Artwork by Saurabh Shandilya
From conversation on:
Mar 07, 2021
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From the time mankind came into existence, communication has been key to its survival. Throughout the ages, different forms of communications have rapidly evolved to an extent where we have enslaved light itself to act as our messenger, to send and receive information not just across the world but to probe the corners of the universe that is reaching out to us in the form of electromagnetic waves. In our conversation with Dr. Ragunath Kashinath Shevgaonkar, Professor Emeritus at IIT Bombay and former director of IIT Delhi, he helped us unravel the ever expanding domain of electromagnetism and the subtleties that go behind designing systems like fibre optical cables, giant radio telescopes while also discussing the current education status of the country.
What we have to do now is science and engineering that impacts the local communities. A lot of science these days is done for international journals and recognitions. But the question is – how much of it is actually useful for our society?
ABOUT THE GUEST
Dr. R. K. Shevgaonkar Professor Emeritus, Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay
Dr. R.K. Shevgaonkar is an academician, innovator, eminent researcher, administrator and an avid music enthusiast. His career trajectory is illustrious, vivid, and rich in eclectic experiences, with his longest spells at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, where he currently holds the position of Professor Emeritus. Dr. Shevgaonkar has served at crucial academic and administrative positions at IIT Bombay over the years, is the former Director of IIT Delhi, former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Pune and the Bennett University. Dr. Shevgaonkar’s research work and interests span across the vast fields of antenna theory, fibre optics communication, image processing, photonics, computational electromagnetics, and radio astronomy, to name a few. Apart from his exceptional expertise in the academic domain, he is a highly revered teacher, an inventor, and a visionary. Among his other pivotal contributions to the higher education system of India, he has pioneered the digital education activity in the country, and is one of the founding members of National Project on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL), which is now an unprecedented archive of high quality educational resources available for free across the country. In our conversation with him, he discussed about some of the most complex of concepts in the field with immense clarity, and also shared some of the quintessential insights from the country’s educational scenario, spinning together a tale of passion and ingenuity peppered with his own personal interests and passion.
Transcript
Shreya Mishra (Host 1) :
Welcome to the second episode of Zeroing In- The Science Podcast. This is Shreya Mishra and joining me today is Prajwal Patnaik, who recently graduated from the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology, Trivandrum with Bachelors in Avionics and is currently pursuing his masters in Business Analytics at the University of Technology, Sydney. Our guest for today is an academician, an innovator, an eminent researcher, an administrator and a music enthusiast who has dedicated his life to pursuit of excellence and enabling countless young minds to do so as well. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Electrical engineering from Jiwaji University, Gwalior and then went on to pursue his Masters from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. His doctoral work in Astronomical image restoration took him for the first time to IIT Bombay. His career trajectory is rich in experiences with its longest spell at IIT Bombay where he served as a Professor at the department of Electrical Engineering for more than 20 years. He has served at crucial administrative positions at IIT Bombay over the years, is the former Director of IIT Delhi, former Vice Chancellor of University of Pune and Bennett University. He currently holds the position of Professor Emeritus at IIT Bombay. Notably, he pioneered digital education in India with his extensive contribution to the National Project on Technology Enhanced Learning – or better known as NPTEL which is now recognised as an indispensable online learning resource in the country. In our conversation with him, we discovered about his journey, his ideas about the field of radio astronomy, fibre optics communication and computational electromagnetics in which he has made seminal contributions. We also talked about evolving technologies which have implicit as well as explicit implications on the lives of our community as a whole. A very warm welcome to Dr. Raghunath Kashinath Shevgaonkar.
Shreya :
Sir we would like to begin the conversation with a brief discussion about how you came into the field of science. And where did your initial interests lie? And how did it all begin? Basically. And how were you as a student in school and in undergraduate?
Dr. R. K. Shevgaonkar :
So science looked exciting at that point of time. The mathematics, I always enjoyed. Especially, the first time, when I was exposed to calculus. I was really thrilled by that. I mean the concept of limits, you know, that itself was so exciting that, you know, something, you know, when you look in terms of limits things look completely different, you know. So when the derivative was defined and I just went to that first step of calculus, I was completely zapped by calculus. So, you will not believe it, but even when I was in my high school and when the calculus are introduced, before even the school started, I completed the entire mathematics book in my summer vacation before that because I really, I really like it. So that was something which was always there. Science was always very exciting because of one of my teachers who used to be there in my school who used to explain many things by practical demonstrations, like focusing of sun rays and burning the papers and many other things which looked very exciting at that point of time. So it looks that scientific way of thinking and doing something with science is very exciting. So that’s how my schooling was, you know. Got some good teachers who could excite me in science and good exposure in mathematics which I really enjoyed.
Shreya :
So sir can you also talk about how your interests inclined towards the course, field of electromagnetism? And why was it that you decided to move into research?
Dr. Shevgaonkar :
Yeah so, I had no great intention of going into research. It is just that I wanted to get a little higher qualification which will build my job prospects better than anybody else. So that was only the motivation at that point of time. However, after I went to IIT Kanpur and the kind of academics, I was exposed to. Then I started really seeing how good, how beautiful the academics could be. The kind of forces which was taught at IIT Kanpur, they were at such a level and such an aspiring experience, which I had that. I really fell in love with some of the subjects and one of the subjects was of course Electromagnetics, you know, which I was specializing in at IIT Kanpur and at that time, that subject used to be the topmost subject of our choice. So, the toppers used to go for electromagnetic. And then of course, Communication and VLSI and many other subjects were there but the Electromagnetics was always on the top. So that’s the experience, which really motivated me to get more deeper into his subjects of science. Of course, I always have some liking for physics though. I got into electrical engineering, but I always wanted to do something in physics, that always looked much more interesting, you know, then normal application kind of courses. That was my beginning actually, in Science.
Shreya :
So I'd like to ask from the time you started working, how did your research directions evolve based on the daily lives of people. For example, talking about antennas. Right now, we are carrying antennas literally with us everywhere in our mobile phones and it's an indispensable part of us. So, how did you see the correspondence between the two, the research direction that you were pursuing at the time and how things were evolving?
Dr. Shevgaonkar :
So, when I was doing my MTech in IIT Kanpur. As I mentioned, I always enjoy the subject of electromagnetic and I did my MTech thesis also, which was on propagation of light in the anisotropic optical fibers and that time which was like mid-70s the optical fibers were just coming in, you know, so even if we could launch light inside the optical fiber, that will probably become a BTech project, you know. It was at that time. And people were doing more theoretical work in understanding how the light would propagate inside an optical fiber. If you wanted to send the information by using light or optical fiber, what are the issues which will be there like signal distortion, the bandwidth issues that distances over which the signal can be sent all these things actually where at the primitive stage. So I started, did my MTech project which was on propagation of light in an isotropic optical fiber and I could publish a probably one or two papers through that, my MTech project. So that gave me some confidence that I can do some independent work which is not published already, which is not done and that is the right direction for doing something like research. But getting into astronomy, which I had got, which was my major field of research for almost a decade. That I got almost by accident. So, as I said, since I liked electromagnetics and I could relate it more to the antenna, since my liking was always electromagnetics and antenna was one of subjects which was more practical oriented subject in electromagnetics, other than the propagation of light and electromagnetic waves. Another thing was that the professor who used to teach the course on Antenna, Professor N.C. Mathur, his style of teaching, was so excellent that you will really fall in love with the subject. And that’s how it happened, I fell in love of the subject of antenna, then it so happened that at that time Indian Institute of Astrophysics and Raman Research Institute. They were building a telescope, Gauribidanur, near Bangalore, and they were looking for an antenna engineer to design and erect their large antenna array, when I went there, and I saw the whole system. I really got thrilled because that was the antenna, which I saw for the first time in my life, and that antenna was one and a half kilometers size, a thousand dipole array. So it looked so exciting that almost instantaneously I decided that I would like to work with this instrument. I would like to build this instrument and I just got into that as electronics engineer. Later on of course, you know life took different turns and I became an astrophysicist, you know for a decade but that was almost like nothing was decided a priori. It was just such the way that things came by, I just went on sort of accepting it and making sure they're always up to something quality work, which put me in this research area.
Shreya :
Here, I would like to ask a very basic question, which might come as a genuine doubt to a lot of people. Can you briefly explain how exactly an antenna works because a lot of us don't know about it. And if it has remarkable importance in all fields, for example, like I said, in our everyday life to advanced military applications as well.
Dr. Shevgaonkar :
Right. So, the principle of antenna is basically as fundamental nature of the electrons or charge for that matter. If you have a charge, then the charge gives you the electric field, you all know that right if the charge is put in motion then it becomes the current and then it produces the magnetic field. If you are having a charge which is moving with constant speed, which is just a DC current, then it gives you a magnetic field. That also we know. Question is when the charge is accelerated, then what happened? That is the origin of the antenna. So when the charge is accelerated then it produces electric and magnetic fields both and then it throws the energy out which is supplied to the charge for acceleration. It doesn't keep the energy with itself. So any charge, which is accelerating. And acceleration of charge means any current, which is alternating current. Any time varying current will always have acceleration of charge. So in principle any accelerating charge or any time varying current will produce radiation, it will produce electric and magnetic fields both and then one can show, theoretically that, you can have the coupling of these two will always give you a phenomena which is electromagnetic waves, which will carry power with it. And this power will just detach from the charge and it will just travel into the space. That’s what actually happens. So in principle, if you ask any alternating current should be, need not be sinusoidally alternating current, any time varying current in principle should give you radiation. Question is how efficiently you get their radiation. That’s what the antenna is. So everything will radiate. Can you efficiently transfer the power from a guided system, but it was circuit, to the space in the form of electromagnetic waves. So that is the way of looking at how the antenna actually functions. So though in principle any time varying current will radiate and will give you radiation antenna is more efficient structure which will efficiently take the electrical power and put into the electromagnetic wave, in space. That is basically the antenna here.
Shreya :
Thanks a lot, sir for explaining its so fundamentally that I think anyone even on the outside of the field can understand this idea. Most of us imagine antennas as the dish antennas, we used to have on our rooftops for Dish TV and all. But now to think antennas have shrunk down to chip sizes so that we can carry it around, how did that happen? I mean, what does the basic structure design how it changed from that to this? What was the technology advancement that took place in between?
Dr. Shevgaonkar :
No, so actually the efficient antenna if you really consider, any body which has a dimension comparable to the wavelength, okay, can give you radiation reasonably efficiently. So for example, you take a piece of wire and if the length of the wire is equal to half the wavelength at which the energy is supplied to it. It will start radiating, what is called a dipole antenna. So antenna which you were seeing in your mobile phones and so on, two things have happened. One is the frequency of operation has gone much higher, for example, if you go to your broadcasting station, to normal AM or FM station, what is the frequency you use ? The AM you use a frequency of few Megahertz or a few 100 KiloHertz. For that, the wavelength is of the order of about few kilometers. Right, so there you use an antenna, which is like a dipole antenna or a monopole antenna, which is only a fraction of that wavelength, as you go to higher wavelength like microwave, the wavelength is become almost now, 10 centimeters or 15 centimeters. So the half wavelength of that is really about 7.5cm. So now if you look at it, when you want to make a half wavelength dipole, only a few centimeters in size is enough to give efficient radiation. So why the antennas are now become smaller and smaller because your wavelength of operation has become larger and larger. So, without even going for parabolic reflector, giving much higher gain and focusing capabilities. If I don't want to focus the energy flow too much in one direction. And that’s what we require for mobile communication, for mobile communication, we don't want to focus energy in a given direction, signal may come from any direction or similarly anybody can receive signals from any direction. So energy, what we want to put into the space, ideally should go in all possible directions. If I put a parabolic dish there energy will get focus into a particular direction which I don't want. I want that also, but that may happen only for the cases like microwave link, where the two antennas have to look into each other. Just one line of sight, one point to another. But if I wanted to have a normal mobile communication environment, I would like to send the energy in all directions and that can be achieved very easily by using dipole or monopole antenna, which are not very directional. So, if I go to your handset or something, and put a simple printer antennas, they have the what is called, beam width of the antenna, which is much wider and energy can be sent in very wide angle direction so that large number of people can receive it. So that’s what has happened into the antenna, the frequency is increased and that’s why the size has come down.
Prajwal Patnaik (Host 2) :
It's quite interesting to know the details you put very lucidly such that we get an extensive picture in our head. So moving to a little personal side. Why did you choose astronomy and how did it come together for you? And what are your major learnings academic or otherwise as well from your doctoral work project?
Dr. Shevgaonkar :
Yeah. So as I mentioned radio astronomy was not really by design. I went and joined this project at the Raman research institute and the Indian Institute of astrophysics, as an antenna engineer and I built this array, which is thousand element array, which is what is called phased array. After this telescope was ready, I had two choices. One choice was to become an maintenance engineer and stay there for the rest of my life. Second choice was to start using the instrument and start doing astronomy yourself. Rather than giving it to somebody else to use it. And you become yourself an astrophysicist and understand astronomy. I thought, second option was much more interesting. So I started learning astronomy, I did some courses in astronomy and then I started doing astrophysics. So I started of this, that's how I got into the astronomy as the subject. Second experience which I had with Gauribidanur telescope was - there are very few people who were there who were working on the telescope and there was no work defined for anybody. That you are an antenna engineer, so you will do only antenna. Somebody will do electronics. Somebody will do image processing. Everyone’s is everybody’s work. And that was something, which was very nice. So if the dipole is broken, you yourself have to solder it. If the electronic circuit failed, you open the box and take out the chips and put yourself the chips and design, and, we use them. So, when we went through all that things, you had a very wide hands-on experience on every aspect of a radio telescope. You could talk about antenna. You could talk about electronics, data acquisition, the image formation. You can talk about image restoration. And then you from the science of that, you can understand the physics, what is coming out of that. So, that was very exciting because you are not defining the boundary for yourself. Anything whatever comes to you, looks exciting, it looks great. And then it so happened that when I was working, there was one professor. He came from University of Maryland. He wanted somebody who can work on radio astronomy image related part. So I went to United States, University of Maryland and started working with very large array, which was at that time one of the largest telescope, but this telescope that used to work on solar astronomy. It used to observe sun at radio frequency and at the time it was quite new because sun was always seen at optical frequency. How sun looks at radio frequency, how different it could be at radio frequency. I started working on that. And that’s how actually, I got more and more deeper into the physics of the cosmic body. Sun is a very rich plasma laboratory. Anything you can do in plasma physics and you cannot do on Earth, everything is happening on the sun. Only thing you'd observe it, understand it and see what is really going on. So basically when you do this kind of thing, observation with a VLA, closer to the solar astronomy, which is really very rich source of information in plasma physics. You're base really widens. So you are no more Engineers now. You are no more an antenna engineer, right. You have become an astrophysicist, you’ve become a solar physicist, you know, and that’s how I actually expanded my research area. And at every stage everything looked very exciting.
Prajwal
It was very interesting to know your take in a very non scientific way, you put bounded input bounded output and multi-input multi-output. Like you said, never bound yourself. You didn't want to bound yourself into one thing so that you get bounded output. :
Shreya
Sir, here we would like to take a small detour and I would like to ask you a question about your career trajectories, which have been extremely lush and quite indulging to be honest. I mean, you've closely worked with research and then industry and then Academia as well, so basically here in all these aspects there are various expectations which are extremely different when you are seeing a problem.. how you look at the problem and even prioritizing the tasks under the belt. So how did it all come together for you? And did you plan on all of these things and how did you take it forward? :
Dr. Shevgaonkar
I always tell to the students and take this as a message. Think like a scientist, but deliver like an engineer. When you look at an engineer, an engineer's job, is to develop something which works..even if you don't understand it fully, if it works, an engineer is happy, but if something works but if you don't understand it fully, it's not a good situation, no? So we want something which you should understand also thoroughly, it should work also intact. Thats what I am saying, you should think like a scientist to understand.. don't take anything for granted and then produce something which works in real life, which is an engineering problem. So radio astronomy actually gives me this good combination. I could think like a physicist, I could build the instrument which should work finally and that was something which was a more holistic development, which as an engineer or a simply scientist, probably, I would not have got. So I give full credit to radio astronomy for this, which is a science, which is an experimental science. And where everybody does practically every possible thing related to their field. Nobody compartmentalizes himself in Radio Astronomy. That is something which defined my trajectory. So any problem which comes in engineering, for example, you never ask a question, does the solution exist? You have to make it exists because this is an engineering problem and we want a solution to this. That’s how actually, you start doing the work. Problems keep coming, if your approach, attitude is that.. No, I have to find the solution to this. And then this does not remain confined to only science. It does not remain confined to only engineering, it becomes part of your life, it becomes part of your professional career. So even if the problem comes at an administrative level, you have to find a solution. If you put that attitude, naturally people will start dragging you more and more into the administrative side. Any problem comes in functioning, they will ask you to come and solve it..you get more and more involved. That's how I got slowly into administration. So I became a hostel warden..then they found that, maybe I'm more suited for being a dean of student affairs. I can interact well with the students. When I did that, then they found..maybe I am suitable to become deputy director also, so that's how you get into it. But if you put a positive mindset that No, No problem is unsolvable and no problem is somebody else's problem, it’s your problem, you become an institutional person and then you get more and more involved into administration. Of course, you need to strike a balance between academics, your research and your administration. You should not be carried away only in one direction. So that is only the art of the game.. How would you balance? But if you could do that, then it’s quite enjoyable. :
Shreya Mishra
Over the years, how has your understanding been changing..even now of the world around you and of the work you have pursued? And as you mentioned already that it's a wide span of the fields that you worked in and in such varying fields that we cannot even account properly for. So what were the major learnings that you understood, or how did it all evolve, the idea of looking at the problem that you worked on? :
Dr. Shevgaonkar
One thing you know that, whatever you do, you should enjoy it. My Philosophy is also a little different. You should not do what you enjoy. You enjoy what you do. Many times you are supposed to do something which you never wanted, but you have to do it. But if you are doing it, you as well do with great happiness, your results will be much better. So, when for the first time, when from IIT Kanpur I went to Gauribidanur . Somebody asked me, do you want to do Astronomy? I said, No, I am not interested. But when it came, you start doing it, but do with happiness. And and when you start doing happily, you really start seeing happiness in there. You know, everything has a lot of interesting things which are there. So.. start getting the things done with happiness and without saying that, No, I will not do this or I will not do that. I think it makes life much more enjoyable. So when I went to Gauribidanur, I started doing Radio Astronomy. After that when I came and joined IIT Bombay, there was no Radio Astronomy in IIT Bombay but the students were interested in image processing and Optical fibers. So I said, okay, let me modify myself and change to this direction which the student want. So I started working in more image processing. Image processing background I had from Radio Image restoration, but then the other images which are there in which the engineering fields are interested in, is not astronomical images. They are more interested in TV images or videos and their compression and, you know, their rectification and many other things which are there. So I started guiding students into that direction. At the same time the optical fiber communication was coming in a big way. This I'm talking about in late 80s. So that area seemed to be a very hot area. So I started doing optical communication. At that time, Optical communication has already crossed the phase of primitiveness. Communication was already set up, it was functional, people were communicating by using optical fiber. And in fact, a lot of information and power was getting put into the optical fiber. And interestingly, the medium, the kind of power which was put into the core of the fiber, which is only a few micron in diameter, the Intensity of light inside the fiber was getting so high that the medium itself was changing its properties because of the presence of that. What is called the nonlinear effects of optical fibers. So the material property depends upon the signal and the signal properties depend upon the media. Entangled problem, right? That looked to be more interesting problem..non-linear propagation of light inside the optical fiber, So I started working in that direction. Some students were in the non-linear propagation of light in Optical fibers and that’s how the direction got changed, then many new and new ideas came in Optical communication and I sort of keep on guiding myself to what are the new things which are coming in that field. So it sort of happened naturally. You don't decide that, I'm going to do tomorrow on this or that. new fields start emerging, you keep on adapting yourself to that and you will find something all very exciting. :
Shreya Mishra
Okay, so talking about the disciplines of photonics and fiber optics, given how fast the field is evolving and how extremely application-based it can get, how do you look at the future of the field in the national as well as the global scenario? :
Dr. Shevgaonkar
Yeah so, as I said optical communication definitely is going to remain the backbone of your communication system. Because today there is no medium which is as low loss as optical fiber and has as large a bandwidth as the optical fiber. So now the techniques are actually to, how to really get more and more bandwidth, whatever bandwidth which we got from optical fiber, single optical fiber bandwidth is almost 10 to the power 11 Hertz. Okay. One TV channel requires how much? Four MegaHertz? Or something like that? So about 4 into ten to the power 6. One single optical fiber has a capacity of ten to the power eleven, that means about one lakh TV channels can be transmitted simultaneously by using one optical fiber. But today, when every house is getting corrected, so much of video data is flowing, even that bandwidth is not enough! So you require multiple Optical fibers. Right? So again, maybe one is using optical fiber, but you can use different modulation techniques now. So essentially now the research is in the optical domain itself, not necessarily research in fiber per se. What are the different techniques which you can do in the optical domain? which will enhance the bandwidth of your communication backbone which is the optical fiber. So optical fiber is a backbone, wireless and everything is going to be, you know, on the peripheral side. The last mile whatever you are talking about..accessibility, that is going to come from other mechanism, could be wireless, could be microwave. But whenever we require a large bandwidth, right, that’s where the optical fiber is inevitable, you HAVE to use optical fiber. So all those trans-Atlantic, trans-Pacific links, which connect different continents and different countries, they have to be optical fiber links. Because they are the only ones which is going to carry that kind of huge traffic, that’s where the research is. So country also needs this research because India is still growing in, in the requirement of communication and data transfer and so on. So this field is going to remain active for at least for a decade or so, and we don't know after that what will happen, because it is very difficult to predict technology, what will come after after a decade. But it has very great importance, even for India, you know, at this point of time. :
Prajwal
It's really been great on your decoding of science to the very fundamentals in your research field. Since you have worked at the crucial positions and in India's few of the finest institutions, how do you see the current scenario of the country in a general sense? We are posing this question to you as an academician rather than an administrator, if it's possible to segregate that. :
Dr. Shevgaonkar
Firstly, you know, as an academician when I look at, we have to become more quality conscious and I've been saying it repetitively. Even the graduates which we are producing, the employers say the graduates are not employable and many times we decode that, wrongly, saying that the students don’t know the advanced subject and that’s why they are unemployed, that’s what the decoding normally the industry does. I think that's a wrong decoding. The students are unemployable because their foundation is weak. If the foundation is weak, you cannot build on the advanced subject. So what is happening at this point of time is, we are undermining the importance of the foundation. Every student wants to learn artificial intelligence! Every student wants to do Advanced course, but he doesn't want to do the fundamental course. An advanced course when you do it, an advanced course’s lifetime is very short. When you look at technology today, typically, what is the lifetime? Five years, six years? After that the technology completely changes. So if you focus on that, you will become obsolete in five years. What will not become obsolete? The foundation. The semiconductor physics will not become obsolete. The Electromagnetic wave will never become obsolete. So this Foundation which is there, if quality is built into that.. graduate students will be able to adapt to new technology and new science in a much more quicker fashion. So the bigger problem at this point of time is we are producing in large numbers but in that process we are compromising on the quality. I think everybody has to become quality conscious. And I would rather say this.. students should become more quality conscious! Not degree centric, because ultimately, the degree is simply going to make you stand in front of somebody. But after that how do you perform? That the piece of paper will not do. You have to do yourself ! And that will depend upon how deep your understanding of the subject or knowledge is. So the Quality Consciousness, which is getting a little low back seat, I think it has to be brought into the academics. There's no point in saying everybody got 99%, if somebody got 70%, but if he is worth 70 percent, it is much better than having somebody 99% who is not even worth fifty percent. So this is one of my observations, that our quality in our overall thing is really getting compromised in the name of volume which we want to create . Second thing which is important is, we have to now do science, or even engineering, which has a more practical, local relevance. Lot of science is done, which is very well publishable, they publish in international Journals, people get recognition and so on. Question is, how much of that science or research is finally bought useful for our own society? Many times even the research is done for some problem which is not related to India, maybe related to some other country. Would it have a direct impact on India? We should think about it. So we should start doing our research in a much more focussed way, which is, in quality it is global standard, but it should have a local relevance so that it can solve more and more your problems. So this comes from Administration also, it comes from scientific temperament also, it comes from the policies also, but it comes from the student also. When I was in IIT Delhi. I had done some experiments. But all students in their engineering first year, they do this, what is called NSS..Social service. In that they are supposed to do something which is socially relevant. My concept to them was, why don't you go to nearby Villages or towns? Identify some problems which you think is there in society and for which you think there is a solution, technical solution. You may not know the solution, but there could be a technical solution. But identify the problem, in first year. Remaining 4 years of your program, whenever you do the courses and subjects keep relating to that material to their problem. Can I control this concept? Can I apply there? Can I solve their problem? You will do better relation with the societal needs and problems, even during your curriculum and by the end of your curriculum, maybe you will be already having many more ideas because you have already started relating your concept to the real-life topic. If that kind of approach is inculcated in the minds of the students, you will see that they will be better prepared to address the more societal issues. They will become more entrepreneurial and that research will be much more meaningful and useful for the development of the country as a whole. That’s what I feel should happen at this point of time. :
Prajwal
We do understand that our nation is an extremely unique position in the world currently, with a large youth population and extremely bright people, what has been your personal learnings from the way we have been evolving in the educational system and how can we do better at it? We constantly, you know, get compared to the United States or perhaps European nations in this field, but most often what happens is, these opinions are not able to make an educated gauging of a standing as a nation, financially, demographically and scientifically as well. Do you think there could be a better way to tackle the situation in a better way to use our young brains? :
Dr. Shevgaonkar
Yes. So, I think, again, the core of the whole thing is the quality of education, which is imparted in our country. I'm not blaming, but I'm saying, if you really go and talk by and large to the student, what do they want from their academic program? Their answer will be a job at the end of my program that's what the answer will be, a degree and a job. Employability seems to be the only concern and issue. Rather than making a solid understanding of something and contributing in a bigger scale. So our country when we are saying that how we are evolving, i think, we are concentrating too much on volume at this point of time. Volume is required in the country there is no doubt about that. But while creating the volume, you also should not compromise on the quality of education. And that’s what, I think, has to be repeatedly said. So, faculty should be of quality, the student should be serious about the quality. And there is no point simply boasting that we produce 10 lakh engineers every year. So ask the question what these 10 lakh engineers could do. 10 lakh engineers when you put it, it is almost the entire population of the Netherlands! So when I was telling somebody, one of our friends in Europe that, for JEE, about 1 billion students appear every year, he said - oh my God, the entire Netherland is writing examination, which is true (Laughs)! Question is do we have the technological impact in the same proportion. And the answer is not very positive. And the reason is because the quality is not really up to that point. :
Shreya
Moving lastly and again to a personal bit. This is quite a number of pursuits that you indulge in, be it playing the sitar, painting or even poetry or even just randomly walking, you know and spending time with the nature. Do you still practice these things? And perhaps I would like to ask you here one more thing, has the way that you look at the world and physics and your field of work, in general changed in a substantial way that you can put the finger at, if possible? :
Dr. Shevgaonkar
It certainly does. So again, if music is concerned, it so happened that I started learning Sitar when I was doing my engineering in Gwalior. Again probably it comes more like a culture of that town. That being a city of Tansen, there is a culture that people do have some inclination towards classical music. So, when I was doing my engineering with a five year program at that time, I got into a music college in the evening which is again a five-year degree program and I did my Bachelor's of music degree along with my engineering degree, you know, in Sitar. But then i found you know, that music gives you a peace of mind at a different level. And it so happened that even after all my research and other activities, I never really left Sitar. I still play. And many times people used to ask me- do you find time to do it ? And I said, I find them time to play Sitar only(chuckles). Other things I do because I have to do it. But then, given a choice, I would like to play Sitar much more. But the thing is even if you play or listen to the music even for half an hour- 45 minutes, I think your complete day is changed. You get a piece of mind. Even if afterwards there is a problem, you will be able to handle them because that particular Raga in the morning would have set your mind to find it cool. Other things, of course the poetry... when I was a student I had a liking to write something. Again, It comes because of your social rebellion attitude, you know, of the things which you don't find right, in and around you. So you write something(laughs). I was more disturbed by this communal rights, you know, which were there, so I could write that time around that and lot of inequalities which were there, I could write about it. But more that I also liked a lot of reading and reading... not fiction really, the reading of... from various thought leaders, you know, which are there. So, right from Mahatma Gandhi to other people. Because reading it directly puts you in contact with those people, you know, you have heard about them, but you never talked to them. If you read what they wrote, you directly get in contact with them to see their thinking process. So I was reading recently the book on Maxwell, the life of Maxwell. I mean Maxwell had a personality which always helped me so much. That a single person, how can somebody do so much work, you know? So Maxwell put his hand in every possible way. He worked in thermodynamics, he worked in Electromagnetics, his ‘Maxwell's equations’ are known anyway. But he has many more contributions, Boltzmann-Maxwell distribution and various things which are there in Maxwell. And you know, reading about his life, I found that he used to take a problem, try the problem for a year or two. If it doesn't get solved he used to leave the problem there. He will go to his house, you know, in the village and spend 1 or 2 years building his house and don't do science. And after 2 years, come back and look at another problem which looks much more interesting, start working on that, you know. Everything is interconnected, you could build a house and at the same time solve Maxwell’s equations also, you can write the Boltzmann distribution also. So, there is no bound on you. If you really like something, if you are interested in that, you can really produce wonders out of that. :
Shreya
This is Zeroing In with Dr. Raghunath Kashinath Shevgaonkar, we extend our sincere gratitude to Dr. Shevgaonkar for sharing his inspiring stories and such inquisitive ideas from his elaborate experience along with Prajwal Patnaik for collaborating on this episode on behalf of the Zeroing In Season 2 team which includes Arun S., Kanthan Narayanan, Kriti Raj, Murala Aman Naveen, Shaun Ethan Chaudhary Phangcho and I am Shreya Mishra. Thank you for listening to this episode. Zeroing In is a non profit initiative brought to you in collaboration with the Alumni Association of the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology, Thiruvananthapuram. If you have any suggestions, you can write to us on zeroinginpodcast@gmail.com or contact and follow us on our Instagram and Facebook handle - @zeroinginpodcast. :