People

Motorola awards driver

The winners of the inaugural Motorola Scholar Awards 2005-06 are Dhiren K. Patra, Rakesh J.S., Ritesh N. Phalak, Shulin Todkar (K.K. Wagh Institute of Engineering Education and Research, Nasik); Sourabh Nirmal, Abhinav Khandelwal and Abhishek Sharma (Global Institute of Technology, Jaipur) and Ajay S. Nath and S. Ashwin (Sri Venkateswara College of Engineering, Sriperum-budur). Prof. P. Balaram, director, Indian Institute of Science (IISc) presented citation certificates and cash purses of Rs.100,000, Rs.75,000 and Rs.50,000 to these three winning teams on July 31 in Bangalore.

The Motorola Scholar Awards will be presented annually by Motorola India Electronics Pvt Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Motorola Inc, USA (annual sales: US$ 36.8 billion) and Foundation for Advancement of Education and Research (FAER), Bangalore, a non-profit, non-government scientific research organisation.

"The objective of the Motorola Scholar Programme (MSP) launched last year is to encourage engineering students to undertake innovative research in digital communication technologies i.e mobile telephony. Through this programme we hope to acknowledge and reward students doing revolutionary work in bridging the digital divide between urban and rural India. We want to encourage experimentation and innovation within the community of engineering students so that they are more industry-ready when they graduate," says Bangalore-based Soumitra (‘Sammy’) Sana, managing director, Global Software Group, Motorola India Electronics Pvt Ltd.

FAER was founded in 2004 by a group of academics and industry professionals with the objective of conducting faculty development programmes, under-taking general and specific research, encouraging individual research and converting research projects into marketable ideas. "We chose FAER to be our assessing partner because of its governing board which comprises top scientists, academics and industry leaders committed to improving the quality of technical and research content in higher education," says Sana, an electronics and electrical communications engineering graduate of IIT-Kharagpur and active member of NASSCOM, AmCham and Indo-American Chamber of Commerce (IACC).

According to Sana, Motorola has allocated an annual budget of US$60,000 (Rs.27 lakh) for MSP. This year the contest received over 200 research proposals from engineering students across the country. After careful evaluation by an FAER panel of 25 experts from academia and industry, nine research proposals were short- listed for final appraisal and received seed funding of Rs.65,000. The short-listed teams were given four months to proceed with the implementation and completion of their project proposals, subsequently presented before a panel of judges which included eminent professors from IISc and communication industry leaders.

Buoyed by the good response and high quality project papers presented at the inaugural MSP Award programme, Sana has drawn up an ambitious blueprint for Motorola’s incremental involvement in higher education and research. "Another area where we plan to become involved, is doctoral and post doctoral research projects. Starting this year we will sponsor six Ph D scholars researching different areas of digital communications," says Sana.

Srinidhi Raghavendra (Bangalore)

Said School’s research ambassador

With the interest of foreign corporates and investors in the fast-track Indian economy at fever pitch, several top management consultancy firms and B-schools abroad (Harvard, Stanford, etc), have established research units or centres in India. These offshore back-office centres collate, analyse and disseminate information relating to fast-growth industry sectors such as infrastructure, commodities, building materials, IT, biotechnology etc in India.

Typically, despite Britain with its centuries-old historic linkages being a major foreign investor in India, British B-schools have been slow to establish research affiliates in this country. However the first B-school in Blighty to get off the starting blocks is the Said School of Business, Oxford — an affiliate of Britain’s globally famous Oxford University (estb. 1231). "Although we haven’t finalised its location, we have taken an in-principle decision to establish a research centre which will employ full-time research specialists guided by top Indian academics as expeditiously as possible. The academics will write research papers and create development models relevant to India and third world countries," says Dr. Tarun Ramadorai, professor of financial economics at the Said School of Business who has conceptualised its India research centre. An alumnus of Williams College, USA, the highly-qualified Ramadorai (31) has a Masters in philosophy, politics and economics from Cambridge University (UK) and a Ph D from Harvard.

The Said School of Business was promoted in 1996 by London-based Syrian businessman-philanthropist Wafic Said with an initial endowment of £ 20 million (Rs.168 crore) after which Oxford University raised another £ 21.25 to constitute its corpus. Currently it has an aggregate enrollment of 225 students in the MBA programme, into which graduates with three years or more of industry experience are admitted. Apart from the MBA programme, the Said School offers Masters programmes in financial economics, financial engineering and economics. Over the past decade, this B-school has established a good reputation as one of the world’s leading research centres in the areas of finance, accounting, decision science, human resources, operations management and organisational behaviour.

Schooled in India, with his multi-disciplinary education background in Britain and the US, Ramadorai brings vast experience and knowledge to this high-potential offshore project. "The Indian economy is growing so fast that it makes good business sense for the Said School to seize this opportunity to become knowledgeable about India. I am confident we will become a one-stop shop and information and research repository for business in India," says Ramadorai.

Bharati Thakore (Mumbai)

Multiculturism missionary

Renowned educationist, and proponent of multicultural education, Paul C. Gorski, (assistant professor at the Graduate School of Education, Hamline University, Minnesota (USA)) was recently in India to share his views on multiculturism and suggest how institutions can practise it for the greater good of society. "Despite the US being a multicultural, plural society, inequity and discriminatory practices are widely prevalent within the education system. The poor go to inferior schools, racism and classism is replicated in the classroom and the mainstream curriculum with its Anglo-Saxon perspective, is centred upon white people. However, people with power to shape policy and perception in the US are becoming aware of the importance of celebrating diversity. There’s growing awareness that multiculturism is about sharing rights, power and privileges, encouraging critical thinking in the classroom and going beyond textbooks to learn about diverse cultures and people by making their voices heard in classrooms," says Gorski, who has a doctorate in educational evaluation from the University of Virginia.

Gorski’s interest in multiculturism was sparked off while still a sociology and communication undergrad, when he became aware that the real world with its racist prejudices is very different from idealistic pictures painted in school. Since then he has been an active campaigner for multicultural education, conducting workshops, lectures and providing guidance to schools and educational institutions committed to equity and diversity. To this end, Gorski has designed and maintains two websites — the Multicultural Pavilion and the McGraw-Hill Multicultural Supersite; is director of the National Association of Multicultural Education (NAME) in the US and is associate editor of NAME’s journal — Multicultural Perspectives.

"My role is to model multicultural education for teachers, help them to think critically about curriculums and pedagogies, and equip them with skills and competencies in their subjects. I make a greater impact by working with teachers individually," says Gorski who has acquired a global reputation for transforming curriculums to make them inclusive and equitable.

However, he is sceptical about any major changes he can effect in curriculum transformation back home in the US, given the incumbent Bush administration’s insistence upon standardised testing in its national education policy. "This policy is designed by corporations rather than educationists. Since teachers and schools are assessed on the basis of student performance, teaching is wholly oriented towards achieving successful exam outcomes and critical thinking and analysis is being sacrificed," he says forthrightly.

Nevertheless, Gorski avidly advocates multicultural education so that regardless of class and race, everyone has the opportunity to achieve in supportive learning environments.

Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)

Shroff’s red letter day

For renowned economist, financial consultant and captain of industry, Minoo Rustomji Shroff, July 19, 2006 was a red letter day. The Mumbai-based Forum of Free Enterprise (FFE), of which he is president, celebrated the golden jubilee of its foundation. On the occasion, industrialist Ratan Tata released Eventful Years — a history of the forum authored by economist Sunil Bhandare and Ajit Karnik, professor of political economy at the University of Mumbai.

Founded in 1956 by the late A.D. Shroff (1899-1965), eminent economist and chairman of the pre-nationalisation New India Assurance Co with the objective of educating the public on the virtues of free enterprise, FFE ploughed a lonely furrow in the heady years when Nehruvian socialism with its huge public sector undertakings and Soviet-style central planning, led post-independence India into the wilderness of the so-called Hindu rate of GDP growth (3.5 percent) for over three decades.

"The Forum was set up to educate the business community and society about the power of private enterprise and what it could do to stimulate economic growth. In particular, under the leadership of the legendary lawyer-economist the late Nani Palkhivala, the forum played a major role in changing economic mindsets in India. And our finest moment came in 1991, when the government of India in effect admitted its errors of the past and rescinded industrial licensing while ushering in the new era of economic liberalisation and deregularisation, following which annual rates of economic growth have more than doubled. It’s a matter of great satisfaction that Nani Palkhivala lived to see economic liberalisation work before he passed away in the year 2002," says Shroff.

An alumnus of Mumbai’s St. Xavier’s College from where he graduated in science in 1948, Shroff carved out a distinguished career in industry, accountancy and management consultancy. Starting as a trainee in Swadeshi Mills, Shroff today is chairman of six leading corporates and has served as director of 40 blue-chip companies. Moreover, he has also been a visiting lecturer at the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management, Mumbai and Harvard Business School.

Having stepped into the large shoes of Palkhivala, Shroff is deeply involved with his responsibilities as president of the forum. During the past half century when he was continuously involved with its activities, FFE organised 2,200 public meetings, published 1,800 booklets and articles and conducted 5,700 elocution and essay competitions among other activities to propagate the virtues of private enterprise "which is a national attribute of Indians".

Eminent personalities who have graced FFE platforms include Nobel laureates Prof. Milton Friedman and Prof. Amartya Sen, Margaret Thatcher and Justice M.C. Chagla. "There is much cause for satisfaction that the forum’s activities have borne fruit. But the process of liberating the Indian economy is by no means complete, so we will persist with our efforts to create a more enabling environment for private enterprise. In particular, there is a huge role for private educationists, who still suffer licence-permit-quota raj. We intend focusing our efforts towards enabling them to upgrade standards of Indian education," says Shroff.

Power to your elbow!

Gaver Chatterjee (Mumbai)

Magsaysay award winner

A crusader for transparency in governance, Delhi-based maverick civil servant (Indian Revenue Service) Arvind Kejriwal is the recipient of this year’s prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award for his advocacy of the right-to-information (RTI) movement. Co-founder of the Delhi-based voluntary organisation Parivartan, this mechanical engineering graduate of IIT-Kharagpur (1986-90) has been cited for the award — Asia’s version of the Nobel Prize named after the late President Ramon Magsaysay of the Philippines — for the relentless energy he invested in the national movement which resulted in Parliament passing the revolutionary Right to Information Act, 2005.

Currently on a two-year sabbatical from government to focus on the RTI campaign, Kejriwal signed up with the IRS in 1992. "The brazen corruption of the high and mighty may grab headlines, but for an ordinary person it is the ubiquity of everyday corruption that weighs heaviest," says Kejriwal, explaining his championing of the citizen’s right to scrutinise government files and processes. By all accounts Kejriwal’s campaign in alliance with other NGOs and student activists to shape the RTI Bill into effective legislation, i.e the RTI Act 2005, was a spectacular success. It attracted 21,000 suggestions from over 42,000 citizens.

"By activating a grassroots movement which has resulted in the RTI Act, we have empowered the poorest citizens to fight corruption and made governments accountable to the people," he says.

Inevitably, Kejriwal’s crusade to open up government files and processes attracted the ire of India’s powerful 18-million strong bureaucracy. On several occasions, he and his volunteers were roughed up or attacked. In particular, he was targeted by the food and civil supplies department and Delhi Vidyut Board officials who labelled him a "security hazard". But Kejriwal refuses to capitulate under "mafia pressure". "If you believe in yourself and your cause, such pressures dissipate in no time," he says.

Be that as it may, despite winning the Magsaysay award, Kejriwal is concerned about the future of the RTI Act. Especially the recent Union cabinet decision to keep file notings out of the purview of the public. "Official notings are the essence of the Act. If they are kept away from public scrutiny, the Act will lose its teeth," warns Kejriwal.

Happily his warning has been heeded. On August 19 the Union cabinet revoked its intent to amend the Act to place file notings beyond public purview — for the time being.

Neeta Lal (Delhi)

Celebrated Sanskrit scholar

On July 20, the Delhi-based University Grants Commission honoured 17 outstanding scientists and academics from across the country with national awards for 2004 under three categories — the Hari Om Ashram Trust National Awards for science; the Swami Pranavananda Sarswati National Awards for humanities and economics, and the Ved Vyas National Sanskrit Award — at a glittering ceremony in Delhi.

The Ved Vyas National Sanskrit Award was conferred upon Dr. Kamal Anand, principal of Delhi’s Aditi Mahavidyalaya and honorary professor of Sanskrit literature at the Hoshiarpur-based Vishveshwaranand Vedic Research Institute. This award apart from a citation, includes a purse of Rs.100,000 — double the cash purses for the science and humanities categories (Rs.50,000).

Anand, Punjab University’s only woman D. Litt (1998) awardee, was honoured for her outstanding contribution in popularising Sanskrit through her writings, plays and ballets, and research papers. Born in Lahore, Anand moved to Delhi during partition, completed her graduation at Lady Shri Ram College and was awarded her Ph D by Delhi University. In 1968, she signed up as a teacher of Sanskrit at Delhi’s Laxmibai College, an association that lasted for 35 years. During that period she published two books based upon her study of 100,000 stanzas of Katha Sarita Sagar.

"Sanskrit is a neglected treasure of India," she laments. "This award gives me immense pride and satisfaction as a teacher of Sanskrit, regarded as the most perfect language. But at the same time, I feel the language is dying for want of proper attention," says Anand who has been conferred a plethora of awards for her contribution to Sanskrit research and scholarship.

Listing the challenges confronting this classical language, she advocates teaching of Sanskrit from class I (instead of class VI) and refresher courses for teachers. "Sanskrit should be taught on the lines of English from the very beginning, and made enjoyable and relevant. It offers many a panacea for the ills of modern life including stress, depression, and failed relationships. It can open avenues for the study of ayurveda and other ancient sciences," says Anand, whose mission is to project Sanskrit as an important thread in the warp and weft of Indian culture.