at main gate (Mahendar bhai must have moved now?) is inevitably accompanied with smoke flying off.

Look, he’s not smoking!

Reflections on Smoking at IIT Bombay

A nonsmoker obviously felt out of place and just to feel a part of the group, (s)he started to smoke, one a day. The craving begins, and soon, he finds himself walking all the way to staff-c for a smoke, gathering those difficult four bucks from his wing. It surely was a sight. And when one cannot wake up in the morning without a cigarette, the reality of addiction has set in. Once while making fun of the whole habit, we were discussing how disgusting this habit has become and how addicted we all are (contrary to our earlier beliefs that we could never be addicted and we carry a will stronger than Skywalker), we

realized that we smoked without sense or reason. Smoke before lunch, after lunch, before lectures, after lectures, before an exam, after an exam, with a chai, without a chai, in times of stress, in times of idleness, being happy, being sad, being with friends, being alone etc. It dawned upon me that I had become a chain smoker. It was ruining my health; I was depressed, hardly socialized, slept through the day and felt drowsy all the time. It was not as if I smoking to counter examination or project stress. One puffs away every waking moment of one’s life without even noticing it. One grabs a quick smoke in a hurry, to kill time, while talking, while working. We smoke unconsciously, cigarette after cigarette, without even realizing. Is it worth it? I decided that whenever I felt like smoking I shall stop everything and prepare myself for a ‘meditative’ smoke. Go to some quiet place where I can sit undisturbed, alone. And when I do smoke, I shall only smoke – no multitasking. No more smoking with friends, with tea or coffee or no more hurried puffs. I

followed this religiously, and pretty soon I discovered a sharp reduction in my intake. Outside of campus, it’s gradually becoming cool not to smoke. In the object-oriented lives with ambitions at stake, everyone is realizing the effect of smoking on efficiency and lifestyle. Passive hazards are well known. Many of us smokers sincerely wanted to quit. We knew cigarettes threaten our health, annoy our acquaintances and cost an inordinate amount of money. It increases anxiety, decreases mental strength, leads to drowsiness and exhausts all the energy. Nobody can force a smoker to quit. It requires a personal commitment by the smoker. Many smokers use the cigarette as a crutch in moments of stress or discomfort; the cigarette is sometimes used as a tranquilizer. But the heavy smoker who tries to handle severe personal problems by smoking heavily all day long, is bound to discover that cigarettes do not help him/her deal with his/her problems effectively. When it comes to quitting, this kind of smoker may find it easy to stop when everything is going well, but may be tempted to start again in a time of crisis. Exercise, good food habits, or social activity in moderation may serve as useful substitutes for cigarettes, even in times of tension. The choice of a substitute depends on what will achieve the same effects without having any appreciable risk. Once a smoker understands his/her own smoking behavior, he will be able to cope more successfully and select the best quitting approaches for himself/herself and the type of life-style he/she leads. Quitting smoking not only extends the exsmoker’s life, but adds new happiness and meaning to one’s current life. Most smokers state that immediately after they quit smoking, they start noticing dramatic differences in their overall health and vitality. I read an anecdote, ‘I phoned my dad to say I had stopped smoking. He called me a quitter.’Now it feels rather foolish how much I used to smoke and why. It has taken so long for the cleansing process. Now it feels pretty good to advice other smokers to start quitting :)

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India“After 44 years of marriage and two wonderful sons and 3 grandchildren, our family has become truly diverse with Polish and Chinese daughters-in-law and 3 grandchildren coming into our extended family. ”

By D C Agrawal 1

9/11 had dawned like any other workday. I still remember that it was a beautiful and crisp blue-sky day that morning as I drove to Princeton Junction to catch the 7:02 morning train to Newark. I wanted to get to work on time, as I had to prepare for an important

conference call at nine that morning.

In addition to my executive position at NJ Transit Rail, I had been also serving for over twelve months as a Special Advisor to the Commissioner, NJ Department of Transportation on reaching agreement among three private railroads, the Port Authority (owner of World Trade Center) and NJDOT/NJ Transit to advance some critical passenger and freight rail improvements. Given upcoming elections for a new NJ Governor, it was important to reach agreement on some critical issues that week, finalize all the legal documents, and get the necessary approvals before October end.

After the daily rail operations senior management meeting, which ended around 8:45am, I saw some of the office staff looking out of the windows from where you could see the NYC

skyline. My secretary mentioned that a “small” plane had hit the World Trade Center. There was some smoke and a little fire. Not thinking much of it, I went to my office to initiate the conference call as I had some thirty people on the call.

Within a few minutes of starting

the call, it quickly appeared that we had a major problem. Outside my office I could see hear some crying. Others on the call who had access to TV or computers said that CNN was reporting that WTC had been hit. Recognizing the implications, I very quickly ended the call. As the events unfolded that day, it was also the end of my reaching an agreement on the NJ rail initiative.

Looking at the WTC towers on fire, and then hearing about the plane crash in Washington, DC we realized that we had a major emergency. All trains were stopped at the nearest train station. Listening to the internal railroad communications, we learnt about the chaos on the NY City streets and emergency evacuation of folks from the WTC towers.

Since I was the internal lead with Amtrak, Long Island RR and PATH, I was on the call with

their senior management to know exactly what was happening on their rail systems on a real time basis. All Amtrak services nationwide had stopped by then including Amtrak and NJ Transit train services to and from New York. Given potential terrorist actions, the Hudson River tunnels and the emergency exits had to

be secured and literally walked to ensure there were no bombs and explosives.

It was really shocking to actually see the WTC towers collapse around 10:30 that morning. Given the rail negotiations with the Port Authority, I had visited One WTC several times those days with the last visit only three days ago. I just could not believe that something like that was possible. As

an engineer, I just assumed that such structures were designed to stand for hundred plus years; I never thought the steel in such buildings could just melt.

As the morning progressed, I heard about the many deaths there. People jumping to avoid the fire but certain death below. On one side was the whole issue of a major terrorist attack on US soil, the chaos on TV and the other side was the surreal calm from the loss of so many innocent souls. There were few cars on the street except for the emergency vehicles. All air traffic from Newark airport and other airports had come to a halt a few hours ago with not a plane in the sky.

Remembering 9/11Some Professional and Personal Reflections

1.D. C. Agrawal was DGM at NJTransit Rail on 9/11/2001. He was also past President of As-sociation of Indians In America’s NJ Chapter. Given his two positions and 9/11 involvements, he was interviewed by NJ Historical Society as part of their 9/11 Oral History Project.

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At NJTransit, we had to deal with the emerging commuter crisis. How to get the survivors and regular commuters home from Manhattan - Penn Station New York was still closed. The ferries had begun to bring shocked survivors fleeing downtown Manhattan to NJTransit’s Hoboken Terminal and Liberty State Park, which were designated as emergency response centers. The federal emergency management office had set up portable shower facilities to remove unknown toxic contaminants from the evacuees. Strange, bizarre and not fully understandable at first!

The Hudson River rail tunnel was the major transportation link at that time to move thousands of people fleeing NY to NJ. Late afternoon, emergency train service was finally restored from NY Penn Station with packed trains leaving all afternoon and evening.

I experienced first hand how the 9/11 events had touched the people, when I left my office around 9pm to go home and met this continuing stream of evacuees. I can still remember the gratitude on the face of two young girls, who worked near WTC, when I shared a bottle of water with them... they had nothing to eat or drink the whole day as they had spent over ten hours walking from WTC area to 42nd street, then to the piers to get a ferry to Liberty State Park in NJ, then a bus to Hoboken, a train to Newark and then finally on their way home to Princeton.

At a personal level, the enormity of the situation was not fully understood until much later that day and the following days. My wife had called during the day worried about our two sons who worked and studied in NYC as

she could not reach them. The NY-NJ cell phone network had crashed with the antennas on top of WTC. I was able to reach them from my office phone later in the day. Luckily they were far from WTC and were fine. However, my wife, who was an Occupational Safety consultant, had to report for emergency duty to fit the NJ emergency responders with masks and other protection equipment as they left for WTC search and rescue mission. Except for my youngest son who was trying to keep up with all the news, it was real silent and quiet at home that evening … just absorbing the implications of the day.

One of the first things I noticed the next day when I went to work was the look from strangers …. the lack of trust and distancing away from me. In my thirty plus years in US, I had been welcomed not shunned as a “foreigner and outsider”. Indians in other parts of the country, especially Sikhs who looked different, fared even worse with physical attacks. For me, the looks of the strangers and the awful smell of death wafting from NYC were most troubling. I tried not to go out of the office building that day.

In addition to professional acquaintances, I got to know that several Indians had passed away at WTC. The numbers became much larger as you talked to others. As the immediate past president of the Indian association in NJ, I got involved in trying to find out what the community needed. It just happened that I had worked with and knew the person appointed by the NJ Governor to manage the 9/11 Emergency Response. I reached out to her, volunteered as a resource and went to the Liberty Park Emergency Response Center that weekend to get the

best available information on the missing and how to help the families of those who had been declared dead.

Given the enormity of the tragedy, I felt really small in my inability to help. I did try to help some individual families - from trying to find TV tapes of possible sightings of the missing, to make arrangements for families to come to the US for funeral services, and ensure resources were provided to the needy widows and children. I also worked on getting police protection for the local temples and gurudwaras.

As an Indian-American, my wife and I realized that we need to do more for the “average American” to know us – our backgrounds, heritage and values. In 2003, with the support of the NJ Department of Education, AIA-NJ started an annual art/writing competition based on a Mahatma Gandhi quotation, which was open to all NJ high school and middle school students. Gandhi was the best representative symbol of India, especially given his message of nonviolence. Over the last 14 years, this annual competition has received over 30,000 entries (with nearly 90% from non-Indian-Americans) and has better informed over 100,000 NJ students, teachers and family members about the values cherished by their Indian neighbours.

Some important lessons learnt. One: Life can change in a minute. When you leave for work each day, just remember to part lovingly with your loved ones. Two: Be involved in the community where you live, even if you consider yourself a transient. You will need community support and help during moments of unanticipated crisis.

Image Courtesy: Dileep Bhandarkar

Commentary by David Cullen, Executive EditorThis article originally appeared on Heavy Duty Trucking’s (HDT) website truckinginfo.com and is is reproduced with permission

Author’s Bio : David Cullen, Executive EditorExecutive Editor David Cullen comments on the positive and negative factors impacting trucking – from the latest government regulations and policy initiatives coming out of Washington DC to the array of business and societal pressures that also determine what truck-fleet managers must do to ensure their operations keep on driving ahead.

There is a mechanical engineer and professor of mechanical and electrical engineering— whose distinguished and globe-trotting career has already spanned over 40 years— who can simply and succinctly explain how autonomous driving technologies will actually make it onto a road near you… and sooner than you might think possible.

Bharat Balasubramanian, PhD., laid out his road map to the fairly near future in a colorful and engaging talk (complete with comical video clips) on May 1 at the National Private Truck Council’s annual meeting in the historic Netherlands Plaza hotel in downtown Cincinnati. The arc of Balasubramanian’s global automotive career is the stuff of a Bollywood epic, or at least of a recruiting video for a top-notch engineering school.

Born and raised in India, he attained a degree in mechanical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai. He then followed his passion for automotive design to one its epicenters— Germany-- where he went on to earn a master’s and then a doctorate in engineering and launched a 38-year career in research and development with Daimler AG. Balasubramanian retired in 2012 as group vice president of research and advanced engineering for Daimler. Not content to rest on his corporate laurels, Balasubramanian’s next move was to accept an engineering professorship at the University of Alabama as well as the post of executive director of UA’s Center for

Advanced Vehicle Technology. The long and the short of his résumé is that he knows a thing or two about applying technology to make driving safer.

“Increasing safety and the [SAE] levels of autonomous driving are two facets of an identical technology set using advanced sensors, actuators and ECUs with slightly different software,” is how Balasubramanian said he sees technology converging to make operating vehicles far safer than they are today. Balasubramanian contends that self-driving and safety advances should not be viewed in isolation. He said flat out that “current discussions on autonomous driving revolve too much around an ‘all or nothing’ approach.” Rather than see it that way, he suggested that “the true advantage in deploying advanced driver assistance systems [ADAS] lies in their ability to dramatically reduce the number of accidents and fatalities – and this [occurs] with every incremental piece of safety technology [introduced].”

He pointed out as well that “typically, implementing truck safety technology lags cars by 10 to 20 years. But with [the rollout] of autonomous driving technologies, these times will probably be cut dramatically through legislative and societal pressures. “Depending on road and traffic complexities, [SAE] Level 4 High Automation mode [coupled] with ‘high automation’ [installed] on parts of Interstate highways ‘from entry to exit’ could be achieved by 2022,” he predicted. On the other hand, Balasubramanian said that “in other [less advanced] scenarios, the vehicle may only operate in Level 2 Partial Autonomous mode, such as on city streets.” Leap ahead to 2022 – only five years hence – and picture those highly autonomus trucks plying “entry to exit” stretches of Interstate (OK, well let’s just say they’ll be doing so during clear weather). Now that

you have that view in mind, is it really so hard to leap to picturing other trucks in other duty cycles running with various levels of task-oriented automation? Especially if it makes the roads safer for all? I, for one, think not.

FYI: Here are the SAE J3016 Levels of Automation for on-road motor vehicles:

Level 0 – No Automation: The full-time performance by the human driver of all aspects of the dynamic driving task, even when enhanced by warning or intervention systems

Level 1 – Driver Assistance: The driving mode-specific execution by a driver assistance system of either steering or acceleration/deceleration using information about the driving environment and with the expectation that the human driver performs all remaining aspects of the dynamic driving task

Level 2 – Partial Automation: The driving mode-specific execution by one or more driver assistance systems of both steering and acceleration/deceleration using information about the driving environment and with the expectation that the human driver performs all remaining aspects of the dynamic driving task

Level 3 – Conditional Automation: The driving mode-specific performance by an Automated Driving System of all aspects of the dynamic driving task with the expectation that the human driver will respond appropriately to a request to intervene

Level 4 – High Automation: The driving mode-specific performance by an Automated Driving System of all aspects of the dynamic driving task, even if a human driver does not respond appropriately to a request to intervene

Level 5 – Full Automation: The full-time performance by an Automated Driving System of all aspects of the dynamic driving task under all roadway and environmental conditions that can be managed by a human driver.

Seeing Safe Driving and Self-Driving as Going Hand in Hand

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Domains fit into three buckets: health, wealth and spirituality, allowing for some overlap and dependencies.

1. Health: swimming, running, lifting, yoga2. Wealth: education, career3. Spirituality: meditation, yoga

Each of these buckets are filled with the time and effort you invest in them. You can calibrate yourself in every bucket by guessing what percentile

By Vignesh Rege

Self improvement involves the following steps:

1. Figure out potential domains of improvement2. Calibrate yourself in that domain3. Chart out your next steps

Figuring out domains needs you to be open to new experiences and fight the urge to define your comfort zone too early in life.

you fall in. Ask yourself, where do I stand with respect to the rest of humanity? The 100 percentilers in each of these buckets are familiar to us - say Bolt, Gates and Buddha.

Most of us tend to be skewed heavily towards one of the three. For the audience of this post, it’s likely ‘wealth’. Work towards reducing these skews and it should be possible to reach the 90%ile marker in every bucket. Efforts that you take in every bucket make progress on other buckets easier. Same holds fordomains within every bucket. Yoga improves flexibility which makes it easier to lift heavy. Lifting can improve muscles strength that reduces strain during hiking. Wealth can enable easy access to better health facilities and can free up time. Meditation frees up brain time by training you to not get lost in past

Ramblings on Self Improvement

is going to be.

Our societal obsession with small talk also makes it harder to learn from each other. Be the example here. Open up, answer honestly and from the heart. Humans have a tendency to mirror each other and seek social proof for actions. You can be the one who provides that social proof. It’s ok to say you are having a hard time. It’s ok to describe why. Be nonchalant while doing so. People will mimic you and follow suit. The end result is a more genuine interaction. A better use of time. Some will hesitate. That’s fine too. It’s hard to open up. Allow them the time.

In the process of self improvement, failures are inevitable. Failures are information transfer mechanisms. They are a critical precursor to step 2 and 3. They make it easier to figure out what next steps you should be focusing on. They are hard to deal with though because our emotions get entangled in them. Our ego is hurt. If only we weren’t slaves to our egos.

Growing up in modern human societies fattens our ego and our identity. I was a Hindu, an Indian, a Mumbaikar, a Marathi even before I could speak. Our identity tends to collect more and more traits as we grow up. Many of these traits are slapped on by our social up bringing rather than via a concerted conscious effort on our part. The later your ego, the easier it is for your ego to be hurt. The more you identify with things, the more fiercely you will defend them. The only difference between a debate and an argument is a sense of identity. Arguments are a waste of time. Time is truly the only resource you have. Save time. Whittle down your ego.

Next time you get into an argument, take a step back. Ask yourself why your emotions are rising. What aspect of your ego is causing your emotions to rise up to its defense. Is this aspect something that you truly want to incorporate in your identity? Or is it just something that you picked up

regrets and future anxieties. Self awareness gained via spiritual efforts makes it easier to not get dragged into heated arguments. It also helps with self calibration.

When you feel like you’ve hit your limit, remember that nature operates through phase transitions whereas our brain thinks linearly. Have you experienced an occasion where you’ve surprised yourself with what you ever able to accomplish when you thought that you couldn’t? That’s an example of your abilities eclipsing your brain’s linear constraints.

“Most people overestimate what can be achieved in 1 year and underestimate what can be achieved in 10 years” - (Gates)

Phase transitions in a domain are made possible by small inconspicuous wins in related domains. When you hit a plateau while trying to make progress in one of these domains, take a step back and figure out easier wins in related domains.

While charting out next steps for improvement, remember to focus on setting up systems rather than goals. What new habit can I imbibe rather than what next goal can I hit? Set up systems and celebrate goals.

What systems to set up requires some research. Learn from the Internet and the people around you. Learning from people directly is hard because most people are unaware of what contributes to their own successes. Here it helps to know what questions to ask to tease out learnings from people you converse with. Asking good questions requires active listening. Active listening requires fighting the urge to figure out what your contribution to the conversation

along the way? If it’s the latter, shed it. Put your ego on a diet. On a spiritual diet.

If failures hurt you, that means there are things you can do to improve spiritually. The end result isn’t a robotic emotionless being. It’s someone who is at peace with failures and successes.

Of the three buckets, spirituality has the least obvious effort-fruits relationship. How the fuck do breathing exercises help you diminish your ego?

The answer is unknown. I believe it had something to do with living in the present. Focusing on your breathing is the easiest way there is to focus on the present moment. Once you focus on the present moment, your ego is handicapped. Your ego thrives on the slights and regrets of the past and the anxieties of the future. Focusing your attention on the present moment is your weapon against your ego.

The weaker your ego becomes, the quicker you recover emotionally from failures and embarrassments. The quicker you recover, the more information you can gather from that event. The more information you gather, the easier it is to calibrate and figure out next steps.

People can aid you in figuring out next steps for self improvement in specific domains. Seek people who were at your state a few years ago and are now better than you in that domain. Learn from their mistakes. A word of caution while seeking advice. I

f you want to be amongst the best in a domain, a majority of the advice you get will naturally be mediocre. Be picky when imbibing advice. The best coaches are the ones who listen carefully, take their time to understand you and then help you figure out the one thing you should focus on to improve. Seek the best coaches.

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By Parth Patel

If I had to summarize my experience working with and learning about Pratham hands on in India in three words they would be: eye-opening, heartwarming, and inspiring. When observing Pratham learning centers in Ahmedabad and Surat, I explored a part of India I had never experienced before. A part where reading is more of a privilege than a necessity, and a place where getting an eighth grade education is no guarantee. I say “experienced” in this context because I had already seen this place, and I was already

keenly aware of it. I knew education was lacking in parts of India and all around the world, and I was very aware of the polluted conditions a multitude of people are forced to live in because of near destitute poverty. I would even try to help wherever I could. However, I never understood the intensity of these conditions until I got out the car, looked at the area surrounding the first center I visited, and experienced the atmosphere that was present. Many of the students who live in such areas do go to schools, whether they be public or private. However the quality of these schools would often be very low. For example, a fifth grade student at this school could still be reading at a first grade level. At these schools, students also receive very little individualized attention, which is essential at a young age to encourage learning and good habits. For me, witnessing these conditions first hand was eye-opening. I learned earlier that this is where

Pratham comes into the picture. Pratham works to further the education of youth who fall under this category with extra classes and programs that are supplementary to school. One thing that stood out to me during my observation of these classes was the amount of dedication that people who worked for Pratham had, whether they are teachers, accountants, or anything in between and how much of an impact they are making on students’ lives. Also, starting from the first day, when I visited a range of classes with students anywhere from ages five to ten I was impressed by

how smoothly and efficiently the whole system ran. I did not get to observe any of these classes in depth, however the level of enjoyment that the students seemed to have jumped out at me. These students were loving class; they worked with smiles on their faces. Another thing that impressed me was the teaching tools that the teachers used. Some of them were standard ones that can be seen at any given Pratham learning center, but many were hand crafted and drawn by teachers. By the end of my first day in the field, I probably visited five to six different learning centers for 20-30 minutes each.

On my second day I visited pre-school classes and sat through an whole two to three hour class. I enjoyed it. The class started with the students, about 3-5 years old, playing with toys that stimulated their minds for 10 minutes. Then the teacher took attendance at which point each student would get up one

by one and put a check next to their name. Not all of them could recognize their name so there would be sticker with a picture of something next to their name that they would associate with themselves. Next the kids sang songs for 5 minutes and got ready for some learning. They started with a quick activity in which the students had to point something in room out and say what it does, for example a fan, which blows air. Then teacher had a lesson planned out that had to do with learning numbers. After that the teacher told the students a story that had a moral so they could take something away from the story as

well. A few more fun learning-based games followed and then it was lunch time. Each student brought their lunch to class. For lunchtime, the students and teacher would go downstairs to wash their hands at a spigot and then come back upstairs to eat their lunch. After lunch the class was over and the students returned to either another class or went home. After observing this class I headed to a few more preschool classes in different environments just to see how they looked, which ended my exciting day. Here are some pictures that I took.

The next day or two was spent prepping for the Pratham Access English Immersion Camp. This is a four day program that many schools are invited to participate in. Its goal was to immerse the students (average about 15 years of age) in the English language so they can improve in it and learn about some parts of another culture because all of the

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students are studying it in school. My role was to act as an assistant to the team running the camp and help wherever needed, interact with the students as much as possible (which was a lot of fun), take pictures, and give a presentation about my life and the US. I would have to say working at this program was probably the highlight of my whole trip to India. Parts of My Overall Experience:My first experience with the Access English Immersion Program was getting to see all of the students dancing and smiling. The moment I saw it I was exhilarated by the loud but fun music, and the many students moving to the beat. Each of the four days of the camp is started with aerobics. This gave the students a chance to get closer to each other, and loosen up before their activities (keep in mind the students are from a few different schools, so they did not all know each other). I thought the activity was very productive and a great way to start a busy but exciting day!

Another activity I observed was a hat making activity. In it, students

excited, and so was I. They were very interested by the fact that I live in the US and were curious to learn more. People were eager to talk to me and it felt very good. After I introduced myself, the students were asking a lot of questions about the US and some fun personal questions, like what people in the US eat and wear, or who my favorite Hollywood actor is. As time passed I got to know many of the students by name, and I received many verbal “thanks” and three thank you cards. It was uplifting. The people were an absolute pleasure to work with and it was so fun talking to them. When talking to them in-between activities, I did switch from English to my scratchy Gujarati at their request, but during all of the activities, English was basically the only language spoken. In these side conversations I got to ask them some questions about their life, India, and their interests and the responses were very interesting to hear. The same went for the conversations I had with the students when helping out with activities, or giving presentations. I

make a paper hat and paste cut outs of people, places, and things they like and dislike that they find in magazines. It served as a fun and useful activity that provided a way for students to break the ice with each other. For example, one student that has a picture of a car on his or her hat sees that another has a similar picture would then ask, “Do you like cars as well?”, and regardless of whether the answer was yes or no, a friendly conversation ensued. This provided a great way for students to practice English with another student who is at a similar proficiency in the language.

I also feel it is important to note that during this experience, at no point did the student seem bored, unenthusiastic, or disrespectful. They were always actively listening to every presentation and many took detailed notes.After the hat activity, teachers came in the classrooms and taught the students how to construct sentences in a more colloquial manner, instead of relying on textbook structure. The audience was engaged, and answered

learned what they want to be when they grow up, and some of their favorite sports. By the last day, I had given my email and phone number, and gotten some emails and phone numbers to become Facebook friends with some of the students. I gave a PowerPoint presentation that I created to talk a bit about myself, and the US in comparison to India. While doing so, I tried to be as interactive as possible, and it was a great success. The students followed my whole presentation, understanding what I said, and answering all of the comprehension questions I asked. They also asked many follow up questions on what I presented that kept the conversation very lively and entertaining. For example, at one point I started singing We Will Rock You and drawing the Statue of Liberty (the students were laughing and clapping like crazy!) I also was privileged enough to hear some of the students sing. One sang three minutes of Justin Bieber’s Baby. Then afterwards, the whole class recited the Indian national anthem, it was

all of the teacher’s questions with success. I thought this gave them a great chance to speak and listen in English, while learning more English.

Note that the Hindi on the board is just there to show the difference between Hindi’s grammatical structure and English’s)The activity that ended the first day was handball. It was run by some students and teachers from the Riverside school. They organized many team building drills and activities. One of them including people forming two lines, linking hands, and having one person run through the lines with their eyes closed.

This was followed by everyone sitting in a circle to talk about what it means to be a team, part of a team, and a good sport. This provided the students with something to take away from their experience. Then, the handball began!

My Personal Experience:On the first day when I introduced myself, the students were very

quite moving.

By the time the Immersion Camp came to an end, I had made many new friends, and lived a great four days I will never forget. The experience was heartwarming.

After the Immersion Camp, I visited a school that attended the Immersion Camp and sat in on one of its classes. This class’s theme was a reflection of the Immersion camp, so I helped the students out with that. We did some activities for that and then we played some fun English based games to wrap the session up. One of the games we played was 20 Questions, I had a blast and so did the students.

Afterwards, I went to Surat to check out the centers there. I sat in on another pre-school class which was pretty fun. The layout of the class was very similar to the Ahmedabad class I observed. The next day I took a bus to Chikli, which is close to Navsari. There is a Pratham PACE center located there. When I actually got there it was totally different than

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what I expected. The building, funded by the Naik foundation, was very large and located on the side of a highway. When I went inside the building was very well maintained and had a modern look to it. Inside I met with the manager of the sight and got a tour of the facility and learned about the program. PACE centers are places where people between ages 18 and 30 (I think) can come to learn a specific vocational job for a certain amount of months. In the case of this PACE center, it is hospitality, which means working at a hotel in either food & beverages, housekeeping, or bakery and the course takes about three months.

This gives people with less fortunate backgrounds a great opportunity to become specialized in a field where they can get a steady income a good lifestyle. I really enjoyed my visit, it was really cool seeing how this whole program worked.

This is one of the teachers lecturing a group of students in one of their classrooms.

This is a student cooking our lunch in their practice facility!

This is one of the managers of the center, one of the managers of the Surat urban centers, and me eating lunch cooked by students.

This is me talking to all of the students and answering any questions they had for me!After visiting the PACE center, my experience with Pratham in India ended.

However it left a lasting impact on me. I created memories I will never forget, met people I will continue to stay in touch with, learned a lot from travels, and I left India inspired to make a difference in any way I can.

UJALA Foundation

Ujala is proud to contribute to the following organizations:Cornell University School of EngineeringDrexel University School of BusinessJohns Hopkins School of MedicineThe Franklin Institute, PhiladelphiaThe Academy of Natural Sciences, PhiladelphiaAmerican Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)Legal Aid of D.C.Philadelphia ZooIndian Institute of Technology, BombayAnd many more…

UJALA FOUNDATION “Investing in the future – youth, education, and health”

RAJ L. GUPTA, Executive Director

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the catastrophic decline in medical education. Remember, the vast majority of India’s best minds go into science, engineering and medicine. The less said about those who get an education in arts, commerce and “oriental” subjects the better.Suffice to say, a growing number are deeply worried about the gargantuan crisis in India’s higher education system.

On August 7, 2016, Shail Kumar argued, “everyone is paying a hefty price for [the crisis]: students, parents, industry, society and the nation.” Since most degrees are often not worth the paper they are written on, students strive to get into elite institutions such as the IITs. To do so, parents pack them off to coaching classes in towns like Kota where they prepare for dreaded entrance examinations for up to four years. The chosen ones get to go places like IIT. Those who fail to make the cut are often deeply disappointed, some are scarred for life and a few even

commit suicide. The coaching classes industry is booming in India. In Kota alone, the industry has an annual turnover of nearly $250 million (Rs1,500 crore). Some middle-class parents spend up to a third of their salary on coaching for their children.

Unsurprisingly, the coaching business is now a multibillion dollar industry. Even as middle-class Indians send their children to Kota, richer Indians simply pack them off abroad. Children of leading politicians and bureaucrats leave for places like Harvard and Yale as soon as they finish school.Given the dire state of affairs, is there reason to hope?

A LOTUS IN THE MUD

Those who take a cyclical view of life and history muse that things are never static and can always turn around. In the East, this view has always held weight. That may or may not be true, but there are institutions and people still living up to ancient ideals of education in India’s time-warped land.

One of these institutions is IITGN. Led by the visionary Jain, it is an institution that is taking risks and embracing bold ideas. For a

start, IITGN is on the banks of the Sabarmati, the river by which Mahatma Gandhi set up his ashram some kilometers downstream when he returned from South Africa. In 2012, after turning down other offers of land, Jain astutely wrangled 400 acres of riverfront property from

the Gujarat state government at a hugely symbolic location. Appositely, Rajmohan Gandhi, the nearly 82-year-old grandson of the Mahatma, now teaches here.

IITGN not only gains from being on the banks of the Sabarmati, but also from its location in Gujarat. Gandhi’s ancestral home, with its long, jagged coastline, has been a land of traders since time immemorial. Purportedly, it was a Gujarati sea pilot who guided Vasco da Gama to Kozhikode. Today, Gujaratis can be found all along East Africa, Canada, Britain, the US and any other part of the world. Gujarat continues to be the most entrepreneurial of Indian states and is relatively better governed, even though traffic signals are ornamental lights that no one heeds. The entrepreneurial environment gives IITGN the opportunity to serve the needs of the local industry, find jobs for its graduating students, and draw upon well-heeled Gujaratis to support

the young institution.Location is important but not enough. Besides, India is a land where opportunities are squandered on a daily basis. Even famous institutions have been crumbling. “Tagore’s Viswa-Bharati University is now a picture of decline and decay” and

By Atul Singh

This article was first published on www.fairobserver.com and has been reproduced with permission. This does not necessarily reflect the views of the editors, IITBAA-GNY, or IITBHF, and has been included here as it was deemed valuable to the scheduleddiscussion during the Annual reunion.

IIT Gandhinagar offers some key lessons for tackling the acute crisis in India’s higher education system.Readers must know at the outset that this author teaches at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IITGN). Furthermore, this author greatly admires Sudhir Jain, the director of the institution. He also has close relationships with and high regard for a number of faculty members in IITGN. Therefore, this is certainly not an article written from Olympian heights with Apollonian objectivity. Yet this author hopes it will shed light on an issue that bedevils the future of the land of the Buddha, Kabir and Tagore.

CRISIS IN INDIAN HIGHER EDUCATION

India’s higher education system has long been in crisis. In September 2004, Devesh Kapur and Pratap Bhanu Mehta authored a Harvard paper titled, “Indian Higher Education Reform: From Half-Baked Socialism to Half-Baked Capitalism.”

They mapped the massive scale of the de facto privatization of Indian higher education. They posited: “This privatization has resulted from a breakdown of the state system and an exit of Indian elites from public institutions, to both private sector institutions within the country as well as abroad.” The situation in 2017 is far worse.

Kapur and Mehta also pointed out that the ideological and institutional underpinnings of privatization remain very weak. In 2004, the University Grants Commission (UGC), India’s apex body for higher education regulation, classified two-thirds of 15,000 colleges that educated almost 10 million students as “Arts, Science, Commerce and Oriental Learning Colleges.” Such terminology gives away the fact that the Victorian spirit might be dead in Britain, but still thrives in India’s UGC.

Little of the Victorian rectitude survives in India, though. Politicians have got into the education business and so have bureaucrats. Indian dirigisme simply means that those with connections can begin engineering institutes, medical colleges or management schools. Indian license raj enjoins that higher education institutions be nonprofit institutions. After all, they are temples of learning. That may well be true, but Kapur and Mehta astutely observe

that “non-profit status allows for tax exemption and makes it easier to launder money.”

Most Indian higher education institutions are absolutely awful. They churn out graduates with little skill and scant knowledge. In 2016, a study found that barely 3% of graduating engineers are employable in software or product market and only 7% could handle core engineering tasks. Dheeraj Sanghi, an eminent academic renowned for his forthrightness, has chronicled “the absolutely abysmal quality of education in [Indian] colleges” for many years. More than “poor quality curriculum, poor quality faculty, poor infrastructure, poor school education” et al, Sanghi blames the culture of copying in colleges for the terrible state of Indian education.

Sanghi is right. In India, plagiarism is a way of life. Laziness, not learning, is the guiding principle of most faculty and students. The country has lost its moral compass and education is about gaining certification, not acquiring knowledge. The malaise is captured best by a 2015 Reuters report that chronicled rampant fraud at Indian medical schools. This has been a longstanding phenomenon. For the last two decades, I.P. Singh, the author’s father and an eminent plastic surgeon, along with many of his illustrious colleagues, has bemoaned

IIT Gandhinagar:

An Oasis in India’s Higher Education Desert

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students at Malaviya’s Banaras Hindu University allege sexual harassment by faculty. So, IITGN’s location by the Sabarmati in the entrepreneurial state of Gujarat was and is no guarantee of success. The institution has got off to a rollicking start because it puts the students center stage. In a conversation with other university leaders, Jain remarked that directors may come and go, but students will be associated with the institution for life. In his view, students and alumni are the biggest stakeholders in any academic institution.

Therefore, Jain has fostered a culture of student involvement in all aspects of campus life. They have given inputs in architectural plans, chosen names of hostels, created mini-traditions and traveled around the country to find their moorings. IITGN’s “Foundation Program” for students who join the institution is exceedingly radical. This five-week program is intended to expose students who might have spent four years in Kota to the wider world. For the first time, many paint or play sports, do community service or organize social events, meet people from other walks of life, and discover new possibilities for the future.

Jain encourages his students to explore. Under his leadership, IITGN provides multiple opportunities for its students to go abroad and experience other cultures. Students do research projects, courses and internships all over the map. Some spend summers at US universities such as Caltech and Texas A&M University. Others do courses in design or literature at places like the New School in New York. Some go to Japan where they experience work ethic, discipline, punctuality, politeness and high technology in a society markedly different to theirs. Yet others make their way to Portugal where they savor the sun and sand in the land from where Vasco da Gama set sail for India.

Jain has also made IITGN students discover their own land. An “Explorer’s Fellowship” enables students to travel through the length and breadth of their vast

Earlier this year, the president of India conferred on Danino the Padma Shri, a national honor for the country’s most eminent citizens. Other sages come from abroad. Fred Coolidge, a youthful 68-year-old professor and cyclist, brings to the campus l’étonnement philosophique, the ability to marvel at the wonder of the world and incessantly discover things new.

BREAKING DOWN SILOS TO SERVE WIDER SOCIETY

Coolidge and this author shared an office earlier this year. Among other things, Coolidge has worked on the evolution of the human brain and done some interesting work even on the Neanderthals. One fine morning, Coolidge asked this author which god had emerged from the forehead of Zeus. This author responded it was not a god but a goddess named Athena. Coolidge then revealed that this is where the frontal lobes are located.

This is a part of the brain that controls our key cognitive skills such as language, memory, thinking and judgment. Did the ancient Greeks observe the human body and come up with this conclusion? Or were they simply intuiting something fundamental that modern science has finally verified? We may never fully know.

As a modern-day philosophe, such serendipitous discoveries delight this author. They are only possible if an institution creates an interdisciplinary environment. This is precisely what Jain has done. In Jain’s recent visit to Portugal, the education minister of this former European naval superpower remarked that he wished his universities operated a bit more like IITGN.

The minister cited the example of IITGN’s engineering and anthropology departments working together on interesting problems, hoping Portuguese universities would do the same.

subcontinent. Through this experience, they come to understand their country’s traditions and its complex ground realities. The assumption is that travel through the dusty towns and rustic villages of India will give students much-needed practical knowledge, connect them to real-life problems and make them better decision-makers when they assume positions of leadership.Along with this exposure, IITGN instils rigor among its students. There is zero tolerance for plagiarism that plagues the country. Students who copy from others and fail to do original work face swift and severe action. Regurgitation is unacceptable. Students study a range of subjects from mathematics to humanities to develop the confidence to come up with and develop their ideas. As Jain often says, IITGN aims to produce graduates who not only solve important problems, but also identify problems worth solving.

Naturally, students will only be able to do so if they have the confidence and bravery to think independently and critically. Therefore, inspiring students and making them think is a fundamental goal that Jain has set out for his young institution. In a country where rote learning and obsession with examinations rule the roost, this focus on learning and thinking harks back to Tagore. Unsurprisingly, Tagore’s iconic poem, “Where The Mind is Without Fear,” that celebrates cosmopolitanism, curiosity, reason, knowledge and truth takes center stage on IITGN’s vision document.

STRONG ROOTS AND OPEN WINDOWS

In the past, India was known for its universities. Takshashila, Nalanda and Vikramshila are haloed names in history. They educated scholars not only from India, but also from abroad. Each of these universities set strong roots in local communities but opened its windows to the world. It is this millennia-old ecumenical and liberal tradition that IITGN is laying claim to.Jain has created internal systems that work. He has put good people in key places. He once remarked: “You

Younger faculty members at IITGN embody this interdisciplinary ethos and some of them are highly impressive. Amit Prashant has a mind that cuts through complex issues like a hot knife through butter. Vimal Mishra is a walking encyclopedia on river basins and more. Amit Arora has shed light on how to make the infernally heavy tripods used by the Indian army much lighter. Rita Kothari is a multilingual author, translator and teacher par excellence. Neeldhara Misra is a fount of knowledge on internet technologies and online tools. Manas Paliwal, a lover of Montreal and Canada, has wit and wisdom beyond his years. These and many others will form the spine of IITGN for decades to come. After all, what is an institution but a collection of people bound together by shared norms and working toward a common purpose?

With the institution’s spine in place, Jain has been building relationship with other institutions. IITGN has signed multiple memoranda of understanding with the likes of Tata Chemicals and the Indian army. Young researchers such as Arora and Paliwal will be finding solutions to India’s real-life and real-time problems. A research park connecting industry and academia is soon on its way. Jain is taking a leaf out of Caltech or MIT and striving to make IITGN much more than a watering hole for students on their way to jobs in multinationals, careers in the civil services or research in American universities.

Of course, no institution is perfect and IITGN has its warts. After all, it cannot escape the Indian terroir. Many students are burnt out and lack the desire to learn. Few can write half-decently and even fewer can speak coherently. Some faculty members are not as passionate as others. However, it is important to remember that even Harvard is far from perfect. This author knows graduate students who crammed up over the summer and then taught undergraduates Indian politics from September without ever visiting the country or having any knowledge of a single Indian language.

have to keep internal systems in equilibrium to create outward looking universities.” That is precisely what he has achieved. A cursory look at IITGN’s website tells any visitor that American Nobel laureates, Japanese ministers and Portuguese officials have spent time at the campus.

The campus itself is superlatively designed. G.C. Chaudhary, the superintending engineer, has come from the Military Engineering Service (MES) on deputation after building runways for fighter jets in difficult conditions. He has achieved wonders on a tight budget. Once, Chaudhary was Jain’s student. Conveniently, Jain is a civil engineer who did his PhD from Caltech. This means he has been exceedingly hands-on in the designing and building of the campus. The buildings in the academic area all flow into one another and foster serendipitous social interaction between faculty and students. Steve Jobs had precisely the same idea when he designed Pixar’s headquarters in Emeryville.

Unlike Jobs, Jain and Chaudhary have created the campus rather frugally. Yet it has won numerous awards for its environmentally friendly design and has been deemed “the greenest campus in India.” Its innovative features such as the use of natural light, use of fly-ash bricks, cavity walls, solar panels, passive cooling technologies, saving pre-existing trees, and integration of horticulture and waste management are path-breaking in the country. Naturally, this pioneering spirit rubs off on students and faculty.

Most young institutions hire faculty rather quickly. In contrast, IITGN has been patient and picky. To set the institution on the right footing, Jain has astutely collected a crew of sages who retired from older IIT campuses to provide statesmanship for this young institution. Some sages come from non-academic backgrounds. Michel Danino, a French engineer-turned-environmentalist, conservationist and renowned scholar on ancient India, is a shining star in the IITGN firmament.

By contrast, Danino and Gandhi illuminate ancient and modern India for those who want to learn.

There is one last thing that needs mentioning but that requires a trip to the past. The pre-independence period from 1892 to 1947 was a time of extraordinary developments in India’s higher education. As Kapur and Mehta point out, philanthropy played a big part. Public institutions of enduring significance, such as Aligarh Muslim University, Banaras Hindu University, Jamia Millia Islamia, Annamalai University and the Indian Institute of Science “were created largely through voluntary donations.” The two gentlemen go on to observe that “the net share of private philanthropy in shouldering the burden of public institutions was as high as seventeen percent in 1950 and is now down to less than two percent.” Jain has taken it upon himself to turn the clock back. He engages with people with extraordinary warmth, infectious cheerfulness and indefatigable energy. Staff members such as Santosh Raut, Sunita Menon and Yashwant Chauhan ensure that visitors enjoy warm hospitality for which India has long been famous.

This warm welcome bowls over foreigners like Olivier Lavinal, donors such as Ruyintan Mehta and even prospective faculty members. It generates goodwill that has helped Jain raise money for IITGN. In particular, he has tapped the Indian diaspora in the US and Gujarati business community closer to home. Remarkably, alumni from IITGN are already donating to the institution. For the financial year 2016-17 that ended in March, Jain raised about $3 million (Rs18 crore). Compared to US universities, this is piffle but IITGN is a lighthouse for other public institutions in India that are entirely dependent on government largesse.

This author hopes that other institutions will use this lighthouse to sail to better waters and India’s higher education will improve in his lifetime.

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To Register Please Visitwww.iitbgnychapter.org

Diwali Dhamaka

Sat November 11th, 6:00pmDeewan Banquet Hall,

Piscataway, NJ

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