Category: VC

NODYCOS-2011 is the International School on Non-linear Dynamics in Complex Systems, being held at the University of Yaoundé. Having agreed to come here earlier this year to lecture on the applications of Nonlinear Dynamics to Biology, I found myself on a flight from Brussels to Nsimalen last Friday.

All the things that could go wrong did, of course. I had not had my yellow fever vaccination (so I got it at the airport, much use that). The transportation that had been sent to get me gave up after a long wait- my “visa on arrival” entailed much delay and negotiation and stretched my non-existent French to the fullest, so when I emerged with the visa, there were only predatory taxi-wallahs who homed in on me to take me to downtown Yaoundé for what seemed like an astronomical amount. I capitulated… Je suis fatigué can be used only so often.

The drive had its moments. One thing about living in India, most other places seem like somewhere familiar. On the outskirts, Yaoundé seemed very much like one of the smaller Indian towns, Indore, Tiruchi, or Bhubaneswar some years ago maybe? On the other hand, Yaoundé is hilly, so images of Aizawl flitted by occasionally. And it is also quite French colonial, so Pondicherry came to mind too… Posters proclaiming the gratitude of the President, Paul Biya, for being elected- making this his 29th year at the helm of affairs- festoon the place, so by the time I reached my hotel, I was fully indoctrinated by Paul the taxi driver and tres tres fatigué to boot.

Navigating through this part of the world for the first two days was mostly social since it was le weekend– with a trip to the seaside town of Kribi (with a side trip to a so-called village of the people of the forest), seeing a lowland gorilla close up in a reserve, a canoe (pirogue) ride through a partly submerged forest… And a run in with the militia for not carrying my passport at all times (and that seemed very much like something out of a despatch from Ryszard Kapuscinski).

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So much for the pretty beach picture, the work part now. The poster says: NODYCOS 2011, the first school of its kind to be organized in Cameroon (by the ICTP Trieste, Italy) aims at bringing together students and leading experts with diverse backgrounds in applied physics, theoretical physics and computational physics, to share insights on the state-of-the-art of efficient forefront analytical and computational approaches to models governing nonlinear physical processes.

The ICTP in Trieste has played a major role in nurturing physics and mathematics in the developing world, thanks in great measure due to the vision of its founder, Abdus Salam. Its outreach activities are impressive, and this School is another example of what the ICTP has done well in the past (nearly) 50 years. NODYCOS expands to NOnlinear DYnamics in COmplex Systems, a common way in which acronyms seem to be constructed here, phonetics being as important as brevity. Other delightful examples are SOACAM (the SOciete Alimentaire de CAMeroon) and FINUTRASU (the Fako INter-Urban TRAnsporters Union).

Arriving at the University this morning, it was good to see a large group of enthusiastic students. Not all were there to study chaos, it turned out that a few had come- Eid notwithstanding- for their distance education classes. The real surprise for me was that these were students of Amity University in Noida- all taking the e-learning modules in finance, tourism management and other subjects. From what I was able to gather, there were 60 students in Cameroon, and about 500 in all of Africa, and the government had sponsored them for this 3 year course. Other private Indian Universities- Manipal among them- have also heavily invested in the distance learning mode, and much of their outreach is in Africa where the need is large, and an Indian solution is both inexpensive and highly regarded. There is a lesson here somewhere for us…

There was more to learn- in particular about opportunities for African researchers to come to India. Amazingly enough, FICCI and the Department of Science & Technology have initiated the C V Raman International Fellowships to promote scientific cooperation with Africa. There are opportunities for African researchers to collaborate with groups in Universities and other Indian institutions in various areas of Science & Technology. 
Each of the participating African nations have been given 8 fellowships, and these are at the post doctoral, junior and senior levels totaling about 24 man-months. That I had not heard about it until a Nigerian student at the School told me is not clear evidence that the fellowship has not been widely advertised, but still… Given the widespread enthusiasm for the Indian educational system that I see here, the real need and the vast potential, I think this is an excellent opportunity for us to do something meaningful!

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I did go around the central part of downtown Yaoundé, chancing upon the few Indian stores that mostly sell mixed goods- a catchall phrase for just about anything from LG TVs to baby clothes. The community is small, but will be getting together to celebrate Gurupurab on Thursday… The Consul General of India in Cameroon, Mr J Ravikumar, has been doing a great deal to further relations between the countries- in particular the effort in e-learning and telemedicine is largely thanks to his initiative. It should be added, of course, that the Indian Government has put in a large amount of money into this- apart from the CV Raman Fellowships, there is the Indo-Africa Virtual University (IAVU) that was announced earlier this year.

Meanwhile, a colleague shared a link to the New York Review of Books’ article by Anthony Grafton, a thought provoking piece titled Our Universities: Why Are They Failing? I found some time to go over it today, and in case any of you have wondered if there is indeed cause for concern, this article gives a special insight into the US university system and its challenges at this time. The essay is a good read and thought provoking to boot. One aspect that I thought that we should keep in mind as we think of growth and change is Grafton’s comment that (in the books he was reviewing) “two points come through with striking clarity. First, traditional subjects and methods seem to retain their educational value. Nowadays the liberal arts attract a far smaller proportion of students than they did two generations ago. Still, those majoring in liberal arts fields—humanities and social sciences, natural sciences and mathematics—outperformed those studying business, communications, and other new, practical majors […]. And at a time when libraries and classrooms across the country are being reconfigured to promote trendy forms of collaborative learning, students who spent the most time studying on their own outperformed those who worked mostly with others.”

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An article in a recent Sunday newspaper reminded me once again of a passionate and well reasoned article by Sheldon Pollock, Crisis in the Classics that was published earlier this year in India’s World, a special issue of Social Research: An International Quarterly.

The paper can be downloaded freely from the above link for those of you who many not have read it yet. The main thesis of the paper- at the risk of condensing an argument that is already forcefully minimal – is that there is a dangerous decline in scholarship in the classics in India, dangerous enough that its extinction is more or less assured.

The fate of the soft subjects in a hard world is a matter that we- at the UoH in particular- should be concerned about, in part because we have at least three Departments that are players in the classics game, Urdu, Telugu and Sanskrit. And a whole Centre that concerns itself with Endangered Languages.

The danger is near. As Pollock puts it: There have been no major Sanskrit projects in India since the completion of the critical edition of the Ramayana at Baroda more than 30 years ago. All the great classical series (such as Anandasrama, Trivandrum, Gaekwad, Madras) have been more or less discontinued, and as a result the manuscripts in those collections are no longer being published. Indeed, there have been few new Indian editions of complex Sanskrit texts at all from among the scores of important manuscripts that lie unpublished in archives. In the area of hermeneutics (Mimamsa), for example, I know of no one in India today capable of editing works like those edited just a generation ago by P. N. Pattabhirama Sastry or S. Subrahmanya Sastry…  I have not encountered a single PhD dissertation on Sanskrit in India—and I have seen many— worthy of publication by a Western university press.

The situation is no different in the other classical languages […] Our core group of colleagues was looking for others to join us who possessed a deep historical understanding of a regional language, conceptual skills, and the capacity to communicate their knowledge effectively. We were able to locate only four qualified scholars in India, and identified no one for a host of languages, including Assamese, Marathi, Newari, Oriya, and Panjabi.

Assamese, Marathi, Panjabi, Oriya- these are hardly languages we think of as being on the brink of extinction, but the lack of scholarship in these could eventually drive them to the brink. Indeed, some of our languages have already vanished, or been relegated to kitchen languages as the linguist Loreto Todd calls them- spoken only in private or in fields, not worthy of a literature.

My erstwhile colleague (at JNU) Anvita Abbi’s efforts to preserve the last traces of the Great Andamanese (GA) have been heroic but futile. She explains that about ten languages form the present Great Andamanese language family, and the number of speakers in some of these such as Bo (one of the last speakers of the GA language is shown in the poster on the left) now number five or so. The language groups are complex- Anvita’s work is on the Koine language, a mix of four varieties of the present GA language. One can only wonder how soon there will be none left, no varieties, no speakers, no GA.  The announcement of a talk she will give in London next month is poignant.   Breathing life into a dying language: Documenting Great Andamanese. The Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal are home to three highly endangered languages: Jarawa, Onge and Great Andamanese. Professor Abbi will share her experiences documenting them and compiling a multilingual multiscriptal interactive dictionary revealing the ecological and archeological signatures of the original communities and their ties with the environment. An ethno-semantic and ornithological account of the local birds and their names in the Great Andamanese language features in the dictionary and in the book Birds of the Great Andamanese co-authored by Professor Abbi and Dr Satish Pande. The talk will include examples of original sound and video recordings of the last native speakers of Great Andamanese.

This may well have been the history of the world since the tower of Babel- one language gives way to another, one evolves into another, some die, new ones are born. So why should we care? To misquote Elizabeth Barett Browning, let me not count the ways, but instead appeal to both art and science. Each time a language dies, something of humanity dies with it, some common collective memory vanishes… Abrams and Strogatz modeled the death of languages mathematically in a paper in the scientific journal Nature a few years ago. They end their letter with the analysis that to prevent the rapid disintegration of our world’s linguistic heritage, some simple steps are possible: The example of Quebec French demonstrates that language decline can be slowed by strategies such as policy-making, education and advertising, in essence increasing an endangered language’s status. Not a particularly deep or lateral conclusion, perhaps, but still, something that we can heed at the University, since we do care deeply about this issue in the context of preserving our heritage.

There are many other disciplines that are undersubscribed, but more on those another time.  As also on whether we need a “western” press to validate the scholarly quality of our own work, and why there is not University Press of any standard left in India…

Finally, in case any of you are wondering what that image at the top is, this is the atoll near one of the most remote places on earth (and which cannot actually be seen in the image, its too small a speck), the island of Furudu. Ever since I heard of it on the CBS show 60 Minutes many many years ago, this has always struck me as a metaphor for planned extinction: Exiles are consigned there, and typically, forgotten.

Here is a link to an article that appears in Inside Higher Ed, the online Higher Education magazine. I was in Washington for the India-US summit on higher education, and Scott Jaschik, the magazine editor came by to chat. Some words got left out of the last quote, but the article gives you an idea of what I thought the summit was all about. And a bit more than that, of course.

anyone would like to read my convocation report, here it is:
Your Excellency the Governor of Andhra Pradesh and Chief Rector of the University Shri E. S. Lakshmi Narasimhan, respected Dr. R. Chidambaram, Chancellor of the University, Dr. Anil Kakodkar, the distinguished Chief Guest of the Convocation, members of the Convocation, colleagues, dear students and esteemed guests:
On behalf of the Executive Council of the University of Hyderabad and on my own behalf, it is my privilege and honour to extend you all a cordial welcome to the thirteenth Convocation of the University. Our Chief Guest Dr. Kakodkar, an eminent nuclear scientist, was the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and Secretary to the Government of India, Department of Atomic Energy. He has also been the Director of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, and is well known for having played a major role in India’s nuclear programme, particularly in the design and construction of the indigenous Dhruva reactor as well as the reactors at Kalpakkam and Rawatbhata. Recipient of the Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri Awards, Dr. Kakodkar is a champion of India’s self-reliance: his dream is to make India fully self-reliant in energy particularly by the use of indigenous Thorium resources. We are indeed privileged and honoured to welcome you, Sir, as Chief Guest at this Convocation.
We extend a warm welcome to our respected Chancellor Dr. R. Chidambaram. Dr. Chidambaram, an Indian nuclear scientist and metallurgist is the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India and formerly was a predecessor of Dr Kakodkar as Director of the BARC. As a member of IAEA‘s ‘Commission of Eminent Persons’, Dr. Chidambaram played an important role in getting the Safeguards Agreement passed by the Board of IAEA that followed the signing of the Civilian Nuclear Cooperation Agreement between India and the United States of America. Dr. Chidambaram completed his Ph.D. in nuclear physics at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 1962 and his research thesis on Nuclear Magnetic Resonance was awarded the Martin Forster Medal for the best Ph. D. thesis submitted to the IISc during 1961-62. He has subsequently been awarded the D. Sc. in metallurgy and in materials science. Dr. Chidambaram is the recipient a number of awards and honors including the Padma Vibhushan and the Padma Shri.
We are also privileged to have in our midst His Excellency the Governor of Andhra Pradesh Shri E. S. Lakshmi Narasimhan. Thank you very much, Sir, for sparing some of your valuable time to be with us to give away medals to the recipients.
Before I present my report, I warmly congratulate all the graduates who have received their degrees today. My hearty congratulations are also due to the medal winners. Yours is the Earth!
Ladies and gentlemen, the University is now 37 years old and is regarded as one of the major Universities in the area of higher education achieving honours and attaining standards that set a benchmark for universities in India. The faculty strength is over 400 and that of students is 4,700 plus. We are poised to expand further in the coming few months as we advertise 124 positions and will, hopefully, fill these up soon. As of now the faculty have written over 1,100 books and more than 12,000 papers. We are also pleased to share the news that we have been granted 8 patents. All these have helped us achieve the position of the highest ranking University within the UGC system.
The University is particularly pleased that this year one of our alumni has been awarded the Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar Prize in Chemistry in addition to several of our faculty being elected to the INSA, IASc, and other academies. We also have a Young Engineer of the year among our colleagues, and our former Vice-Chancellors have recently been given the Gujar Mal Modi Science & Technology Award, H.K. Firodia Award and the Lokmanya Tilak Award. Our faculty have also been associated with several important national and international bodies, held Professorships of distinction both in India and abroad, and participated in the global educational scene with as much vigour as we have always done. Furthermore, they have been funded quite handsomely receiving grants from national and international funding agencies like UGC, MHRD, DBT, DST, EU, DoE, IUSSTF and so on. The University’s current extramural R&D funding is over Rs. 135 crores.
In its 10 Schools of study, the University offers postgraduate and research programmes in several areas of the Humanities, Social Sciences, Sciences, Arts, Management, Medical Sciences and Engineering. There are also a large number of students under the Distance Education and Virtual Learning Programe through 20 PG Diploma courses. In addition, there are a number of Centres outside the School system, interdisciplinary Centres such as the Centre for Neural and Cognitive Sciences, Centre for Women’s Studies, Centre for Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, to name a few. I am happy to inform that it has been decided to convert the Department of Economics into our eleventh School.
The Academic Staff College at the University is one of the finest of such Staff Colleges established by the UGC. It has so far conducted 72 Orientation Courses, 180 Refresher Courses for the benefit of 10,000 teachers from the colleges and universities all over the country. The University is running a high school on the campus for the benefit of employees’ children as well as for those from the neighbourhood.
Over the years, our annual student enrolment has grown steadily, now at a little over 4,700 in regular courses. Entrance examinations for selection of students are conducted in 25 centres all over the country. About a third of our students are women, and nearly two fifths come from marginalized or otherwise deprived communities.
The Library at the University has done very well and has a collection of about 3.6 lakh books and other reference material, and it subscribes to about 600 foreign journals and 18,000 online journals and 12 online databases. It is fully automated with special software for the visually-challenged students. It has recently received the highest usage award from the UGC for utilizing online journals and databases provided under the UGC Info Net Digital Library Consortium.
This is the final year of the 11^th Plan, under which the University has been allocated a sum of Rs. 189 crores, a large part of which has been spent for expansion and strengthening of our infrastructure.
In this Convocation a total of 2097 students will receive their degrees and of these 161 are Ph.Ds. This brings the total number of Ph D’s produced at the UoH to nearly 1700, and the number of graduating students since the time of its inception to nearly 20000.
In the early part of this century, the University Grants Commission selected the University as one of five that they declared to be Universities with the Potential for Excellence. Along with this title came entitlement, a certain special grant that each of the Universities could use in order to better realize this potential. It was the wisdom of the leadership at the UoH at that time that the funds obtained under the UPE grant were used to promote interdisciplinary or interfacial studies, thereby ensuring two things. The first was that we realized that the most exciting aspects of any field of enquiry lay at its boundaries, where the questions and methods came dangerously close to the methods and questions of other traditional domains. The second was that we could make new entities to look at these problems. Thus, the interface between biology and physics, between nanoscience and biology, between physics and neuroscience, between neuroscience and philosophy, and between science and public policy: these interdisciplinary- indeed multidisciplinary areas of study have been found most fruitful, and form the focus of some of the new research that we have undertaken in the past decade. And thus we have seen the establishment of a Centre for Neural and Cognitive Sciences, a Centre for Nanotechnology, and a Centre for Women’s Studies among others.
Among aspects of multidisciplinarity, of intellectual integration, one of the most imaginative initiatives that the UoH has pursued is the undergraduate programmes, the integrated Masters programmes in the Sciences, Humanities, and Social Sciences. Students are admitted after twelfth standard in this five year program of studies. The first set of students to graduate are among those here in the hall today, and we are very proud of this innovation that the University has introduced in higher education in India. Like many good beginnings, this effort needs nurturing and polishing, and this is our task in the coming years. The integration that has been successfully done vertically needs to be buttressed horizontally as well- to offer students in the country a liberal arts program that is sensitive to our educational system and our needs.
This sense of consolidation will, I hope, mark the efforts of the UoH in this decade. Having witnessed considerable growth- in faculty strength, in student strength, in the number of programs, the number of departments, centers and schools, and in the number of different degrees we give; it is now time for us to consolidate. We are in desperate need of infrastructure to fully realize our dreams. Adequate hostel rooms, adequate offices and laboratories, teaching spaces etc. These facilities are not just part of a wish list, they are crucial if we are to be in a position to take advantage of the initiatives made in the last decade. The University is – in a way that few institutions are- a wonderfully inclusive campus with diverse inputs from all over India. The potential is all here, and it is the obligation of the University administration to translate the potential into realization. This requires, at the base, a solid infrastructure. Common teaching spaces are our primary requirements as we make our claim for the UGC’s second phase of support under the UPE rubric.
Having just gone through a part of this exercise, it is a matter of pleasure to report that the University community has with one voice requested for common facilities – for the faculty as a whole- to pursue and strengthen our efforts in interdisciplinary areas. Enabling students to easily pursue complementary disciplines, enabling the mingling of ideas in common spaces- these are the themes of the different areas of support that we have requested.
To reiterate some ideas that I articulated a couple of months ago, the University system is continuously evolving, and not always in a way that one could have anticipated. Today, we see the mushrooming of new Institutes and universities with different mandates, different aims, and different sets of goals. I would not like to forget the very special space that the UoH, as a Central University, occupies as a centre for learning and knowledge dissemination; we have an added responsibility, to grow with inclusion in the true sense, and with transparency. Our commitment to this goal remains as real as always. It also becomes increasingly difficult, as the world changes, as the country changes, and indeed as our local environment changes. But a University such as ours was founded on the hope that from such scholarship would emerge the possibility of addressing social and societal problems, and from such scholarship would emerge the material that would lead our country forward in all spheres of achievement. These hopes are still alive.
To realize this aspiration, the UoH needs the ability to grow in new ways, and indeed, needs to be unfettered as we aspire 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.
Our progress along these paths would not have been possible without the unstinting and tireless support of the UoH fraternity which includes the students, the staff, the officers and the teachers. Each has played her or his role with enthusiasm and dedication, and each has been crucial in bringing us to this special moment. Thank you all.
Jai Hind!

A couple of weeks ago, my erstwhile colleague Professor Prabhat Patnaik, who recently retired from the Sukhamoy Chakravarty Chair at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, JNU, wrote a thoughtful piece in The Hindu. One chord that the essay struck in my mind was on the nature of democratic functioning…
There is something in what he says for us to think about, especially since we (at UoH), are members of a publicly funded enterprise that is patently engaged in a social activity which, arguably, is for the greater common good.  Much of Prof. Patnaik’s essay is the contrast between democratic functioning and messianism which may not be entirely germane outside the context in which it was written, but there is a basic issue that needs consideration.
Democracy essentially means a subject role for the people in shaping the affairs of the society. They not only elect representatives periodically to the legislature, but intervene actively through protests, strikes, meetings, and demonstrations to convey their mood to the elected representatives. There being no single mood, freedom of expression ensures that different moods have a chance to be expressed, provided, the manner of doing so takes the debate forward instead of foreclosing it.
For all this to happen, people have to be properly informed. The role of public meetings where leaders explain issues, and of media reports, articles, and discussions, is to ensure that they are well aware. The whole exercise is meant to promote the subject role of the people, instead of being merely ‘masses’ and the leaders as true facilitators. Even charismatic leaders do not substitute themselves for the people, they are charismatic because the people, in acquiring information to play their subject role, trust what they say.
Alter legislature to Academic Council or Executive Council, substitute faculty meetings for public meetings, substitute leaders by Dean, Chair, Head or even Student Union president… the parallels are there. And I believe we need to reflect on the democratic versus the non-democratic at the UoH.
Democratic functioning is crucial to our growth. We need to have informed debates on all issues that concern us, devoid of acrimony. And with passion, but also with respect for contrasting points of view. One of the most important adjectives in the above paragraph, in my opinion, is informed. We have enthusiastically celebrated the Right to Information Act, but withholding information is still, regrettably, all too common at all levels. This makes it all the more difficult to have an informed debate, when so much information is simply not there in the public domain. It also does not help that the RTI is used by some as a weapon and as an instrument of mischief. They do not help the cause.
In any case, where and how is this information to be shared? Where is it to be discussed and debated? Given our commitment to scholarship, this is a question that should not need to be asked.  This blog is, of course patently meant for the sharing of ideas and concerns and also for sharing information. But this can only be very limited- in part because it would get tiresome otherwise, and in part because there are more issues that need our concern than can be covered in a blog.
I believe that everyone who is in a position of some authority can take a number of steps to bring about the democratic process, by inviting discussion and encouraging debate, and by helping to form positions and evolve opinions.This needs to be done proactively. And in a manner that encourages participation, is inclusive, and allows for dissent. Not that this is entirely missing in our campus- it just needs to become more common…

I thought I would share the results of a misspent Sunday morning when ewandering brought me to the site of Jean-Michel Folon, an artist who I have greatly admired ever since I bought (now sadly lost…) some posters of his in New York about 35 years ago (thank you, DeFrietas!). The watercolour to the right, a card he made for Amnesty International, and the World Cup Football poster to the left give you some idea of his charm and wit.
Folon, who died in 2005 had set up the Fondation Folon (and museum) in the 1990’s. Exploring that site, I came across the Proust Questionnaire – something I had not come across before (the results of a sheltered life, I guess). To learn more about the PQ, I went, naturally to Wikipedia… and found that there is an online version (with a different set of questions). This had, unfortunately, dangerous consequences… I tried this “Turbo Proust” to discover that based on my answers, I was most similar to Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Anyhow, I thought that for the UoH community, an updated PQ might be of interest, so here are 14 questions, down from the original 25 or so (you can see them in the Wikipedia article, along with Proust’s original answers in 1890). Some of these are about you, and some of these are for what you see about the University and your interaction with it. The UPQ is for these times, when life is lived on Facebook (for the most part), so feel free to add questions! .

1. Your preferred virtue
2. Your main character trait
3. UoH’s biggest shortcoming
4. Your biggest quality
5. What you like the most about the UoH
6. Your favourite occupation
7. Your dream of happiness
8. What would be your biggest misfortune?
9. Apart from the UoH, where would you like to be?
10. Your heroes in real life
11. Your heroes in history
12. The historical events you despise most
13. The reform at the UoH you would most value
14. The natural gift you would love to possess.

As we all know, these questionnaires don’t really mean much and are poor indicators of personality. But they are harmless enough and can be fun.
I’ll be back…