Be Ready for an Online Semester in August

The lockdown has been extended by another 19 days, as expected. Whenever we do start relaxing the restrictions, it will have to be gradual. My own guess is that the two sectors that will be opened at the very end would be education and entertainment. Will we be ready to start classes in July/August. Seems very unlikely, at least not residential campuses with students from all over the country. The assumption here is that even when we flatten the curve, we will need to maintain vigil in the form of social distancing for a long time. And maintaining social distance in crowded lecture halls, hostels, dining halls, and all other facilities will be a challenge. Also, there are likely to be significant restrictions on organizing large events, student festivals, contests, etc.

Assuming that social distancing requirements will not go away in a couple of months, or even 4-5 months, we really need to think of how to manage the next semester in our educational institutions. We really have three options in India. One is to postpone the next semester by two months, assuming that social distancing norms will get relaxed in an additional two months. But notice, one is taking a risk. What if, they don't. Will we postpone the semester by another month, or two months. Second option is to stagger the semester. Bring in old students in July end, as usual. And bring in new students two months later, when social distancing norms are likely to be more relaxed. The assumption here is that if we have only 75% students (considering a typical engineering under-graduate institution, for others, the number would be different), we could possibly maintain harsher social distancing norms, and only when the norms ease out, do we admit the new students. This has two assumptions, namely, one can maintain social distancing norms with 75% students, and that social distancing norms will sufficiently relax within an additional two months. Again, a significant risk.

So, we should look at the third option. Go online.

In the current semester, a large number of educational institutions have been forced to move instruction online. Faculty had to be trained quickly. Internet access had to be strengthened, investments had to be made in tools for managing online education. Now that all this has happened across the country, we should use the intervening period to look at the difficulties faced in moving online and try to fix them so that we can provide a better learning experience to our students. Many of the problems faced due to lockdown will not be there next semester. If a student does not have Internet access at home, next semester, the student can be asked to go to a nearby place, a friend's home, for example, to gain that access. We can even have local colleges allowing other students to sit there at non-peak hours and use their Internet bandwidth. So all the learning of this semester and all the investments of this semester will be leveraged for one more semester. We can start the semester on time.

And we can have a combination - some batches online and some batches on campus - only so many on campus that we can ensure compliance with social distancing norms. This is really what was also expected when MOOCs started becoming popular that one day, the university experience will not be a continuous four years on campus, but learn online for some semesters, perhaps even part-time, and learn on campus for some other semester to enjoy that wonderful experience.

In the long run, it is clear that Covid-19 would change the education sector completely. Online learning would become a very important part of any educational program. Next semester, we may choose online education for some batches because circumstances are forcing us to. But, in general, we should start getting ready to have an online strategy.

The first Aeronautical Engineering program in India: PEC

The year was 1962. The first Commander-in-chief of the maintenance wing of the Indian Air Force was legendary Air Vice Marshal Harjinder Singh. Here was an officer who was one of the greatest aviation experts. So much so, he had designed and built an aircraft. You can still find the plane “Kanpur 1” in the labs of Punjab Engineering College. He was among the first few employees of the Air Force when it was established in 1932. He had joined as technician and rose to the level of commissioned officer in 1942. He was appointed Air Officer commanding Maintenance Command in 1955, when the command was established. When the level of Command was raised in 1959, he was also promoted to AVM to head the command. He retired in 1963. The Air Force maintenance command was based in Kanpur. He even created a team of Air Force officers who actually manufactured AVROs in Kanpur. “Harjinder Nagar” in Kanpur is named after him. You may read more about the great man here:

https://www.thebetterindia.com/70596/first-officers-indian-air-force-harjinder-singh-jumbo-majumdar/

But we digress. In year 1962, it appeared that we could have some action on our Northern/Eastern front and he felt that Air Force was not prepared for the action. One of the biggest bottleneck that he as the Commander-in-Chief of Maintenance Command felt was lack of engineers to maintain aircrafts. There was no undergraduate program in Aeronautical Engineering in the country. There were a couple of Diploma courses in Aircraft maintenance and IISc Bangalore offered a research program. There was an urgent need by Air Force for the Aeronautical engineers.

He thought of connecting with IIT Kanpur. But they were still under construction, and a new program would produce engineers five years hence. Air Force could not have waited that long. So he thought of his alma mater. He had done his engineering from Maclagan Engineering College in Lahore which had split into two during partition, and the Indian half had established itself as Punjab Engineering College in Chandigarh. He convinced the college that it was so urgent to produce aircraft engineers that he could not wait for a new program to start. The program had to start by shifting students from other disciplines who were about to complete their second year into this new program of Aeronautical Engineering. Since the first two years had a common curriculum, it was indeed a possibility.

The college was ready to do anything for the nation. But it needed labs and faculty. AVM Singh talked to the then Chief Minister of Punjab, Shri Pratap Singh Kairon, who offered all support. He then suggested that Air Force could provide all the equipment necessary for setting up of labs. Faculty was still an issue. There was no way, PEC would be able to recruit several faculty members in a couple of months. The Principal turned to Dr. V S Malhotra, a Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and he agreed to run the new program.

Option was given to all students to change in the beginning of their 3^rd year to Aeronautical Engineering. To make the deal sweeter, AVM Singh announced that all these students will be eligible for recruitment as Pilot Officer right in the 3^rd year, and those selected will get a full salary during their 3^rd and 4^th year. All seventeen went through the Services Selection Board, and 8 were selected as Pilot Officer in Indian Air Force. The other 9 were a disappointed lot. They will not get any money for these two years. But at the end of their program, all 9 were recruited by the fledgling DGCA, and as one of them recently told me, the disappointment of not getting selected as Pilot Officer disappeared when they found out that as DGCA officers all of them will have job till 58 years of age, while in Air Force, the retirement age would depend on your promotions.

Dr. Malhotra had the hard task of training these 17 students with no faculty. He started writing to all institutions in India about various courses. While no institution other than IISc had a department of Aeronautical Engineering, he could find specific faculty members to teach specific courses. So students were sent to IISc Bangalore, IIT Madras and IIT Kanpur for doing certain courses. It certainly helped that a young professor, who too was an alumnus of Maclagan Engineering College, had assumed the role of Director of IISc Bangalore. He was Head of Aeronautical Engineering Department before that. That young professor was none other than Satish Dhawan who would later become Chairman of ISRO.

The students would go to these institutions (and notice that IITM and IITK were just 2-3 years old and had a lot of teething troubles of their own, but they too chipped in because of nation first) for a few weeks each, and go through a compressed course by a faculty member. In the meanwhile, Air Force helped with setting up of labs so that students could come back and do their experiments on campus or at Air Force station. (So our students doing courses at other educational institutions and getting credit at PEC is nothing new for us. It is part of our DNA.)

At the end, the first set of 17 graduate engineers in Aeronautical Engineering in the whole country came out of PEC in 1964, with 100 percent placement – 8 in Indian Air Force, and 9 in DGCA. One of them, Shri H S Khola would later become Director General of Civil Aviation in India.

We at PEC are proud of our heritage and how our alums have built India, one small step at a time.

#1921pec2021

IIT Chandigarh: Many a slip between the cup and the lip

This is the story of how India missed having an IIT at Chandigarh. A large number of people have told me parts of the story and it is possible that some parts are not authentic. But it is a fascinating story anyway.

Late 1950s. After no one challenged the establishment of IIT Kharagpur through an act of parliament, it was time to establish the other three IITs as suggested by Sarkar Committee Report, one each in North, South and West. It was decided to set them up at Kanpur, Chennai (then Madras) and Mumbai (then Bombay). Since IITs were to be at a level higher than any other engineering college in the country, foreign help was sought and received. The three new IITs would be setup with the help of US, Germany and Russia.

UK wasn't happy that it wasn't asked to play a role in India's development, and it offered its help for any other engineering institute. But their offer initially was less than what other countries were doing for the other three IITs. Indian government welcomed the offer, and was thinking of two options: Starting a new college which will not be an IIT, or converting an old college to an IIT. Both options will need less support consistent with the offer of UK.

A small college in Chandigarh had a great visionary as its Principal, Prof. R N Dogra. To add to that, Dogra family was rather close to Nehru family. And Chandigarh was the most favorite city of Pt Nehru. He brought more state guests to Chandigarh than to Agra. This college which was the oldest college East of Thomson College in undivided India, and had a great reputation, sent a letter to Government of India asking that it be made the 5th IIT of India.

However, the Government in Delhi had other pressures. There was to be one IIT and two RECs in Northern India. The IIT had gone to Kanpur, and one of the two RECs was to be in Allahabad for obvious reasons. The central government was keen to convert Delhi College of Engineering into REC Delhi, but people in Delhi protested. So the second REC of the North was planned for Srinagar. An earlier Chief Minister (the post had been abolished in 1956) had been demanding that a city of the stature of Delhi must get a second engineering college. Eventually, central government decided to establish an engineering college in Hauz Khas with the help of UK. Soon thereafter, UK decided to increase its commitment, and the college was renamed as IIT Delhi. For the Chandigarh college, there was a slip between the cup and the lip.

Not only the college in Chandigarh was not converted to an IIT, but its visionary leader was snatched away and made the founding Director of IIT Delhi. He had built PEC from scratch. We had shifted to Chandigarh only in 1953 and a lot more infrastructure needed to be built, lot more labs, new departments, more faculty, and what not. He had done all that, but more needed to be done to be truly world class.

At IIT Delhi, the initial architecture/planning/hostel names borrowed a lot from PEC. But while he built the new IIT, he remained loyal to his first love. If we could have a 5th IIT, why not a 6th IIT. He lobbied with Indira ji, the daughter of the then Prime Minister. And finally, the government agreed. The date was decided. IIT Chandigarh were to take admission from 1963. But in 1962, the China war happened. The finances which were already stressed became much worse and the date for conversion was postponed to 1964. Once again, there was a slip between the cup and the lip.

A new condition was added for the conversion. That Punjab Government must continue to fund this IIT to the same extent as the funds they provided to PEC at that time. This wasn't too difficult. Shri Pratap Singh Kairon was the Chief Minister, who had been arguing for the establishment of a world class college in Punjab long before he became CM. He had helped in getting the 146 acres of prime land in the new upcoming city of Chandigarh for relocating PEC. But he was fighting to clear his name of corruption charges, and there was this Punjabi Suba movement. IIT Chandigarh wasn't the top priority at the moment. But as soon as the the commission of inquiry exonerated him of corruption charges, he suddenly resigned in June, 1964, and Shri Gopi Chand Bhargava who was the first Chief Minister of Punjab after independence, was made a caretaker Chief Minister for two weeks. Within this brief period, he called a cabinet meeting and approved that Punjab Government would pay the same amount that they granted to PEC that year for eternity. While it was too late for July 1964 admissions, the central government decided that IIT Chandigarh would come into being in 1965.

At the 3rd Inter-IIT Sports Meet at IIT Madras in December, 1964, Brig. Sisir Kumar Bose had announced that from the next year, there would be six teams participating in the sports meet, the sixth one being from IIT Chandigarh. He hadn't realized that with the death of Pt Nehru, Chandigarh had lost its biggest supporter in Delhi. No notification of IIT Chandigarh came. Instead, it was decided to seek another letter of support from Punjab Government, since the earlier letter was from a caretaker government. There was a slip between the cup and the lip.

The Punjab Government decided to wait till the picture of division of Punjab was clear. The Punjab Reorganization Act was implemented on 1st November, 1966, creating the states of Punjab and Haryana, merging some of the hill districts with the Union Territory of Himachal Pradesh and making it a state, and most importantly for us, converting Chandigarh into a Union Territory. The PEC was no longer in the state of Punjab, and therefore, there was no question of Punjab Government promising any financial support to PEC (or IIT Chandigarh).

India had to survive without a sixth IIT for the next 3 decades.