I Walk the Woods No More...

It took just one person with inappropriately large powers, and a very large budget to change the face of IISc. Prof. Balaram took charge as the Director of Indian Institute of Science Campus in 2005. During the same period, Central government allocated Rs 100 crore to make IISc a world-class university ranked along with Harvard, Cambridge and Stanford.....now the woods are gone, and also the fields, the dark groves of old trees. We mistakenly replaced world class achievements with world class buildings of concrete, steel, glass. Our leadership thought that original thinking and better performance could be achieved in larger, air-conditioned office spaces, more equipment, and shamefully high salaries - not to scale to the poverty that infests the land, hunger that wipes out our young, causes farmer suicides in hordes...We thought we would better compete with international performances, forgetting that excellence is an internal quality, fed by internal passion, nurtured by internal imagination - an obsessed curiosity , a pursuit to solve a puzzle, crack a problem - unmindful of the other, or the international, unmindful of pursuing excellence. Excellence is not an orchestrated, funded entity to be bought in shops, just as middle class happiness is not available in malls. Scientists whose discourses evolve around funding, and looking over their shoulders to catch up either with facilities abroad, or with salaries of their IT peers (with MNCs) are disabled to even comprehend, let alone access excellence.

Here at IISc, scientists are on verge of getting their 'firang' shaped spaces - it took five years to provide these facilities. Let us see, five years hence, whether they become a Stanford, or a Harvard, or whatever...

Meanwhile...I walk the woods no more...