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Good Khabar

A recent newspaper report caught my eye, and given my fledgling attempts to learn Telugu, it felt vaguely satisfying to read that Speaking a Second Language May Delay Dementia. But it was infinitely more satisfying to learn that the research that led to this finding was done (in part) at the UoH, in our very own CNCS, the Centre for Neural and Cognitive Sciences.

19.cover Professor Bapiraju (of the School of Computer and Information Sciences and Coordinator of CNCS) wrote in to tell me that the article in the journal Neurology (the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology) that went online yesterday was the product of collaboration among CNCS, NIMS and Osmania University, as part of a Cognitive Science Initiative project funded by the Department of Science and Technology. The full list of authors of the paper, Bilingualism delays age at onset of dementia, independent of education and immigration status, are Suvarna Alladi, Thomas H. Bak, Vasanta Duggirala, Bapiraju Surampudi, Mekala Shailaja, Anuj Kumar Shukla, Jaydip Ray Chaudhuri, and Subhash Kaul, Anuj Shukla being an M. Phil. student of the Centre, while the other authors are at NIMS, OU, and Edinburgh.

The main features of the study, as summarized in the abstract to the paper read as follows: Overall, bilingual patients developed dementia 4.5 years later than the monolingual ones. A significant difference in age at onset was found across Alzheimer disease dementia as well as frontotemporal dementia and vascular dementia, and was also observed in illiterate patients. There was no additional benefit to speaking more than 2 languages. The bilingual effect on age at dementia onset was shown independently of other potential confounding factors such as education, sex, occupation, and urban vs rural dwelling of subjects.This is the largest study so far documenting a delayed onset of dementia in bilingual patients and the first one to show it separately in different dementia subtypes. It is the first study reporting a bilingual advantage in those who are illiterate, suggesting that education is not a sufficient explanation for the observed difference. The findings are interpreted in the context of the bilingual advantages in attention and executive functions.

This work has captured the imagination of the entire world, it seems! A blog from Brazil says: Mais um motivo para falar inglês (ou espanhol, francês, esperanto…) namely Another reason to speak English (or Spanish, French, Esperanto…). Newspapers across the world have picked up the article, from the NEW YORK DAILY NEWS to the LA Times… Professor Huntington Potter, Director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Programs at the University of Colorado in Denver has been quoted as calling the study “very definitive” in an interview with MedPage Today. “The fact that this study was carried out in India where many people are illiterate … and still the benefit was seen, bolsters the idea that cognitive reserve can be acquired in the absence of formal schooling,” he said.

Heartening news. And also very heartening that this work was done in part at our University. What better way to underscore our belief in the importance of multidisciplinary effort! Je सोचता हूँ என்று நான் always అనుకుంటున్నాను!

The DOI link to the article for those interested is:

doi:10.1212/01.wnl.0000436620.33155.a4

Greetings for Diwali!

Best wishes to all on the occasion of Deepavali! This year, and every year…

The Importance of Being Open

Should scholarly publications be absolutely freely available, or should they only reach those who have the funds to pay for subscriptions to the journals where these articles are published? There are as many nuanced opinions on this question as there are scholars, but with the ubiquity of the internet and the rising costs of journals, the issue is one that merits some thought and discussion.

Almost all the research that is typically done at the University is publicly funded, through the Government of India via various ministries, or by other public funds. Should the results of such research not be made available to as many as possible? These questions are central to a book that I reviewed in Current Science (Bangalore) some years ago, “The Access Principle. The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship” by John Willinsky. Parts of the review are excerpted below.

At the heart of the book is a simple idea, that ‘a commitment to scholarly work carries with it the responsibility to circulate that work as widely as possible’. This is in part so that knowledge that is created can be disseminated in a manner that the largest numbers of people have unfettered access to it, but there is more to it than just that…

The issues that Willinsky deals with have wider ramifications. For instance, who ‘owns’ knowledge? The scholar who creates it through research, or the funding agency that funded it directly or indirectly, or the commercial publishing house who owns the journal where the research was reported? And how best can it be used for public good, while ensuring that all involved parties do not go unrewarded or unrecognized?

The […] digital revolution is upon us all in a way that demands that such issues be thought about afresh since the modes of preservation of information and the modes of dissemination of knowledge have changed radically in our lifetime. For one thing, most journals of any quality are now online. Furthermore, many of them are ‘open access’, namely the articles they carry can be viewed without a subscription. However, the majority of academic journals have been in existence for a long time now and date back to the pre- digital era. The digitization of this legacy is a related issue, and the manner of the digitization and its consequent costs is relevant.

But issues are more complex in an era of impact factors and journal citations. The most prestigious journals, at least in terms of their perceived rankings, like Nature and Science are neither open access nor are they purely digital. It will be a long time before their influence will wane, so it is important to understand the totality of the access problem.

Today it is commonplace that the majority of scholars in any part of the world access academic information primarily in an electronic manner, and not through the pages of a printed journal. This revolution is similar to that wrought by Gutenberg, who through the printed page freed humankind from the purely oral tradition by offering mass producible books that anyone (with enough money!) could obtain, keep, learn from, and use to advantage.

And it is the complex nature of this revolution that ‘The Access Principle’ addresses through its extensive research. The 13 chapters of the book examine issues ranging from the history to what is copyright, the politics and the economics. Willinsky, like many of us, believes that openness is ‘better’ in an abstract way – at the end of the day its not clear from which quarter the fundamental advances are going to come, and so its best not to deny anyone the requisite opportunities. The more people who have access to knowledge, the more one can maximize the probability of any one of them using some part of it in a fundamental and future altering manner.

The first journals appeared only in the 1600s. The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society grew out of the publication of the correspondence between the members of the society thanks to the efforts and foresight of Oldenburg. Despite the reputation for secrecy that surrounds his name, one of the earliest articles was a letter from Newton on ‘the theory of light and colours’. Newton appears to have held the opinion that public exposition of his research was both a duty and a privilege, and in that sense, scientific journals offered an intermediate space between the public book and the private letter.

But journals offer more than just exposure. The process of peer review, the validation, and with time, the prestige of publication – and the vanity – have all contributed to making the dissemination of science a fairly substantial business. And in the details of how this business is run lie some of the more contentious problems of the open access paradigm. Willinsky is quick to emphasize that open is not free – someone, somewhere has to invest in providing access. He lists 10 flavours of open access to underscore this point. For instance, scholars can post articles on their homepages, submit them to e-print archives, or pay a journal to allow open access to their articles. Journals, on the other hand, can subsidize access (as many Indian journals, notably those of the Indian Academy of Sciences, do), use their print versions to subsidize the online versions, allow delayed or partial open access, have a subsidy model in place, and so on. A cooperative movement such as JSTOR has played a very important role in developing tools to digitize old journals in a manner so as to make their content digitally searchable, and the access they allow is not free, but by having a flexible policy as regards revenue, they enable access in a significant manner.

The different chapters of the book are devoted to a variety of issues such as copyright and its consequences, the role of scholarly bodies and their publishing models and imperatives, the economics of open access, the role that this can play in development, and so on. The digital revolution holds within itself considerable promise. Universities, colleges and schools that did not build up physical libraries can, given enough resources, build up essentially a complete repository of the knowledge generated by humankind since whenever. Anecdotal evidence on this count is abundant and genuine, particularly in countries like India where the public investment in libraries is limited.

As a scholar who has devoted the better part of two decades to such matters, Willinsky argues the case for increased openness in scholarly publications with vigour and with wisdom, and without oversimplifying the issues at hand. The commitment to the cause is most evident in his chapter on Rights, where he proposes that access to knowledge is a fundamental human right, one that is closely related to the ability to defend other rights. The argument is tenuous but offers an interesting perspective on the ability of increased access to knowledge to have an impact beyond the areas envisioned by the creators of that knowledge. To some extent, the Right to Information Act in India has had a very similar effect – information on one aspect of public life can have consequences on other aspects.

In the end, the most compelling aspect of this book is the simplicity of the basic argument. Scholars should see that their work reaches the largest number of people and should make all efforts to ensure this. This is their dharma. Academic administrators should see that scholarly work is supported in a manner so as to have this wide reach. And this is their karma. In the long run, inclusivity is clearly more in the public interest than exclusion in any form, especially in a globalized world, and the Open Access movement can help us along this path.

The karma of the University administration can be fulfilled with just a little effort. Along with the Gapps crew, we are setting the subdomain archive.uohyd.ac.in where scholars can upload their working papers, conference papers as well as their near final preprints in a UoH Archive which is an OAR (Open Access Repository). This is simple enough to operate- anyone with an @uohyd.ac.in account can upload a document which can then be accessed by anyone, inside the University or across the Universe…

The scholarly world is a-changing. This week, October 21 to 27 is International Open Access Week 2013. Celebrate! Upload a paper onto the UoH Archive!

PS: For the moment, send contributions to qohe571tigi@post.wordpress.com as an attachment. Watch this space for updates…

Maths Teacher of the Year

One of the first posts on this blog was about our colleague Prof. S Kumaresan in the School of Mathematics and his involvement with MTTS, the MATHEMATICS TRAINING AND TALENT SEARCH PROGRAMME. The aims of MTTS (and thats largely Prof. Kumaresan) are

To teach mathematics in an interactive way rather than the usual passive presentation. To promote active learning, the teachers usually ask questions and try to develop the theory based on the answers and typical examples. At every level the participants are encouraged to explore, guess and formulate definitions and results.
To promote independent thinking in mathematics.
To provide a platform for the talented students so that they can interact with their peers and experts in the field. This serves two purposes: i) the participants come to know where they stand academically and what they have to do to bring out their full potential and ii) they establish a rapport with other participants and teachers which help them shape their career in mathematics.

At that time, I had written that “The work of Prof. Kumaresan in this arena, in encouraging the growth of competence in our mathematics community, will go a long way in ensuring that although the road ahead may be a bit rocky and steep, there will be mathematicians to help us along the way…”

The Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi, has been thinking of how to recognize such contributions. A few years ago they instituted the INSA Teachers Awards. The award aims to recognize and honour teachers who have provided guidance and inspired students to take up careers in Science and Technology.

We are very proud that Prof. Kumaresan is one of the Awardees for the year 2013. And even more proud that the INSA has recognized the value of teachers who, as they put it, have shown consistent and high level of teaching. Their hope that Prof. Kumaresan will continue to nurture talent in the coming years is sure to be borne out. Bravo!

Turbulence

The other day, at a book release at our neighbouring Central University, MANUU, I heard the chief guest quote Allama Iqbal. Apparently (or so I gathered) when his son was setting off for higher studies in London, the great poet said to him: … خدا تجھے کسی طوفان سے آشنا کر دے کے تیرے باہر کی موجوں میں اضطراب نہیں (Khuda tujhe kisi toofan se ashna kar de, ke tere bahr ki mojon mein iztirab naheen).

I’ve looked for translations, and while none of them captures the nuance of the Urdu, the closest I could find is May God grant you a storm! The voyage of your life is on too placid an ocean…

Literally, though the verse reads in translation, “May God bless you with some storm, because the waves in your ocean (of self) are devoid of agitation (turmoil)”. There is the resonance with Shakespeare, when Brutus talks of the “tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; […] And we must take the current when it serves“, as well as the famous Chinese curse, May you live in interesting times!

The appositeness of the advice is something I have had occasion to reflect upon, as we pass through these interesting times. We at the UoH have such great privileges- our campus, its freedoms, its autonomy- and one cannot but feel that we should be doing something more. More what, one might well ask, so to turn the question around, is what we do enough? Just enough, barely enough or well enough? These are questions for which there are many answers, so all things considered, I think it is preferable that we have the occasional iztirab, a little anxiety, a little uneasiness. A state when we are not too comfortable is more conducive to self-examination, and thereby one hopes, to more discussion, creativity, and thereby to evolution.

But not too much discomfort, though! In the fluid case, in some ways the most interesting situation is that of intermittency, when there is smooth flow much of the time, interrupted by staccato bursts of turbulence. As much as we need the iztirab to evolve, we also need some undisturbed period to think, and to consolidate… But that is not a luxury one can always be assured of! There are enough forces at work and play both inside the University and outside it, that make this an ongoing challenge.

The images of the turbulent waves above are by artists whose work has been very inspirational: the iconic and familiar print by Hokusai and closer to home, the wave by Krishna Reddy, the great printmaker who lives in New York and who taught for many years at NYU.

Scenes from a collaboration

An exciting and ongoing partnership project between our Department of Theatre Arts in the S N School of Arts & Communication and the Wimbledon College of Arts at the University of the Arts, London is on Scenography in a digital age: a comparative study of the impact of new media on contemporary Indian and British performance practice.

Bringing together nine people, four from their side and five from ours, this project is a great opportunity for all of us, particularly the two students involved. The project leader from the Indian side is Professor B. Anandhakrishnan, Dean of the SN School who says the prime objective of the project is to develop a trans-national, inter-disciplinary discourse that will enhance understanding of contemporary performance culture in India and the UK. And, incidentally, a cross-fertilization of ideas: the image above is of the props from a scenography workshop at the UoH, done on the campus by one of the Wimbledon college students.

This partnership will investigate the impact of ‘new media’ on performance in India and the UK. It brings together two recognize centers of excellence to create a cross cultural research platform at the interface of fine art and theatre. In the UK, lines between these two approaches to performance have already been breached as new technologies blur the boundaries between established traditions. Increasingly in India, plays and fine art installations use video and digital projections that merge the theatrical and the experiential under the umbrella of performance. This project seeks to conceptualise and understand how these new mise-en-scenes are affecting traditional ways of making and viewing performance in our respective nations.

Rustom Bharucha (in his book Theatre and the World, 1993) argued at the end of the twentieth century, ‘[at] this point in time, one can say that technology has not yet co-opted the ‘visionary’ possibilities of seeing assumed by our spectators…’ . Does this still hold true at the beginning of the twenty first century?

Describing the viewing habits of European and American audiences, Arnold Aronson (in The Power of Space in Virtual World in Performance Design) says, “The increasing ubiquity of the World Wide Web and its particular visual aesthetic is what most spectators associate with performative imagery’’.

Using the ‘scenographic’ as a frame of reference, a broad term that encompasses all the elements that contribute to the composition of performance, this joint research will compare how digitalisation and electronic media have been absorbed into our respective performance cultures and begin to develop a set of criteria with which to analyse and respond to these changes. By sharing perspectives on this new materiality of performance, this partnership will contribute to a better understanding of the way each culture views the other and, in the long term, build capacity in our institutions through the development of joint masters and new PhD programmes.

The project is for 18 months and during this period there will be four seminars and a series of practice sessions focussing on digital arts and scenography. Two events will be organised by both the institutions. The first is going on now, from the 9th to 16th September 2013 at Wimbledon. Two of our students will be staying back at Wimbledon to work with colleagues there.

Great opportunities here, thanks to the UKIERI– this project is one of the select ones funded by them as a Thematic Partnership. And congratulations to the SN School on being Wimbledon champions!

Teachers Day

Greetings on the occasion of Teachers Day– to the teachers of the University, and to our many, many teachers outside the University…

The UoH has always been known for the many great teachers who have been here from the first days, Gurbaksh Singh onwards. I’m lucky that I also had the opportunity to learn from some of them when I was a student at IIT Kanpur, and knew some of them in later years as well. We have a good reason to recall Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan not just today but most working days, given the name of our Lecture Hall Complex, and the photograph of his above, an uncharacteristically informal one, also has a nice connection to the UoH.

A colleague writes on FB, “To all my teachers for all that I am today and to all my students from who I learn everyday, Happy Teacher’s Day!”. How true, and said so well- its a day to celebrate both teaching and learning!

Déjà vu

I’ve been having something of a writer’s block these past couple of weeks. Partly due to a sense of ennui as the blog enters its third year and I feel that the issues I want to discuss often border on the same old same old… But I must recall Larkin again- the there and that of been there done that are no longer where they were or what they were, and so its best to begin afresh. With a request for your indulgence if it seems like some of this has been said before.

For reasons that are too obvious to mention, I have been worrying a lot about our campus these past few weeks. Since the rains have been good to us, it is a corollary that the campus is very green, but it also becomes painfully evident that we need to constantly maintain it. Pruning, clearing, cleaning, culling… And picking up litter- there seems to be no spot on the campus that is free of plastic or paper waste. There are some simple and straightforward rules, banal enough to not be worth reiterating, but it seems they must. Respect nature. Don’t litter. And don’t expose yourself to danger.

I recall a conversation I had with Meenakshi Mukherjee, at one time on the faculty of the Department of English at the UoH. She was a good friend during the many years when we both were at the JNU- as it happened we moved there at roughly the same time. One day when I met her at Ganga Dhaba, apropos of nothing particular (more than usual that is) she said to me, you know, our campuses are the new colonies. Explaining herself, she added, it is like we academics create an enclave that is removed from the rest of the country, where different rules apply.

I have often thought about what she said, not just this but many other things (she introduced me to the poetry of Agha Shahid Ali, for one. And encouraged me in my misguided efforts to learn Portuguese for another: learning a language is a very pure skill, she told me, but I’m still not sure what she meant…).

I feel that she was essentially right in her perception that a university campus is a special place and a special space, but also that in such enclaves there is a lot of privilege, and it is all too easy for us to slip into a colonial mentality.

This post is not just about littering or preserving the (physical) environment, it is also about the more general question of how we behave on the campus. For instance, there is a lot of helmet-less driving of two wheelers on campus. Seeing three students on a two-wheeler is not that uncommon. Some of the driving tends to be rather rash, and a positive danger, not just to others but to the driver as well. The traffic rules that apply elsewhere should apply here as well… Similarly, in public spaces Smoking is a No-No and Consumption of Alcohol is a BIGGER No-No.

images-1

There are the laws that apply in the country, and then the special rules of the campus itself, and both need to be respected. This is not to interfere with personal choices, but there are laws that apply to educational establishments, and infringement of these draws some very unwelcome attention as we have seen in the past weeks.

The campus is always under threat, it seems. We have many well-wishers and much to be grateful for. But there are also others who are not slow to sit on judgement, others who are quite happy to show up all our weaknesses. Preserving and protecting the campus space is a full-time job, and its a job for all of us. It is a huge responsibility that we all have, to keep this place as one where generations of students can come to learn, and generations can use the freedom and the opportunities that this space offers to grow and develop.

Aneesur Rahman Day

The computational physicist Aneesur Rahman was born in Hyderabad on 24 August 1927. Widely known for his seminal contributions to the field- he is often termed the “father of molecular dynamics”- Rahman was a pioneer in the area of computer simulations- his 1964 study of liquid argon started a field that has grown from strength to strength. By 1970, for example, there were 34 papers on the subject in the Physical Review journals alone that were on molecular dynamics, and in 2012, this number had grown to 2751!

The UoH will celebrate this coming Saturday, 24 August 2013, as Aneesur Rahman Day, at ACRHEM, bringing together researchers from all over the country who work in the area of molecular simulations to discuss their work, share their research.

Rahman died in 1987 after a career that took him from Osmania University, Hyderabad to the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, to Argonne National Laboratories in the US where he worked for 25 years. He then moved to the University of Minnesota where he was Professor of Physics and a Fellow of the Supercomputer Centre. His education had been at the Universities of Cambridge and Louvain (where he got his Ph. D. in 1953).

Our colleague Professor Kalidas Sen of the School of Chemistry was kind enough to share some details of Rahman’s life and work from where I got the above information, and also learned of the few papers that he published from Osmania, a composite image of which is on the left (taken from Prof. Sen’s presentation).

The American Physical Society now annually awards the Aneesur Rahman Prize for outstanding achievement in computational research. I hope that each year, the Anees Rahman Day will similarly bring outstanding researchers who use molecular dynamics simulations in their work to our campus, to celebrate the life and contributions of this great Hyderabadi!

The convenor for this year’s meeting is Dr G Vaitheeswaran (write to him for any information) and the announcement and programme is downloadable from the (new) What’s up? UoH site.

I Day, 2013

The country’s 67’th, my third, and the Kendriya Vidyalaya, University of Hyderabad’s first. Some excerpts from my speech today:

Members of the UoH Family, Let me start by first conveying my warm wishes and greetings on the occasion of the 66th anniversary of our nation’s Independence.

Today we are- as we have been for the past many years- living in interesting times. We appear to be in a state of perpetual flux, with the scenario changing frequently in dimensions that are political, economic, and with consequences of an immediate, as well as of a long-ranging nature.

Combining independence with responsibility has been a challenge not just for our campus, but metaphorically, for our nation as well. The day of independence that we celebrate or mark each year, brought the nation the responsibility of forging a modern state, one where all citizens could aspire to a life that was better, because it was free, and because we had self-determination and self-governance, swaraj. In the nearly seven decades that have passed, it is clear that we have tried hard and that we have made great strides, but it is also clear that we have far to go on so many fronts.

This is the third time I have stood here to speak on this occasion, and since last year there have been many changes that we have seen happening around us. As anticipated, the XII plan grant has not been as generous as we had wanted, but there have been rays of hope and promise on many fronts. The University has had a preeminent position in the country with respect to its commitment to excellence in research and teaching. Having seen it intimately these past years, I know that the foundation is very solid, and the base is a strong one. In the past month, in recognition of the fact that twice the UGC has declared us to be a University with the potential for excellence, we are now designated simply as University of Excellence. This is not to say that all the potential has been realized- we more than others are acutely aware of the many miles we have to traverse and the many goals we need to score- but still, we are I believe, a University with the Promise of Excellence. This appellation comes with a heavy responsibility, and that is the responsibility to continue to deliver in the future, as we have in the past, good students, good programs, and good, solid research.

Our faculty and students have been recognized nationally and internationally- this year’s Amartya Sen award, the SCOPUS young scientist award, the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Award, the B M Birla Award, several KVRSS awards, AP State Football championship… the list is a long one.

Similarly, many individual disciplines have been recognized for their excellence as well. PURSE, the programme of the DST for Promotion of University Research and Scientific Excellence will shortly enter its second phase, our Centre for Research and Education in Biology and Biotechnology or CREBB, similarly, is up for renewal and extension. A crucial and significant new addition to the University is the School of Education that has been granted recently by the UGC. I believe that with the addition of this important discipline, we will be able to make progress in a crucial dimension, the marriage of instruction with technology. I see that in the coming years we will be able to reach out to larger and larger numbers of our fellow citizens in the country and thereby fulfill the responsibility that we all share, namely of educating the bulk of the country to create a modern state.

Our concerns are many. As I have mentioned on earlier occasions, we are blessed to occupy this campus, this environment, this land. Our efforts to secure the land for the future of the University and for the purposes of education are still on: that road is a long and tortuous one, strewn with unexpected hurdles, but it is one that we are firmly committed to. For this purpose, we now have a detailed master plan for the campus.

Our commitment to the environment extends to the preservation of the biodiversity, of the varied habitats, of the fauna and flora, the lakes the rocks. One achievement that attracted considerable national attention is our action of using the roof of the Library for harvesting solar power and making this building almost self-sufficient and independent of the state electricity power supply. This coming year we will do more, and while we reduce our expenditure on power, we will also contribute to building a greener campus. And a more sensitive campus as well. The Ministry for Social Empowerment has responded positively to our disability audit, and our request to make all our buildings accessible to disabled students, and in the first instance they have funded us to do so for sixteen of the main academic buildings. Our lakes remain a source of concern, and our efforts to clean them, deepen them, and improve the ground water resources in this part of the city are also always afoot. Similarly, our campus has been invaded by the subabool tree species in a manner that is harming the native flora of this part of the Telangana region. These need careful culling and replacement, and we will undertake to do this shortly.

Within the University administration there have been many attempts to streamline procedures, and one effort that promises to serve us well is the decision to advance the entrance exams, and to make the admissions more transparent. The intake this year exceeds that of last year, and many more students have been able to apply for the several courses that we offer, although it is also true that the process needs further fine tuning.

But above all, if there is one thing that I would wish for us, it is for an increased self-confidence. We are a good, solid university, and we offer a quality of education that is difficult to come by, facilities that are well above what can be found elsewhere, superb teachers and a cohort of students that is second to none. And yet, there is a strange diffidence that permeates our functioning, something that is difficult to fathom. We are very good by any set of standards, except perhaps by our own. And this, while it should help us to reach even higher levels, appears to pull us back and hampers our own growth, both physical and intellectual. The responsibility of independence, of autonomy, is one that cannot be taken too lightly. Of late the University has been portrayed in somewhat negative light in the press and media, and I believe undeservedly so. The onus of making ours a University of Excellence is a shared one, shared by all sections of our campus community, staff, students, faculty alike. Each has a role to play, and each has one’s own sphere of operation. I urge all of you to play your roles with utmost seriousness- losing sight of our ultimate goals causes us to drift, and ultimately lets us all down. We need to change this, and now more than ever, we need to be the change we wish to see.

But this should happen gradually, with deliberation, and with debate. And with wide participation so that each voice can be heard. To adapt something that I said recently in a related context, if we are to bring about lasting change in education and research in our University, there really is no alternative to slow and sustained effort. The race, such as it is, is not always to the swift. It is to those that persevere.

Jai Hind!