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Is Life Elsewhere?

At its best a University is meant to prepare one for a life in the real world. LIFE in the outside world, so to speak. But, and not as Milan Kundera put it in his brilliantly titled novel, life is also not really elsewhere, even if the University provides only a transitory environment for most. I’ve been mulling over this post for a while now, these thoughts prompted by a number of things that happen from time to time on the campus.

And in the classroom. I was mildly (to put it mildly) irritated some months ago when two students asked for permission to miss a class since it clashed with an entrance or qualifying examination for some other institution. Like there was a destination that was demonstrably more important than here, which was just a stepping stone in any case… which more than kind of devalued the present in favour of an imagined future. But maybe I was being unnecessarily touchy.

The issue continues to bother me though- why do many of our students, and typically the more promising ones, not consider the UoH as a serious destination for research. Better facilities elsewhere is one reason, of course, but there is something more to it. Over the years I have seen a variety of students who intend to pursue further studies choose destinations that are almost surely not as good, and also seen them exchange the familiar for the alien, exchange the possibility of good mentorship for the probably indifferent… But then, I have also seen them perform well enough later, so this is also somewhat of a sense of regret of “what might have been”.

Nevertheless, the question of why Indians seem to do better abroad is one that has been asked often enough, and reasons range from the obvious to the banal. A typical one being that “India’s biggest problem is its mindset. India still views itself as a third world country or less harshly, a “developing” one.” Comparing our (presumed) national characteristics with those of others is an old practice: Rabindranath Tagore, for instance, when talking of the Japanese aesthetic felt that in Japan, there was a certain sense of order, discipline and unruffledness he missed in India, where people wore themselves out with disorder, effusiveness and over-reaction [as cited in K G Subramanyan’s article on RT and modern Indian Art].

So is there something more to it than better facilities and infrastructure that attracts the aspiring student to more developed (or richer) countries? Is life elsewhere? A colleague recently wrote (and I am extracting from his mail) on what the main differences were. This was about the attitudes of people to the following principles of life:

Ethics, as basic principles.
Integrity.
Responsibility.
The respect for Laws and Regulations.
The respect from majority of citizens by right.
The love for work.
The effort to save and invest.
The will to be productive.
Punctuality.

The differences, that analysis asserts, arise essentially from the proportion of the population that actually follows these principles and not from some other national characteristic, intrinsic superiority or natural advantages that these nations might possess.

Surely these principles are neither so profound to enunciate, nor are they that difficult to follow in a society. And yet…

Keeping one's Temper

Of the several meanings of the word temper when used as a noun, here are eight that I picked up from the Free Dictionary:

tem·per, n.

A state of mind or emotions; disposition: an even temper.
Calmness of mind or emotions; composure: lose one’s temper.
A tendency to become easily angry or irritable: a quick temper.
An outburst of rage: a fit of temper.
A characteristic general quality; tone: heroes who exemplified the medieval temper; the politicized temper of the 1930s.
The condition of being tempered.
The degree of hardness and elasticity of a metal, chiefly steel, achieved by tempering.
A modifying substance or agent added to something else.
[Archaic] A middle course between extremes; a mean.

The fifth in the list is what Jawaharlal Nehru had in mind when he defined scientific temper in his Discovery of India (1946), as “a way of life, a process of thinking, a method of acting and associating with our fellow men“.

The immediate reason for writing about this is a letter I recieved from NISCAIR, the National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources, approaching us (the University) to endorse the Palampur Statement, a resolution adopted at the International Conference on Science Communication for Scientific Temper in January 2012.

That scientific temper has not much, per se, to do with science or science communication is (or should be) self-evident so it is a little unusual that NISCAIR should be the only organization that is taking initiative in this matter. Several years ago, I was asked to speak at the release of the National Book Trust’s Angels, Devils and Science: A Collection of Articles on Scientific Temper by Pushpa Bhargava and Chandana Chakrabarti, both prominent residents of Hyderabad. Prof. Bhargava, founder Director of CCMB and member of the National Knowledge Commission is an indefatigable spokesman for the scientific approach in all aspects of life, and with Chandana Chakrabarti, he has written a number of articles in the popular press, many of which are collected in that book.

The blurb that one can read on the NBT’s website says ” India is one of the ten most scientifically and technologically advanced countries in the world. Interestingly, it is also the only country where commitment to scientific temper is enshrined in the Constitution as a duty of its citizens. Juxtaposing the advancement in modern science with serious lack of scientific temper, the articles in the book make a plea that many superstitious beliefs still prevalent in society are founded on unscientific grounds. Arguing for the urgent need to promote scientific temper as a social asset, the book discusses the importance of scientific temper and its role in the country’s socio-economic as well as scientific & technological advancement. The book is a major contribution in understanding the importance of science and scientific temper.”

So given the importance, what is the Palampur Statement? Its a fairly long and comprehensive document that delves into, among other things, the changing world order, the current state of science and technology, the spread of fundamentalism, and so on. It has to be read- even cursorily would be enough- to get a true sense of its potential impact in our lives. One fragment that summarizes the main gist of it goes: the thought structure of a common citizen is constituted by scientific as well as extra-scientific spaces. These two mutually exclusive spaces co-exist peacefully. Act of invocation of one or the other is a function of social, political or cultural calling. Those who consider spreading Scientific Temper as their fundamental duty must aim at enlarging the scientific spaces.

And it concludes: We call upon the people of India to be the vanguard of the scientific temper. This is a statement I endorse.

Anandibai's Quilt

On the third floor of the Kelkar Museum in Pune, in the corner of the room where articles of clothing are displayed, is a quilt. Presented to the museum by ‘Wrangler’ Paranjape, this quilt is possibly the only physical article known to have been in the possession of the remarkable Anandibai Joshee (1865-87).

The image on the right is from a photograph I took a few years ago when a friend told me about its existence. The description provided at the display says that the quilt was a community effort by Anandibai’s friends to mark her return to India. As one can see, it contains scraps of cloth that must have formed part of everyday objects and clothing- it was difficult to not be moved- one irregular piece has mirrorwork , while another contains the name of her husband, embroidered in what must surely be her hand. I have not been able to find much about this in what has been written about Anandibai’s life, both in the popular press as well as in scholarly journals. As things go, maybe quilts are not that important.

But as one of the first Indian woman to be trained in western science, her story is iconic and inspirational, and in its own way as remarkable and as tragic as that of Ramanujan. She was the first Indian woman to get a medical degree, in the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. Upon her return to India where she hoped to practice, she died of tuberculosis at the age of 22.

Commenting on her life, the sociologist Meera Kosambi writes: Anandibai Joshee was a true pioneer…. she was the first Indian woman to qualify as a medical doctor. She was also the first Maharashtrian woman to leave these shores for higher studies abroad, at the young age of eighteen.

In March 1886, when she received an American medical degree, she was barely twenty-one — an astonishing achievement in an era that refused even simple literacy to most Indian women! Anandibai chose a medical career because she wanted to serve other women who had inadequate health care. She defended this choice publicly and against heavy odds. Her personal life, too, was a continuous struggle on many fronts. Given the dramatic and eventful nature of her life, it is difficult to believe that she died so tragically young, just before her twenty- second birthday. [She was] an intelligent woman who was dispassionately perceptive of herself and her society — one who had independent views on contemporary gender issues. She was fearless in pointing out the obstacles to women’s education in India, and yet was firmly anchored to an Indian cultural and nationalistic identity. Anandibai was not merely India’s first woman doctor: she was also a feminist and a nationalist at a time when women were a rarity in the public sphere. And though she was not a scientist in the proper sense of the term, Anandibai wrote and researched in the field of public health/ epidemiology while still a medical student.

As has often been underscored, there are multiple identities that each of us carries, and Anandibai’s life, short though it was, was a patchwork quilt, not unlike that with which this post begins. Married young, she learned to read and write, not just Marathi, but 6 other languages including English. She she had a child at the age of 14 and upon losing that child due to inadequate healthcare, she decided to become a doctor. A letter written by her in 1883 gives a glimpse into her determination and strength of character. It is not unlike letters that reach similar offices even today…

Dear Sir, she says, I beg to ask, if upon any terms pecuniarily consistent with my means, I may be allowed to enter the Women’s Medical College of Pa. for a thorough course of study. I have with me seventy dollars, and my husband expects to send me twenty dollars per month less the cost of sending.

I was eighteen years of age last March.

I am not quoting the entire letter which can be seen in the archives of Drexel University, in their collection on Women Physicians, but the arguments she makes find an echo even today!

Though I may not meet in all points, the requirements for entering College, I trust that as my case is exceptional and peculiar your people will be merciful & obliging. My health is good, and this, with that determination which has brought me to your country against the combined opposition of my friends & caste ought to go along way towards helping me to carry out the purpose for which I came i.e. is to render to my poor suffering country women the true medical aid they so sadly stand in need of, and which they would rather die for than accept at the hands of a male physician. The voice of humanity is with me and I must not fail. My soul is moved to help the many who cannot help themselves and I feel sure that the God who has me in his care will influence the many that can and should share in this good work to lend me such aid and assistance as I may need. I ask nothing for myself, individually, but all that is necessary to fit me for my work. I humbly crave at the door of your College, or any other that shall give me admittance.

I’ve included a piece on Anandibai’s in Lilavati’s Daughters, a collection of essays on and by women scientists that I co-edited some years ago. Her story while sad and complex is compelling, and a perpetual testimony to the value of higher education, and to the importance of a higher cause.

… very Heaven!

My Independence Day speech, 2012:

Members of the University family, students, faculty, officers, staff, colleagues. Greeting on the occasion of our 66th Independence Day.

Every year this day we look to a new year of our Independence with renewed hope. Hope for a better future for our children and ourselves.

During the last few days, seeing the physical beauty of our campus- its greenery and its lakes- I have repeatedly been drawn to a fragment of a poem by Wordsworth, written at the time of the French Revolution- a time of hope and expectations. The poem captures the idealism of a time, and one that is good to recall today, particularly given the large number of young people here.

Oh! pleasant exercise of hope and joy!
For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood
Upon our side, we who were strong in love!
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven! Oh! times,
In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways
Of custom, law, and statute, took at once
The attraction of a country in romance!

Our freedom has brought us huge possibilities, but it has also come with a huge responsibilities. And huge challenges. One responsibility that I am especially sensitive to comes from our privileged position on a campus of such beauty, in a University where the major part of ones day is devoted to intellectual pursuit. We are blessed to be in this learning environment, blessed that we can enjoy the several freedoms we have. Blessed, one can say, to be allowed to do the things that we care so deeply about.

But with this privilege comes responsibility, in particular, the responsibility to contribute at the highest level that we can. As members of the University family, we represent a vanishingly small fraction of the population of this country that has this privilege. The privilege of being educated, of having the resources that we do, of being able to think what we can, how we can, and when we can. The investment that our country has made in us, both implicitly and explicitly is tremendous, and the hope they have that we will deliver is also ever present, and something we need to acknowledge. The country has invested in itself by investing in us, it has invested in its future by investing in us now. The important thing is that we do the very best that we can to keep the faith, and that we strive to deliver our very best- in any field of intellectual endeavour.

This is not always easy. We live, regrettably, in interesting times. Each day brings new and unexpected challenges, particularly on matters that relate to governance and policy. The past year has seen our fortunes fluctuate, especially on matters relating to funding. The economic downturn has meant that the funds that will be made available through the UGC for the 12th plan will not match the promises that were made, but nevertheless it should be possible for the University to consolidate, to improve the infrastructure and to strengthen our various academic programs. The lower funding levels, though, come with the need for sacrifice. Well, if not quite sacrifice, this comes with the need for fiscal discipline and a leanness in spending. We have to make our funds stretch to help us reach the goals of excellence that we aim for, we need to spend wisely, and to use our grants well.

While new infrastructure will slowly become available, it is also true that what we have built up over the last 40 or so years is now in sore need of maintenance. It is our collective responsibility to ensure that the facilities that have been developed be kept functional. Likewise this campus of ours- blessed are we that live here, but more blessed are those who can preserve it! I have, over the past year, been particularly sensitive to matters relating to the environment, to water, and to the campus fauna and flora. With the Hyderabad Metro Rail, we have undertaken a massive tree plantation drive, and with the GHMC, an ambitious plan to improve the water bodies on campus, to increase their number as well as their carrying capacity. This will, I hope, serve us well in the future. Similarly, our recent drives to clear the campus, manage the waste and build a sustainable program for its ongoing maintenance are in this same direction. It needs all of sections of the University to participate, and I look forward to your contributions in this endeavor.

This campus is ours. Ours to enjoy, ours to nurture, ours to nourish. We need to know it well- this is the only way in which we can know well what it needs. Walking through it- as we did earlier this year, and will do again this afternoon- is one way. Caring about it and caring for it, is another. Beyond the slogan, “Mana Campus, Mana Hridayam” we need to develop a sense of ownership of this campus.

Our university- while being central- is also an integral part of our local environment. I have often stressed that we are not just a University of Hyderabad, we are a University for Hyderabad… I hope that we will see more efforts in the coming year to integrate us in the city. Our campus radio station is a year old today- this is a very important way in which we reach out to the communities that sustain us, and an important way in which we can give back to those that sustain us. But there are other ways in which we can and should integrate. We need to have more engagement with the city, with issues that are current and relevant, with discussion and debate. Some of our campus events have been shared with the city, music, theatre, lectures, but we need more.

Let me close with reiterating what I said last year, that we need to carve out a set of freedoms for ourselves. In particular, we need to hold dear to the freedom to excel. Too often, we perform to the levels set by others and achieve goals set by governments. As academics, we know that the best standards are internal, set by the disciplines themselves. We need the freedom to pursue such ideals, without fear or favour, without interference from anybody else. Be Excellent!

Once again my greetings on the occasion of Independence Day to all of you. Jai Hind!

BhK

Professor Bhadriraju Krishnamurti, third vice-chancellor of our University passed away on the 11th of August, last Saturday. I had met him once last year, an evening of pleasant conversation and gentle wit. It was clear that even long after retirement he thought often about our University and various matters concerning its well being.

One colleague who was very deeply affected by the news of his passing is Probal Dasgupta who is presently at the ISI Kolkata and was earlier in the CALTS, the Centre for Applied Linguistics and Translation Studies that Prof. Krishnamurti had founded. I asked him if I could adapt what he had written in his mail for this blog post.

The news of Professor Bhadriraju Krishnamurti’s passing which reached me on the 11th of August first shocked me – he had been aging gracefully and one had expected him to last a lot longer than eighty-four – and then, on reflection, also drove home a social fact. I began to feel that the University of Hyderabad community, which he worked so hard to shape seriously and durably, may have reached a point in its trajectory that makes it hard to see just what his contributions were all about. So let me throw in a few personal comments, for what they are worth, hoping that this might help some of you to achieve some clarity about what the man did for us. Before I start, since I no longer work for UoH, I suppose I need to tell many of you that I worked there from 1989 to 2006; time flies.

I first met BhK – as he encouraged many of us to call him – in 1980 at an international conference in the Osmania area of Hyderabad; at that stage few of us had heard of HCU. I had just finished my PhD at New York University. I was happy to find that he and I, across the generation gap, shared an enthusiasm – we both felt it was important to use Indian languages in official life, in the public space, in higher education, and to incubate cutting edge research especially in the humanities and social sciences. When we began to exchange thoughts we were not just crossing a generation divide; BhK was also going out of his way to befriend a younger person across turf boundaries – he and my mentor in linguistics had crossed swords a couple of times. By ‘friend’ I emphatically don’t mean just a chatting companion (though he was that too, and a good conversationist). He was a well-wisher willing and able to translate words into action. It was BhK who went out of his way to give me a break in the 80s. I was just one example; he often went way beyond the call of duty to support non-conventional scholars. BhK always did his best to ensure working conditions for them that were as optimal as one might expect, given the overall institutional circumstances in our country – and he expected these scholars to walk the extra mile to improve these circumstances for others. BhK was a rare combination – he was as committed to institution building as he was to scholarship itself.

I can vouch for the fact that BhK worked both privately and publicly to create an interpersonal ethos that would foster excellence and the democratic virtues, but that he did not believe in an opposition between merit and social justice. His appreciation of excellence never lapsed into elitism; he also never made the opposite mistake of pushing the appearance of democracy to the point of suffocating the quest for intellectual and cultural excellence. His willingness to cross boundaries was evident for instance in the fact that despite his life-long support for a centrist form of politics he was explicitly appreciative of writings emanating from the radical left. Again, I’m talking about actions, not just words: BhK was the Vice-Chancellor who expanded the scope of reservations in the admission process of the University of Hyderabad to help the democratic conversation to flourish. Some day, writers capable of eliciting serious public attention will give him credit for this social achievement which grew directly out of his academic convictions.

This is not the place to comment on BhK as an academic in any detail. I’ll just finish by telling you an anecdote. BhK and I were travelling to Calcutta to speak at a Suniti Kumar Chatterji centenary seminar. Chatterji (1890-1976) was arguably the greatest Indian linguist in modern times. On the way, BhK said, “Probal, there is a question I have been wanting to ask you. Those laws of sound change that were stated in Chatterji’s 1926 book – they still stand, don’t they?” I reflected for a moment and said, “Yes, they stand.” He simply said, “That is what I wanted to know.” The point BhK was driving home, in his own quiet way, was that we who are working today should repeatedly ask ourselves: Are we writing anything, today, with enough rigour to make it likely that commentators 64 years hence will still cheer for what we are writing today?

Thanks Probal. And thank you, BhK.

Chemistry in the time of civil conflict

I’m just back from the University of Jaffna, Sri Lanka, where I had the privilege to deliver a lecture in honour of Professor Sivapathasuntharam Mageswaran, founder of the Chemistry Department at the University. Both UoH and the University of Jaffna were set up around the same time- both children of the mid 1970’s but with very different trajectories… Within a decade, the UoJ was in a battleground- a very real one, with the kind of attrition that is any administrator’s nightmare. Faculty and students left in droves, alternately displaced by one side or the other. Many buildings were destroyed. More than that.

Through two decades or more, Professor Mageswaran steered his Department – that was for much of the time just about three persons- through many battles. Any visitor to Jaffna will be struck by the presence of so much detritus of the civil war, the wastage of three decades of civil conflict, the rebuilding of such a large fraction of the city, reclaiming it, from the debris of war as much as from the ravages of time: Nature conquers what she can, and fast, as the image on the left, from Keerimalai, testifies…

One casualty was his own health: at the age of 56, he was struck down, but not before the department he had formed was firmly rooted. Today, it seems healthy, with about a dozen teachers, a firm plan of starting a Ph D programme soon, and a future that has promise. But the memories of the difficult days stay. My hosts there live, for instance, with a daily reminder of the war that was. In the house that they rebuilt, they left the one wall with bullet and shrapnel holes intact. And those days are indeed never very far away- an old machine gun and unexploded grenade was found in the tailor’s shop opposite their home only last week- clearly left over from twenty or more years ago, but still… It was impossible not to be impressed by the dedication of the University staff. Like most people in the peninsula, the University was caught in the middle of all the violence, but the resilience that they showed in finding the strength to keep going, to continue to teach and educate (especially when it was not clear what horror the next minute might well bring) is commendable.

India is both near and far. A short distance across the Palk Strait, but the ferry service has stopped, so it really does take a journey. The Sri Lankan undergraduate programmes are largely of four years duration, so there is a mismatch of sorts. Given the fact that our own system is evolving, this may be less of an issue than it seems, but it is odd that we do not have closer academic links as well.

Especially given our shared history- everywhere one goes, one is never far from a stupa. As it happens, I was also there on the Poson Poya, the full moon day in June, anniversary of when Mihinda and Sanghamitra brought Buddhism to this country. The crowds at Mihintale and Anuradhapura- especially around the Sri Maha Bodhi, the tree that they planted in 288 BCE- are yet another aspect of the old and near connection. But more is needed, especially from the viewpoint of Universities. And the more is in collaborations, exchanges and academic sharing of expertise, given our historical, geographical and cultural proximity.

Night Thoughts

… the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

I came to the University of Hyderabad on the 1st of June 2011. Today, particularly, it is almost impossible to not reflect on the year gone by and think of the roads taken…

My one persistent sense of the year past is that things have moved rather slowly, and that time has flowed in different ways. Tempo Larghetto – somewhere between Adagio and Lento, rather than Allegro! Time has flowed rather differently this past year, not quite backwards, but many things seemed to take more time than I had originally thought they might. So instead of a stocktaking this is really more a time to think of what could or should have been. And what still needs doing, follow through, and follow up. Frost comes to mind again, what with those lonely, dark, and deep woods. And the miles to go.

The title of the post, lest it be misunderstood, are really more the Night Thoughts of a Novitiate Vice Chancellor, along the lines of Night-Thoughts of a Classical Physicist (the novel by Russell McCormmach, but that has more of a sense of angst than I feel) or the poem by Edward Young, from which they both take their name, although that has even more angst than that…

At the end of a year, the view that I have of our University is in many ways not very different from the one that I started with- we are indeed a University with the Potential for Excellence- except that we are now beyond the stage of having our potential recognized, the potential has to be translated into a realization on so many fronts. Some of the Ten Simple Rules (for surviving in a harsh environment) that I wrote about last are germane, most of all the need for endurance. The race here is not to the swift, it is to the true… and to those who stay the course.

Ten Simple Rules

Sometimes it is possible to distill wisdom into a set of byte-sized rules. Or so we have been thinking since long, the tradition going back, in some sense, to Moses. Among the most quotable of these (though the number is not ten) is Polonius’ advice to Laertes, perhaps the most singable, Paul Simon’s 50 ways… And surely, there are others.

In recent times, the Editors of the journal PLoS Computational Biology (thats the logo of their linking page) have been bringing out a number of such lists, among which are variously Ten Simple Rules for: Starting a Company, Getting Involved in Your Scientific Community, Teaching Bioinformatics at the High School Level, Developing a Short Bioinformatics Training Course, Getting Help from Online Scientific Communities, Building and Maintaining a Scientific Reputation, Providing a Scientific Web Resource, Getting Ahead as a Computational Biologist in Academia, Editing Wikipedia, Organizing a Virtual Conference—Anywhere, Chairing a Scientific Session, Choosing between Industry and Academia, Combine Teaching and Research, Organizing a Scientific Meeting, Aspiring Scientists in a Low-Income Country, Graduate Students, Doing Your Best Research, According to Hamming, Good Poster Presentation, Making Good Oral Presentations, Successful Collaboration, Selecting a Postdoctoral Position, Reviewers, Getting Grants, Getting Published… The list will, we are told, go on.

I was recently at a meeting of the Department of Science and Technology’s Ramanujan Fellows, a group of gifted young scientists who have recently (in the last five years or less) returned to work in India after postdoctoral positions abroad. Most of them had spent a fair amount of time away from the country and had, to varying extents, become unfamiliar with how things work (or don’t) here. I was invited to share some experiences of a career in India with them, an assignment I had accepted somewhat hesitantly because hindsight is always 20/20, and often its not easy to share the travails of the path, which can seem rosier than it was. In the event, I didn’t wish to slip into anecdotage and thought I would share some of these Ten Rules, especially because I felt a resonance with them (the rules, that is). Those I chose to highlight in the talk were

Ten Simple Rules for Doing Your Best Research, According to Hamming by T C Erren, P Cullen, M Erren, P E Bourne, PLoS Comp. Biol., 2007
Ten Simple Rules for Building and Maintaining a Scientific Reputation by P. E. Bourne + V. Barbour, PLoS Comp. Biol., 2011, and
Ten Simple Rules for Aspiring Scientists in a Low-Income Country by E Moreno +J-M Gutierrez, PLoS Comp. Biol. 2008

The last of these hit a chord, especially in connection with the second. The mathematician (and computer scientist) Richard Hamming’s list is justly famous, and one that is worth recalling anytime. Anyhow, I picked and chose from this menu to come up with my ten simple rules for surviving in a harsh environment (which is what I subtitled my presentation). Here they are, with a short annotation (though I was much more discursive when I gave the talk, of course).

Understand your Country, its social mores, its needs. We live in a complex country, and to succeed in science, its important to be socially at ease here.
You Need Courage to Make the Best of Your Working Conditions. Power cuts, water shortages, poor infrastructure… Courage and a sense of humour will keep you going.
Develop Endurance. Things do work differently here. Typically very slowly. And strange things can play a role in making things work (thats about as circumspect as one can get) so you need to be resilient…
Work Hard and Effectively, and on Important Problems in Your Field. What’s the point, otherwise?
Leave Your Door Open: Collaborate Locally and Internationally as well. This one is very important. Given the relatively few people in any field of enquiry, its almost a given that for most of us to survive, its essential to be open to others’ ideas and to be willing to collaborate. Closer is better, of course, but its also important to be internationally connected as well…
Commit Yourself to the Education of Young Scientists. We really need more and more scientists in the country, and the only way its going to happen is if we see that more are created… The only way to do it!
Write Research Grants and Publish in International Journals. Doing science is, in many ways, an international enterprise, and we need to keep international standards and benchmarks. And writing fundable research grant proposals, getting published in standard journals is one way of keeping a check on what we do.
Do Not Ignore People. Thats why we do science in any case… There has to be a source of inspiration, and that can often come from others.
Do Your Share for the Community: Teaching, Mentoring, INSPIRE-ing, whatever. It is important to give back, not just by transmitting information, but by guiding, sharing (through the INSPIRE programme is what I meant above, but more generally, of course).
Appreciate Being a Scientist: A lot of people have put their faith in us. There are so few scientists in the country, and the investment is so large- to be a working scientist is a privilege. To be funded to do things that we find so enjoyable- it is not given to many, and its good to occasionally remember that…

Aotearoa

Aotearoa is Maori for the land of the long white cloud, New Zealand. I’m on a week’s visit here courtesy the UGC, to see their eight Universities: The University of Auckland, AUT (the Auckland University of Technology), Waikato, Massey, Victoria, Canterbury, Lincoln and Otago.

The long white clouds have been playing hide-and-seek until the last few days of the trip. Many days looked more like the picture on the right, a set of dark grey clouds that seemed to follow the delegation wherever we went. However, this was briefly graced by an unexpected rainbow one evening…

It has largely been a week of discovery- I have known less about New Zealand than is warranted. Especially Otago- the University we visited on the final day. The southernmost University in the world, this is also NZ’s oldest university, very research intensive. The first people I met immediately asked after our School of Chemistry and our Centre for the Study of Indian Diaspora!

The manner in which universities here are funded is largely indirect: the Government essentially fully funds the students who are then charged whatever it takes to give them an education. There are some advantages to this scheme- the entitlements become clearer- and the Universities have more flexibility in what they can do. In addition there are other direct funds, of course, but by funding students directly, this makes sure that the responsibility for education is shared.

Small is beautiful might well be this country’s byline, but even so, visiting 8 universities in 5 days makes for a rather rushed visit. Nevertheless NZ, for a population of 4 million people has 8 universities, while we with 1200 million people, should by that scaling, have 2400. In reality we have only about 600 in all- central, state, private and deemed. So there are many miles to go, and much to learn from others.

Sometimes the unexpected. In Victoria University in Wellington, the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences includes, among other disciplines, Art History, Film, Theatre and Media Studies, Nursing, Midwifery and Health, History, Philosophy and International Relations, Linguistics… Asian Studies, Literary Translation and even a University Press! The coexistence of all these areas under one umbrella is not as uneasy as one might imagine, at least that was the view presented… But even allowing for some latitude, our ideas of trying to federate the different centres that exist at the UoH should be viewed as an effort that is not without precedent or parallel.

One area that all the Universities highlighted was their efforts to include Maori into the mainstream of all efforts- academic and cultural- within the institution. Preserving the Maori language is one area where we can learn how modern tools can be used to keep traditions and cultures alive. This is a language without a script like many of ours, and seeing the loss of stories, traditions and culture if the language falls out of use has motivated all NZ universities to set up departments of Maori Studies. Our efforts at UoH have had similar foci in the Centre for Endangered Languages and Mother Tongue Studies and in the Centre for Dalit and Adivasi Studies and Translation. Perhaps there is something that we can learn from them, and they can learn from us in this area…

One phrase that kept recurring in conversations across the islands was that this was a country that “punched above its weight”. Certainly, that comes through- in fact this week’s The Economist points out that NZ has as many diplomats and diplomatic missions as India does, being about 1/300th as many in population, and some similar fraction in terms of area. Their Universities have a similarly large international presence, more than the numbers would warrant. I know these are not quite the right comparisons, and some things scale well while others do not, but it does seem that we do not always punch above or even at our weight. Mostly below, and even when we don’t need to.

The common colonial past is reflected in the names. On the drive from the airport into Auckland city, one could see a sign for Khyber Pass Road, and Wellington has a suburb named Khandallah, with Bombay Street… There is an Indian diaspora that dates from the 1860’s and more recent migrations, of course. There’s clearly a wealth of opportunities here for some serious academic engagement…

An idea needs propagation…

… as much as a plant needs watering.

That quote- and the accompanying photograph- is on the website of Columbia University where Bhimrao Ambedkar (1891–1956) obtained his MA in 1915, the Ph D in 1927 and the LLD (honoris causa) in 1952 for his service as “a great social reformer and a valiant upholder of human rights.“

Today is the 55th Mahaparinirvan Divas, the anniversary of his passing away, and a good day for us all at the University to remember him and what he stood for.