 So we are live. Good evening, good afternoon, everyone, and a very, very warm welcome to all of you for the 2021 edition of the VG Kulkarni Memorial Lecture. This is the 20th in the series of annual lectures dedicated to the memory of our visionary founder, director, Sri VG Kulkarni. And over the past years, we've heard some wonderful talks dealing with important issues at the intersection of science, technology, education, and society. Now in the past, this day was a very special day at the HPCSE campus, where we welcomed everyone in our center's auditorium, aptly called the VG Kulkarni Auditorium, and it was an occasion for the entire HPCSE community, family, and friends to get together for this particular event. Although we are compelled to be online this year, it's really nice, and I'm delighted to see so many of you today joining us online. First, let me add a personal note of welcome to the speaker for today, Professor Jayanta Thakkar. And I'm also delighted to see VG K's family here. Welcome, Mrs. Kulkarni. Welcome, Chandrasekhar. I can see you, Anita, Dr. Anita. Yes, you're there. Sure, I don't know if you're here, but thank you so much. You've been coming every year to support us and to inspire us, and thank you this year as well for being with us online. And there's the other family, the academic family of VG Kulkarni. We're having, of course, Sabita and Sugara, these two students who are still with us today at the center, and there are others who are retired. I can see Professor Agarkar. I can see some others. All of you, thank you so much. All the people who have been with the center for so many years. Thank you so much for joining us today. We do hope to welcome you on campus physically here once we are done with COVID and times are better, but as of now, we are online for today. Before we get on with the lecture, it's an honor and a privilege for me to speak about our founder-director, Vinayak Gopal Kulkarni, more popularly known probably as VG K or V-Go in Marathi. He was an inspiring personality. So VG K was born in Birgaon in 1932. His early education is in Birgaon and Ratnagiri, Dharavad, finally Mumbai. And after completing his MSC in Mumbai, he joins in 1953 of fledgling TIFR as a scientist, working in the area of solid state and nuclear physics. And he worked very closely with professors B. M. Uthgaonkar, Prithosa, Giresh Chandra and other people, doing some very, very high quality science over there. In the midst of the science research, VG K and his colleagues, they take a very courageous step. They realize there is a need for training science teachers, paying attention to science education in the country. And at this point, under the guidance of Professor B. M. Uthgaonkar, they found and he nurtured the center devoted for science education with very small beginnings, starting at a municipal school in Nanachalk in Mumbai, and then eventually growing and coming here. So this is in 1974 with the grant from the Doraptata Trust. Eventually it moves to the center where we are located today in Deonar. And that's the history. That's the beginning of HBCS. And there has always been a very, very special emphasis in his work on improving education in the sciences and mathematics, especially for first generation learners, underprivileged students, et cetera, and many, many books and study materials were developed. Now, he was known to be somebody but who's a very approachable person, a very jovial person with interest in diverse fields, literature, to arts, history, philosophy, and of course, of course, science, physics and science education. And one thing at the core focus of his thing was, what is the role of language in education? And he stressed that it is really important to be able to have learning in one's native language and books should be written in a way which is easy to read, of course, very accurate in its content, but in the native language, and VGK wrote extensively. He had this very simple and convincing style, both in Marathi and English on science and the need for a scientific culture. He was a book lover. He was also a brilliant speaker. He was known for his choice of words. And in all the reports, everybody said he had a wonderful sense of humor. And during his distinguished career, both as a scientist and an educationist, he was a recipient of several awards. And even after he retired from TFR, he continued to be prolific writing in, for newspapers and other articles, interacting with various institutions. So he was very, very active. And after he passed away in 2002, the center initiated this series of lectures in his memory and we are going to be very soon hearing the next one in the series. And I'm sure you're all as eager as me waiting for Professor Gaukar's talk. So without further ado, let me hand over to Deepa Achary, our sort of sutradhar today who's going to be moderating the talk. So all over to you. Please go ahead. She'll be introducing the speaker. So over to you Deepa. And thanks again for joining us. Thank you, Professor Bhattacharya. And it is an honor for me to introduce our speaker, Professor Jayan Thutgaukar, who is a renowned biophysical chemist. Professor Thutgaukar is currently serving as the director of Indian Institute of Science, Education and Research, Aysar Pune. I'll give a brief introduction about him. He has obtained his bachelor's in chemistry from Saint Xavier's College in Mumbai and a master's in chemistry from Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai. And he then went to pursue his doctoral studies in biochemistry from Cornell University in United States. And he was awarded a PhD in 1986 for his work about single molecular current recording methods and rapid chemical kinetic studies at the cell surface in biochemistry area, which is where he has made several remarkable contributions. Post PhD, Professor Thutgaukar continued his research as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biochemistry at Stanford University in United States until 1989. And Professor Thutgaukar then joined TIFR in February 1990 with an appointment at the yet to be established National Center for Biological Sciences in Bangalore. So within after three years, after he served in TIFR in Mumbai, he moved to eventually NCBS campus in Bangalore. And Professor Thutgaukar served there as an associate professor since 1995. Later he became a professor in 1998 and a senior professor in 2007. And during this period at NCBS, he also served as the Dean of NCBS and helped to set up both academic and research programs at NCBS. And so far 30 students have obtained PhDs under Professor Thutgaukar's mentoring. Professor Thutgaukar, along with his students, has made quite a few contributions, both significant and original in the area of primarily protein folding research. And the list is too long, so it is hard to cover all the details. But I could say that his work is essentially exploring and experimentally demonstrating how various stages of protein folding and unfolding happens and tease apart the heterogeneity of folding, unfolding or misfolding reactions. And his work is published in several journals, prominent journals like Nature, Nature Structural Biology, a biochemistry journal, Journal of Molecular Biology, and it has over 7,000 citations. Professor Thutgaukar's contribution to his research in protein folding area particularly has won him many laurels and prestigious awards, both at national as well as international level. And he's a recipient of Biotechnology Career Fellowship, which is awarded by Rockfiller Foundation. He's also a recipient of Swarna Jyoti Fellowship awarded by DST, Golden Jubli Biotechnology Fellowship by DBT, and Senior Research Fellowship by Wellcome Trust and JC Bose National Fellowship by DST. And Professor Thutgaukar in year 2000 received Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar Award, which is again one of the highest Indian science awards. He is a recipient of J. N. Ramachandran Gold Medal by CSIR and Distinguished Alumnus Award given by IIT Madras. Professor Thutgaukar is a fellow of Indian Academy of Science and Indian National Science Academy and the World Academy of Sciences. Today we are really fortunate to have Professor Thutgaukar with us and we feel doubly honored to listen to his ideas on thoughts on education in a small research-oriented science university on VGK Memorial Lecture. And the talk is even more interesting because the contributions of both VG Kulkarni and Professor Thutgaukar's father, Professor Bhalchandra Thutgaukar has been reported in the development of HBCSE and its work in the area of science education research. So today we will be listening Professor Jayan Thutgaukar who will share his thoughts about how science curricula, his thoughts on the science curricula to make students better thinkers to make them more vigilant, confident and aware of problems facing in the world. So I request the audience to type their questions in the chat window briefly and I can try to pose them to our speaker on your behalf towards the end. And we'll also try to cover some questions from our YouTube live stream audience if possible. So I think without any further delay, now I request our distinguished speaker, Professor Thutgaukar to deliver the 28th VGK Memorial Lecture. Thanks very much. Thank you, Professor Thutgaukar. Thank you. I'm delighted to give this lecture and I thank the Homi Baba Center for Science Education for inviting me to give this 28th VGK Memorial Lecture. It's probably just over 20 years ago that I met VGK for the last time when he and his wife came to visit my mother in a hospital when she had some knee surgery done. And Professor Kulkarni, of course, talked a lot. He talked on, as Arunabh mentioned, on a variety of topics and it was really a pleasure listening to him. I'd of course met him perhaps 25 years earlier. I think probably around 1970, 71 or so when I probably visited TIFR and my father introduced me to him and it's clear that this man, shot in stature but big in thinking ability, was someone who was unusual and very dynamic, very driven and really deeply interested in what he was planning to do at that time, which was to work with the municipal school teachers on educational matters. So it's really my privilege to give this talk and I'm very happy that Mrs. Kulkarni and the rest of the family are perhaps also present to listen to me. Now, when I was asked to give this talk, I was in two minds about what to talk about. It's easy to talk about one science. I'm still an active scientist, but I thought at least I should try and give a talk on education. And this is really my first talk on educational matters anywhere. So I'm thankful for the opportunity because when I was in college, my father would discuss many matters containing college education at least with me and especially that was the time when the 10 plus two plus three system was introduced in the country and the BSC curriculum of Bombay University was being revamped. And he I think was in charge of that committee which revamped it. And they had these ideas about introducing non-science courses in science curricula and he used to run these ideas by me. He would give me articles he wrote on education to read and it was clear at that time that these were matters which he had thought about very deeply. And because I was asked to give this lecture, I went back to a collection of articles of his on education which the Homi Bahawa Center had put together maybe 20 years, 20 odd years ago and started reading about this one article on restructuring education in science and technology. And I read that it's a somewhat long article, 20 odd pages but I got the feeling that if many of those issues which he was talking about had been actually implemented in educational institutes that we would all be in a far better situation with respect to education in the country. I hope they do get implemented at some point. This is something nearly 45 years ago. And but what was useful for me was to really read about at least some of his articles on education and to remember the talks which we had at that time on educational matters. So I spent most of my career in a research institute. There was some education, but it was the education of PhD students. And I would be visiting undergraduate institutes and they seem to be far more dynamism, far more vitality, et cetera, in such institutes. And for many years, I was wondering whether I should move to such an institute. And I was considering, for example, moving to the IIT Bombay for many years, but that didn't happen. Finally, I got the opportunity to come to ISA. It's a much smaller version of IIT, but it's been a great experience to try and understand educational issues and to confront them and try and deal with them. So I will talk about these issues shortly. I'm actually very, I owe a lot to the Homibaba Center. I used to go in 1976, especially, and perhaps earlier also, but 76 was when we had a big break. So I made many visits to the Homibaba Center at Nana Chowk at the Granford Bridge past all the automobile repair shops to the fourth floor, I think, of the third floor of the municipal school. And I used to use the library and I was allowed to take borrow books, one book at a time from the library. And I think over the period of several months, I borrowed many books which had a good impact on my thinking about various topics and science. And that's where I met many of others working at the Homibaba Center. So that's really a very good memory. This was probably, as I said, 1975, 1976. And it really left a very strong memory in terms of appreciating the type of work the Homibaba Center was doing. Just below, on the floors below the center work was the actual municipal school. And you could, you know, and so you would see the students there, you knew that they were as bright as students in the school I went and had just finished from. But in general, students from municipal schools were not doing as well as students or were not taught to be doing as well as students from more elite schools. And it's clear that the Homibaba Center was having an impact certainly on the school just below where they were situated. So I visited the Homibaba Center also perhaps for many years I didn't visit because I was away. But then I remember visiting in the early 90s when I think V.G. Kulkarni was the director. He took me around the center. And I think at that time he had got very strong audit objections on furniture which had been procured for the Homibaba Center. And in his, he was very upset by those audit remarks and he gave me a big description of how foolish those remarks were and et cetera, et cetera. So it was, but you know again his energy is what struck me. His dynamism struck me. And it was really very nice meeting him at that time. So I remember some years later talking to my father about why the Homibaba Center was named after Homibaba. I think the conversation arose when we were discussing something and about how many buildings or other institutes, et cetera were being named after the Nehru family. And he didn't like that. And then I asked him, well, if you don't like that, why did you name the Science Education Center after Homibaba when Homibaba had nothing to do with directly with science education? He said, yes, that's true. But it was done, I think, more for a practical reason, which was to get money from the Tata, the Tata foundations to support the Homibaba Center. It makes political sense to say that you name it after their favorite non-Tata person, which was Homibaba. And I didn't think it was a good enough reason and told my father so, but it had already been done. But anyway, it's good that the Homibaba has come up so well. I remember some maybe 20 years ago now, 15, 20 years ago, when a committee of the AFR was looking at all the departments, the so-called portal committee, they were very, very appreciative of Homibaba Center and what it was doing and what it had done. I remember listening to the presentation by the Homibaba Center. And I remarked to my father afterwards that they were far too low-key in their presentation. The type of work was obviously very, very good and should have been projected in much, much stronger manner. And I think there was perhaps somewhat of an insecurity of a science education center trying to push science education at a research institute where not working on the main subjects of science are kind of looked at with a little bit of disdain. But I think the committee certainly appreciated the work which the Homibaba Center was doing. And I felt if the Homibaba Center had asked for 10 times the money they were wanting, they would have got it. And well, anyway, that's past history. So let me get on with my actual talk. So I'll share my screen. I've made a few slides really to guide me in what I need to say or talk about. So as I said, my background is that of a researcher in a research institute. And I came to Isopune about four years ago and I've been here for four years. I've been teaching and also running my lab and doing administration. And I've been exposed to many of the problems on issues which confront the running of science education in the country. I'll perhaps talk a little about them, but not too much. I really want to talk about what ideas on education, perhaps some of these ideas are romantic in the sense that they're perhaps not achievable or they're in the short term. But I just want to mention a few so that we all know what would be ideal in terms of education or at least what my perspective on that is. Now, something which is not, I mean, my slide is not moving, okay. So now if you ask people what the goal of education is, this is something which there's no proper answer. At the individual level, the goal is perhaps to make us live our life in a more enjoyable manner in a more meaningful manner. And I've been fortunate that my education has been such that that has happened to a large extent. This is my school education, my college education, my subsequent education has led me, I think, to lead my own life in a meaningful and enjoyable manner. But that's not all that education is for. And you also need to prepare the student, the young man or a woman to play an effective part in society and this is a quotation from an article written by my father many years ago. And this was a constant worry of this, how does education help people, help society? And that is a problem even now, 45 years later. Does our education system really do what it is supposed to do for society or individuals roles in society to help our country or society develop in the manner it should be developing? So before I go further, I should really introduce you to where I am right now because of quite a bit of my thinking on, and the topic of my talk really is on education in a small research-oriented university. And that university is ISA at Pune. There are seven ISAs and so ISA is both an undergraduate and a graduate university. It's small, it's got, as you can see about 7, 16, 50 students, the thousand-odd undergraduates and the rest are PhD students. It's got a small faculty, about 130-odd faculty. And it's got three main programs, a PhD program for students who finished a master's, an integrated PhD program for students who want to do their PhD after a bachelor's degree. And the flagship program is the BSMS program where students come after the 12th standard and stay for five years, leave with a master's degree. The distinguishing feature of the undergraduate program is that students learn both from classroom teaching and also by doing projects. So these are projects which can be research projects in the lab or theoretical research projects or reading projects as depending on which stage in their career the institute they are at. So the idea really is that you want to excite students into becoming researchers by exposing them to research very early on. I'll come back to this in a while. So it's a young university. It's done well research-wise. It's done quite well education-wise. It attracts good students, very good students. It attracts students who are quite motivated because these are very often students who would be pushed by their families to do engineering but were able to withstand that pressure and come and do science. So these are motivated students and I'll talk more about the students later on. So it's a science, primarily a science, I mean it is a science institute. It's got all the standard topics of science. Maybe climate science is not standard, data science is new. And so these are the current departments in the institute. There are centers also a center for water. These are interdisciplinary centers. So the center of energy science, for example, has chemists and physicists. Center of water research has got biologists, chemists and the humanities primarily. And there are other centers, et cetera. And the institute really engages itself in many international activities. It's doing quite well research-wise. It raises a lot of money for research. And this has in the past been supported, especially in its early years, very strongly by the government. So strongly that the faculty members I saw when I came here had a sense of entitlement to a lot. They felt they were entitled to a lot, but the moment you go out of project mode, funding becomes much, much less. And that was a difficult transition for many people here. There are a lot of outreach activities carried out at the center. There is especially the training of students in schools around not just in Pune, but all over the country through the center for excellence in science and mathematics education funded by the government. We have initiatives which are funded by private companies, primarily Tata Technologies and now some other private organizations. We have a science media center, a science activity center where students, school children learn about science through toys. And we do many other things. For example, we hold a nationwide science quiz, the only one I know about in the country. There are where students from many institutes in the universities in the country come and participate and answer questions which I cannot even dream of answering. And so it is doing a lot in terms of outreach. And of course we take part in many government initiatives, especially those concerning training of teachers or improving teaching all over the country. So for example, workshops have been held all over the country other than in Pune. So that's about all I want to really talk about ISA right now. So what I would like to do is first talk about what I think education should be about. And we can judge for ourselves at the end whether ISA Pune or any other institute in the country is doing what should be done. So what would be an ideal educational institute? You want to impart an education really which teaches students to think independently on their own. And for a college institute, for a college after school, after high school, this is something not easy to do because the students who come in coming from schools where learning by rote, by memorizing things is the normal way of learning or what is considered learning. And I think many students do not really get to experience the joy of learning new things because of the amount of things which they are taught in high school. Many just get burnt out by what the quantity of learning which they are supposed to do where you are taught things without really understanding what the applications of that learning are really. And so they lose the joy of learning new things and college like ours is a primary duty would really be to rejuvenate and the students rejuvenate them so that they can partake of the joy of learning new things. Of course, we need to ensure or this institution would need to ensure that each student acquires their knowledge and skills and develop self-confidence and character to do well and not just in examination. So that's the other problem that the students who come in nowadays are students who think success is doing well in examinations not in really learning things at well thinking about them, not in a very focused manner but also in terms of the implications of the work in other areas. And when you have students and this is a vast majority of students whose focus is on doing well in examinations then it is not easy to develop an education curriculum which is ideal for students at this stage. It's relatively perhaps easier to foster culture of hard work. It's not that easy to foster a culture of scholarship. There is actually in the last many, many decades there's certainly been a decrease in scholarship at least amongst scientists which I've noticed. I don't like saying it, but I think it's true that scholarship in terms of learning something in depth, thinking about it in depth is something which is vanishing. And I think part of it is that's not the culture of scholarship is disappearing. And if you ask students these days what is a scholar? And I've actually done this and I've got this answer. It's a student in TIFR that is at the NCBS. I was told by the student, a scholar is someone who gets a scholarship. And that's how a scholar is looked at these days. So you need to inculcate a culture of scholarship, trigger academic activities, academic activities, et cetera. What has also happened is that in the last many years, and this is happening all over the world, not just in India, the questioning of beliefs is perhaps, people don't question as they should. They'll question the believer if you ask someone or you question what they're doing, it's looked down as a personal attack rather than a reasonable quest for trying to understand what the person is trying to say. And this is something which is going out of society and is certainly going out in educational institutes. And part of the reason is that ideologies have taken over. We all know that it's happening in society. And that of course, percolates into educational institutes, but the job of an educational university is really to give value not to ideologies or to societal pressure, but to give value to ideas. And that's really a good, an important job of any educational institute. Of course, one can think about it in a more philosophical way. And there is much of what is on this slide is taken from an essay on education by Will Durant. Will Durant is the author of 13 or 14 volume Encyclopedia on Culture, not encyclical book called Story of Culture, Civilization, if I remember right. And this is an essay in the last book he wrote. And he writes in a very eloquent manner. And I think anyone interested in education should perhaps read this essay and also the other essays in the book, the small essays and can be read quickly. So education is not merely to teach students to think, not merely to have them question their assumptions, not merely to make students strong, invigorated and faith in themselves, but to help the teenagers become adults. So we're talking about college education now, with the qualities of steadiness and balance. And this is something very important. People have to become even tempered. There's no evidence for that on TV channels these days, but to be able to be ready to listen to others, to be ready to change their opinions if the need arises, to develop character and integrity of character. So what does character mean? Character really means that if you, to me, if for example, you have a problem, you need to struggle to overcome it, do you have the perseverance to overcome a problem in an honest manner? And that is something which is an important role of education is to foster intelligence. So if you have different experiences, how do you use those experiences to do what you want to do? To learn new things and to get to like new things, that's an important role of education. In a place such as ISA, which is like a cocoon, a bubble, it's very often possible for that students don't quite, especially students from urban areas, who come from a privileged background, may lose the idea that life is not simple, life is not easy, that you have to struggle, life is complicated. And it's important to have an appreciation of all that. And that struggle is actually quite important. If you struggle makes you do things much, much better. I'm not talking about the type of struggle which is debilitating, but struggle where you have to worry about small things which you can overcome quite easily, will make you happier than people who just do things for pleasure and for promoting themselves. So this is what I think is important in education. You might think that this is a romantic view of what education should be. But I think it's important to remind ourselves about it. Because especially now, what the government and also companies talk about when they talk about education is how education can be important for them. So companies want graduates who are employable what in whatever way they define employability. And that is really they want graduates who have the technical skills to do what the company immediately wants them to do. The government also thinks of educational or at least seems to think of educational institutes as training schools for imparting skills. And that is not the role of educational institutes. And what is worse is the government also seems to want educational institutes to conform to each other. What I mean is it's very difficult and this is talking from experience in administrating an ISA. It's easy for the Babu in Delhi to have all ISAs do everything in exactly the same manner. But that just destroys, will destroy each institute in the long run because unless each institute, which ISA in this case is able to explore its own priorities, they will not be able to flourish. So what is important is that education is not just formal mentoring. I think a lot of education is really self-learning and students have to be encouraged to learn on their own because especially if you get into an academic life, you're going to have to learn throughout your life. And you need to not only learn your subjects like science or whatever science you want to learn, but it's very important to be able to learn to understand life and just learning science is not sufficient for that. You have to learn history and philosophy and literature and even religion. You have to read about these things because if you read about these subjects, you can really understand what's happening around you much, much better. Of course, students have to learn the intellectual and technological skills, which will enrich their lives and those around them. You can learn a lot through engaging with friends and society, engaging with nature, enjoying nature, trying to understand nature is, I think, a very important part of a good education. What is also very important in an institute such as this and especially an institute which is a bubble is that students have to become made aware of the problems facing society, the country and the world at large and they must get motivated, at least some of them should get motivated to address these problems. And students have to learn the scientific method and to apply it not only in science, that is relatively easy, but to activities outside the sphere of science. You know, when I was growing up, we were growing, living in a building which had many eminent science or science administrators or scientists traditionally. And my mother would visit her friends in many of the other apartments and she would come back and say, what type of scientists are these? They believe in government, they believe in X or Y, which she thought was completely unscientific because she would see pictures of these individuals in the houses she would be visiting. So these people obviously would apply the scientific method and have in their own work, but outside that it didn't seem to be applied. So what is distinguishing about the ISERS is as I mentioned earlier, is that students learn a lot by carrying out research projects. And that's really a wonderful thing to do. I had my education in a college in Bombay, in Mumbai, and with very little experience or knowledge about what research really was until I spent a summer at TIFR working in the laboratory of Dr. P.K. Maithra. And that's where I really learned what research was. And that's what really led me to believing that a research career was what was suitable for me and perhaps something which I might be able to do well. And so it's important that students have that experience and given the number of students in the country, in the hundreds and thousands, tens of thousands of colleges in the country, is something which can't obviously be done everywhere, but in an institute such as the ISERS, it is something which is done. And I think it has an remarkable impact on students. They learn whether they are meant to become researchers, they learn whether or not to become researchers. We have students who come in a lot because the families will tell them, okay, if you don't want engineering, do at least science, don't do humanities, don't do other things where jobs might be difficult. Now, the question which is really very important in an institute such as this, where students come in from a variety of backgrounds, economic backgrounds, cultural backgrounds from different states, from we have students who have come from very underprivileged sorts of backgrounds, how does one get them to the same level? At least one needs to be able to make an attempt to do so. And one of the questions which is still not clear to all of us is which are we successful in doing that? Are we able to get students who come from who are not as well prepared as we would like and have them leave being as prepared for the next stage as any other student? Now, the ISAs were a primary goal for establishing the ISAs was to produce students who would go on to do research and primarily academic research become faculty members. Now, and the idea was that you teach them all the sciences which is a very good idea. The question is how much do you teach them? Because depth is, a breadth is important, but so is depth. And so that's been a source of tension at certainly at Isopune. It's good to have that tension. But very often the tension arises for the wrong reason. So for example, faculty members in chemistry or in biology will say we want students to do at least three or four courses and all students to do three or four courses in biology. But the idea behind that is not that they think biology or chemistry is important for any modern scientist, but it's more for the purpose of trying to attract these students to their field rather than let the students by giving them the exposure, let the students read on their own and decide what they want to do. So for example, I think a good reason to have more courses in any particular subject is for example, if the maths department were to say that we think that all students should be learning much more mathematics and which that's a very good reason because all, I think all modern scientists have to learn enough mathematics because science is becoming more and more quantitative. But so there's this tension about how much of each subject to teach. My own view is that if you look at good modern textbooks, undergraduate textbooks and they're fat and heavy, but you can cover the material in roughly 60 or 50 or 60 lectures and that is sufficient for giving literacy, scientific literacy to students. So I talked about depth versus breadth and any program, any curriculum has to have a good balance between the two and they should really complement each other. So breadth is important for education. Students need to learn to think about problems not in a very focused in a dry manner, but also to be able to think laterally how is this problem connected to other problems? You need to think in a manage which combines logic with imagination so that you can have new ideas. You need to think in a manner that does not preclude questioning the subject matter but also your own thinking, your own beliefs and assumptions. And of course you need to learn to think in a manner which will give you a bit more trust in your own ability to analyze things because that's what in the long run for the rest of your life you have to be able to do. And so breadth makes students more balanced leads to a better overall development of the character. It teaches them not only how complex science can be but also what life is all about. That is complicated, it's a struggle and it allows students to really cope with life in a much better manner. We have teenagers coming in and we want when they leave as young adults then you have to be able to deal with the problems of life in the real world in a good way. So one of the points which are not well, I think appreciated is how important it is to teach science students the humanities. You know, the science students were kind of, I don't like the word hate but very often they hate the humanities. They think it's a waste of time. They look down on the humanities but it's the humanities which teach students how to articulate and frame arguments, how to critique existing work in a logical manner, how to think in a logical manner and also how to look first at long-term and ethical, socio-political implications of the work. And you know, it's reading the humanities, reading literature or reading history which allows students to benefit from the experience of others. Otherwise students have only their own experience to fall back on. If you read a lot on history or literature, you get to know or at least understand the experience of other people, whether it's fictional, their fictional characters or not. And as I mentioned, this is disdained towards the humanities and the science students, not just students but in the faculty also. And what that leads to is that students miss out on learning vital skills, skills which are vital for them to acquire to be able to make the research available in the first place, communication, analysis of the work, presenting it properly. If you don't have, if you have this disdain towards the humanities, you're not going to be able to do all that well. And what happens then, our students become far too dependent on their supervisors to make their research comprehensible to the outside world. And that finally ends up harming the students themselves in the long run, because the carriers will stall later in life if they can't do this well. So let me talk about Aisa Pune, the BSMS program, the flagship program. Until 2000, when I came, the first two years had courses which everyone had to do. These were courses primarily in physics, maths, chemistry and biology. One or two programming and earth climate science courses thrown in. And a course in one or two courses in English communication and humanities. And what was somewhat unusual is that in the years three and four, people did elective courses. They could choose which courses they wanted to do, but they ended up having no major. So there was no concentration of doing courses in a particular area. And you left with a degree of master of science. And the fifth year was devoted completely to doing research work to prepare a master's thesis. Now, very soon after joining, I had to go for some conference and I was asked by a distinguished person, why does Aisa Pune not give a major in any subject? And I had no real answer to give when I've talked to many people and it didn't make sense and doesn't make sense to me. That to really not at least learn some things in depth because it's only by learning things in depth can you do things well later in life. So when I joined, it became clear to me that after talking to students, to faculty members, that the program needed tweaking or even more substantive change. Of course, the program was unique, as I mentioned. And so if you wanted to make changes, you had to do them with care. But it was very clear that students wanted more rigor, more depth in the courses taught to them. And faculty members also wanted to be able to teach more in depth and in scope. So now making a change in a program which was going on for a dozen years is not a easy matter at all. Doing, changing anything is very, very difficult and changing in educational program is certainly among the most difficult things to do. Nevertheless, it took a couple of years nearly. The program was changed or tweaked rather in 2019. And now instead of having four semesters of courses taken by everyone, there are three semesters and humanities and earth and climate science are given more say, literally. The courses and the other subjects were reduced and humanities, earth and climate science were given more say, as I said. And now when we have data science and other subjects coming in, maybe we'll have to again tweak the program to see how best to teach us students. The students in semesters four to eight, students can choose a major and a minor and a minor in any particular subject. And the major, minor of course, have credit requirements but it's not that all your coursework would have to be devoted to your major and minor subjects. You have enough leeway to also do other courses which are of interest to you. And we've kept this general degree still and we have to see how many students finally end up taking this option of not specializing in any particular topic. And then the last two semesters last year they continue doing their master's thesis. So there are new departments now, there's data science which is just taking off. We are hoping that science education will become a department in the near, very near future. We are giving much more emphasis on humanities for the reasons I have mentioned. So we need to improve our teaching and we need to improve the attitude of teachers towards students. This is true not, it's true everywhere, not just ISA. In fact, perhaps ISA is better than in most other places. So very soon after my daughter had completed a master's degree, I asked her how she would define a good teacher and she said someone who treats students as human beings. Now this is, as is written here, is quite a profound statement. Her experience and the experience of many, many students especially in high schools is that too many teachers do not respect the views of others and the ideas of others. And teachers who do not respect their students do not consider them as individuals with minds of their own and minds that have the right to challenge their own views and minds from which teachers themselves can learn. So this is something important for a good university to have good teaching. And so the question arises then, if you're a research university, does having to do research help your teaching and does having to teach help your research? Now, it's my own experience and I think the experience of many others is that if you have to teach, your research is certainly benefited a lot. And you, that I think is to me a no-brainer but it's not at all clear to me whether researchers make better teachers. You know, I did my BSc in a college in Bombay St. Xavier's College and we had some absolutely superb teachers who didn't have a PhD and didn't do research but at least the research which one associates with, you know, doing something new. Of course these teachers very obviously did research in the form of reading a lot and learning from books and, you know, the type of researcher a lawyer does or other people do, not the scientists. But they obviously read a lot and figured out how best to teach various subjects. And, you know, that was something just amazing. The teaching especially in chemistry in St. Xavier's College where two or three teachers were just remarkable. And so you don't have to be a researcher to be a good teacher. And in many universities, both in India, well, it's happening in India because it happens outside of the country, researchers think teaching comes in the way of their research and they pay very little interest to teaching. They want to give very little time to teaching. And in those cases, they certainly don't make better teachers. But, you know, if you're doing research and you know what is, you know, state of the art, perhaps you will have a better feel for what a student should be learning these days. But, you know, then you need to develop the course in a manner which brings out your, which will bring out your expertise in the teaching. So that needs to be encouraged more and more and it's not happening at the level, perhaps it should be happening. Now you come to students. Students come in very focused on doing science. They've been chosen for their technical knowledge in the sciences. We have an exam through which they come or they come through the JEE or the KVPI exam. So technically they're good at solving differential equations or they're good at doing some scientific problem, but they come with a disdain for the humanities and other fields very often are completely irrelevant to them and, you know, they're very often ignorant of the research happening in other fields and they need to be taught that it is important to be able to understand ideas outside of their own field so that they can work with others or even do simple things like discuss their own work with people outside the field. And the problem in institutes such as ours, a small close environment has is that it's easy to breed arrogance. Sometimes this arrogance is an excuse to hide ignorance, but, you know, we find very few people who are good at explaining what they do to others and some actually take pride. And this is not, again, this is a general statement. It's not a statement peculiar to, you know, the research institutes or the IITs. It certainly could be very well applied to a place like TIFR that people sometimes take pride in not trying to, not wanting to explain what they do to others because, you know, they're doing something, they think they're doing something great but they don't realize that other people are also intelligent and if they take the trouble to figure out how to explain things to others will understand and students have to learn how to do this. Students coming want to do something extraordinary. That's very good. But, and as I said, they're technically good. They've been chosen for being technically good, but they don't, they have to learn that attitude is as important or sometimes even more important than aptitude and they have to learn to persevere when things become difficult. You know, people talk about short attention spans these days and when you have short attention spans it's difficult to persevere and perhaps the single most quality, single quality most required to be successful is the quality of perseverance and you have to have the character to be able to persevere and this is something important that students who come in learn to do. A place such as ours has to deal with hierarchy and also with gender issues and, you know, it's important to have as little hierarchy as possible. For the simple reason, if a teacher is informal then the teacher is also approachable to students and of course students have to learn to how to deal with the sudden reduction in hierarchy in schools. There's of course a lot of hierarchy but I think it's important for a small institute such as an ISA or an IIT to have as little hierarchy as possible so that, you know, you listen to each other and you respect people's views and you make decisions after listening to different differing opinions. What is also very important and which is not done which is unfortunately happening in many places it happens in society all the time so you can't expect educational institutes to be in that much of a bubble that it doesn't affect them is that, you know, we need to take much more care to ensure that women are not discriminated against they're not harassed because they are women and we need to see that both gender sensitization and sexuality sensitization prevail so that everybody is uncomfortable in any setting and this is not an easy thing to do we have students, we have faculty and we have staff who come from a very large variety of backgrounds and it's not easy to get everyone to understand the importance of these issues but good institutes should be making every attempt as much as it can to address these types of issues and of course there's a question of students coming from a socially underprivileged background and what can an institute such as an ISER or an IIT do to, you know, help students who have come from backgrounds which give them a handicap and this is again something notes an article written by my father when the Homi Baba Centre was when remarks he made during the inauguration of the Homi Baba Centre so this is now 47 years ago so, you know, it writes about the fall of standard you know, is there worries about the fall of standards that the IITs because of the unrestricted admission of SCST what are standards if an educational institution takes in socially handicapped students with low input performance and converts them into a person with high output performance what would you say about the standard of the institution is it impossible, has it been tried also can one not use that new type of input to define new types of socially relevant programs the present course programs only prepare graduates whose sites are fixed abroad rather than on challenges and developmental problems at home so this was 1974 in 2002-21 things are not too much better it's unfortunate so what is needed at ISA is that we need to improve our teaching and we have been wanting to start a centre for teaching excellence teaching pedagogy and that will hopefully happen soon because we do a lot for trying to improve teaching outside and improve teaching within the institute and that's one role that's really very important to do we need to teach students skills so that they can deal with life much better not just how to think well but a lot of soft skills which are needed and students have to learn those skills communication skills, writing skills so that they are able to do what they do well in the future we need to let them explore the possibility of alternative careers in science education or management or communication or anything else they become interested in we have students who are kind of come into the institute with glamorous views of science and many of them I think will realise that perhaps they are not meant to get into a career in science the goal of the ISA certainly was to promote scientific research and have tried to channel students to get into research careers but you know even at the PhD level it's only a few students who are successful researchers and at the undergraduate level the percentage of students who will make it as a good researcher is even smaller and so students have to be exposed much more to alternative careers the possibility of doing something else they unfortunately there is a lot of peer pressure to get into a career but what is far more important in life is to be happy in life and you can be happy in life only if you can do something well and what that career is doesn't matter so long as you do it well you will be happy and so students need to be able to identify what they are good at and that's I think a big role of the institute such as ours is to have an excuse not to be able to do this for our students because unlike many colleges and universities in the country we can set our own curricula and we need to be ready and able to take full advantage of that we need to ask ourselves whether we are okay so I've come to the end of my talk I'm sorry I've gone a little but what I'm trying to say here is that students have to learn that there are many ways to be successful in life not just by doing research I mean I'm talking about educating these students some of them will become of course good researchers but others might be good in something completely different they might be very good bankers or very good administrators elsewhere so the idea then is that you know to be successful in life there are many ways of being successful and I want to end with this slide which is really you know I still do science and when I get invited because I'm the director of an institute I feel very insecure because I still think I do science which is relevant and so this is a little story on some work we recently did and here the argument is in reverse that in life there are many parts to success and that's also true in how proteins fall which is my area of research and so it's actually I'd like to end with this slide which just to remind you that I still do research so I've to give you a kind of rambling overview of my thinking in various issues concerning education I'm not sure how useful it is I'm nowhere of a scholar as my father was in any topic but I think about these issues and I continue trying to think in a much more useful manner in the future so I thank you for attending this talk and I'll be happy to take any questions if there are any. Thank you Professor Uddhavkar and that was indeed an excellent talk and thanks for actually sharing your own region on how the environment that can foster the scholarship of selective students and what is the role of any institution like ICER or any other institution at working at the undergraduate level would be in that regards so there are a couple of questions already in the chat would you prefer like I pose it for you or would you also like to see the chat simultaneously I can read it out loud for you it might be easier if you could read it out because yeah so I'll summarize a few because there are like quite a broad questions indeed I'll start with the first one which talks about does the ICER encounters English language barrier amongst students and if so how does as an institution it manages on this issue no so of course it's a problem it's a major problem we you know in our country English is the second or third language for a very large fraction of people and very large fraction of the students who come in but you know English is the whether you like it or not is a language of science and you know you have to be able to read things in English understand things in English you have to be able to review things in English and you have to be able to present things in English so how does one prepare students with a poor background in English to get better at it and that's something I think is certainly wanting at many institutes including us we do have a course in English communication but and I think it helps but I'm not sure it helps enough and certainly you know I teach students who are in the third or fourth year and you know when they answer exams you it's very difficult to understand what they are trying to say now it's partly a problem of English and it's partly a problem of logical thinking and it's not always easy to figure out where the problem is is it the language or is it logical thinking perhaps one can think more logically in the native language I don't know whether that's true or not my experience is that it's not really true but I'm not sure about it but we need to make try and you know get people to be able to communicate better in English to make the arguments not articulate in English and that's something which of course we need to improve so that you know it's not even when we have students who come from English medium schools and elite English medium schools they're not able to communicate anywhere as well as you would want them to do and that's one reason why I think logical thinking is missing in our education for reasons which I've implied you know not reading enough not other things than very focused topics I think so the next question is regarding national education policy and it's asked by our ex-director so I think I can ask Subramaniam sir to actually pose the question for our speaker today Thank you Thank you also for those very important observations and I'm sure that I certainly and mostly I'm sure that my colleagues too will empathize a lot with what you have said the many points of connect I wanted to ask you this question because I've been you know trying to digest what the implications of the new education policy are at various levels and for an institution like ISA would you say that it involves some significant change in the structure of its programs or in its overall vision or do you think it's already well aligned with what the NMP is trying to say it's not as well aligned as it perhaps should be now you know we have this as I refer to this tension between the different departments of each wanting to have to impart more coursework to students in their particular subject now I think the defining feature of the new education policy is the recognition that exposure to more subjects and more ways of thinking is perhaps far more important in certainly in college higher education the question is how does how does one change the program so for example I refer to an article by my father in 1976 on you know so this was as I said at the time 10 plus 2 plus 3 was being introduced and this article talks about of course in the first year you teach to force sciences physics chemistry biology and mathematics but at least a quarter of the rest that's for three quarters of the time and for a quarter of the time should be on other subjects now I think that's that's important and the question is can we implement it here given given the way things have developed at the institute you know so for example we are planning a department of education well more specifically science education so you know it will also have to teach courses both at the undergraduate and graduate level and do you teach science education before students learn science you know that's a question I haven't got an answer for myself you know you need to learn at least some is it a topic which should be taught at you know one year or two years after or should it be taught after you know at least some science you know so these are things which we will have to grapple with but I think it's important that we give a much more broad education to students than we are currently and we hope that we will be able to do that the tension is there the tension is good and hopefully tension will not come in the way of doing good things for the students very much professor for answering that question now the next question you have to answer by like wearing a hat off as an director so the question is about how does one iser is connected to other iser in terms of curriculum flaming and research facilities and what is the response by Sudhakar Agarkar sir well the isers are completely independent of each other so there is no I mean there is nothing I mean there should be more interaction between them but you know we are geographically located in you know a job very different far apart from each other and it makes more sense for us to engage with NCL or Pune University than to engage with with another iser and you know there is see one thing which I think is true is that you know it's not that isers have all the students and isers are all very good you know Pune University colleges have very good students it says probably that the percentage of very good students iser Pune is probably higher than the percentage of good students in Ferguson College or any other college or Pune University and we need to engage with I think our local institutes much more I think it's far too little right now and of course it's useful talking to the other isers we have a common admission program but once students get into a particular iser the curriculum is actually quite different now the NEP talks about credit banks etc now in general in the past students are not have not been able to move from one iser to another just like students are unable to move from one IIT to another maybe that will change now but you know the programs the teaching programs I think are quite different so we have changed from having two years of common courses to one and a half but other isers still have to other isers have other subjects which we don't have so Hopal for example has engineering science which we don't have so there are practical problems in terms of research facilities etc again we do share when we need to and when we have to and you know when we can we do it but it's not done in any formal manner it's done more informally between faculty members rather than between institute administrations thank you again professor Gavkar for that so the next question I think Achu Sampat Kumaran sir has been waiting to ask so I think I will pass the mic to him so go ahead sir please Jainth I thoroughly enjoy how are you long time yes I thoroughly enjoyed your talk you made very valid points in fact I just saw one suggestion and one question whenever I used to give a talk in some college I make some all the points which you have made for the benefit of the students just not to get misguided by various things happening around my feeling is that you are giving an excellent talk I completely agree with practically all the points you should probably give such a talk to colleges particularly small ones not a very sophisticated college or IIT's but relative smaller places I think very important message goes that I mean what to take seriously what not to take seriously this is my suggestion to you the second thing is that when you mentioned that the breadth I presume you don't mean syllabus my one of the points concern is that syllabus is too much on every subject people don't adequate time to get the grasp of the basics or they understand the logic of every step they simply mug up many are the bright motivated students they are lost somewhere on the way I mean do you think that time to reduce syllabus or syllabus is fine in all subjects so I need to confess I don't know the syllabus in sufficient detail to give you an intelligent answer the problem one problem is that when I talk to students the way they look at things is somewhat strange so at the 12 standard students are just crammed with information they don't really assimilate it now the question is so I think it's important that in the first year you perhaps just go over that and make try to make them understand that better but students look at that as a waste of their time they're looking at coming to a place they come many of them maybe a very large fraction of them have come from coaching classes they they're just wanting to soak up information or learn or be told about new things and you know even though as you said and which is I think quite true they haven't assimilated what they even what they've learned in the 12 standard because there's so much which is you know pushed on to them in the 12 standard there is no way that you can really understand these basics at the level they should be understood so I think that happens in some subjects in the institute and certainly when the teacher is good and there are quite a few good teachers at ISA I think students understand quite a bit and learn quite a bit about the basics so I think what I said is something not new to the teachers and you know they understand that and I think they deal with this issue so sometimes it's very often is repetition what to the student is repetition because what they hear are familiar words and they look at that as repetition but I think perhaps sometimes they don't realize that they're getting to understand things better because they've been taught better or hopefully being taught better okay thank you thanks for the question and thank you professor for answering that we'll take one question from our youtube live audience as well so this question is posed by Haritha and the question is what are your thoughts on school education during the time of the pandemic and how can an institute like ISA spread across many parts which is spread across many parts of the country can support teachers in particular in this pandemic similar time well ISA has been having online programs for during the pandemic as I mentioned at the beginning of my talk we have a lot of outreach programs and these outreach programs have continued during the pandemic online and both for teachers and for the general public as well as students and I think they've been quite a few people for example watching the youtube programs which have been broadcast from ISA so now the first part the first question is what on the ways school education during the time of the pandemic all that I would say is that I would not want to be I'm glad I'm not a student at this time online education I think is terrible and both for the teacher and for the student and so I have complete sympathy for the students as I have for the teachers and so I've got online twice so far and it's very unsatisfying we all believe it is a difficult time and thanks for taking up that question actually so I think there is one comment more than question by Pradhan sir and he basically said that the talk was excellent and I'll just read it out for you so he mentioned while talking about the ISA you also define what constitutes complete scholarship but you really underscored the importance of humanities in our education including science education you gave teaching a rightful place along with the research and thanks for such a wonderful and thoughtful presentation under your leadership I said Pune can become a model science education for the country so that was more like his comment and appreciation about your leadership at ISA and would you like to say some more things no I would as I said you know I I really owe a lot to that essay on education which I referred to by Will Durant and the clarity of writing there is something which is amazing and it really makes you think about these matters in a different it's not so many of the ideas are not new but the way they are written about is so graceful and so thought provoking that it really helped me prepare this talk so I think we are nearly towards the end I would like to ask one question just out of my own personal interest and this is regarding so there are a lot of science education departments or science education communities which we have seen particularly being absorbed the deeper communities of in core science department in various undergraduate institutes in west what is your vision on how do you see ISA or any other institute would take this idea up in India would you like to share some thoughts about it Will our plan is to have a separate independent department for science education but you know there will be organic links to all the science departments and we hope in the long run that more faculty members in biology or chemistry or physics will be spending time thinking on education matters more seriously perhaps as they get older they will spend more time thinking about these issues and so there will be a separate department but we hope that there will be people within departments who will look upon it as a legitimate activity and an important activity and get into the area of education and contribute to that right now we I know that in many US universities you will have one or two people who are education people within the department itself and you know we did think a little about doing that but we thought perhaps having a separate education department would be more useful you know having a department gives I think the activity more stature and more importance than which it actually does need especially in an institute such as us where people look at doing the hard not hard science well hard science but not in terms of hardness but in terms of you know what they consider science as the only important activity so so I think we have reached almost to the closure so there's one question that we could have asked you in person but now I think I request our center director Professor Bhattacharya to make a comment or ask the question to Professor Uddhakar now. Thank you. Thank you Deepa and thank you Professor Uddhakar I think I'll not ask questions we've been bombarding you with questions and I know there are still lots of questions we have not been able to take because of the time it was a fascinating talk to hear from you about both the past and the present and what we're looking ahead at let me read out one comment though I mean there is a comment from Chandrasekhar VGK's son specifically saying pressing his gratitude and saying a big thank you from my eye to you so that is he's put it on the chat thank you so much thank you family of VGK for attending the talk today we are indebted to you for your support all these years even now when it's online and before I end it just occurred to me that you said so much about how your father was instrumental in some of these early thoughts in HBCSE and setting it up and I see today that Aysar Pune coming up with the department of science education spearheaded by you I really hope that it also does extremely well it's a new benchmark for science education in the country we would look forward to lots of interactions with HBCSE hope to welcome you and the faculty of Aysar here one times are better we should continue of course now we can continue online but we should have very active interactions with Aysar Pune looking forward to that in future so I should mention that the science education activity which you know my idea was actually to have this center for teaching excellence and the idea of having a department of science education is not something I push but it was pushed by the dean Dr. Bhas Bapat and a group of faculty members given my background I didn't need any convincing that's so nice to hear okay so on that note thank you everyone thanks for joining us on this 20th BGK Memorial Lecture and please tune in to all other events happening here we'd love to have you with us thanks again thank you Anna and I actually would like to express my thanks to a few people so hold on there because I definitely would like to make a mention of all who were present today and who actually made this event possible and successful so first of all thanks professor for this insightful talk and also I think it is particularly important at place like HBCC which is dedicated for science education research and we do interact a lot with faculty members as well as school and university administration so our own goal of how these learning spaces could make students more enabling was to some extent was addressed by the ideas that you brought up I also would like to mention the program NIUS which is pretty much doing this service towards research experience for undergraduate students at earlier I mean at earlier or undergraduate status which is I think worth mentioning here and I hope your address or your message will reach out to and percolate to all the students as well as teachers community who is listening to us and hope the undergraduate departments would take this message more seriously and more like more critically work on the curriculum on their part I express thanks to all VGK's family member who are present in the audience and who continue to share the same affection every year and we really are blessed with your presence here today I also see a lot of VGK's friends and colleagues and other dignitaries just to mention a few I do see Anil Kakurkar Ji here, Baal Konke Sir here, Agarkar Sir here so special thanks for your presence I think Pradhan Sir's comment I already read so thanks to all of you who have made your honourable presence at the occasion today and I also would like to thank our ex-director and Padmashree Professor Arvind Kumar who actually instituted this VGK Memorial Lecture event and all the ex-centre directors and teens who carried this legacy forward organizing this event and with great enthusiasm for past 19 years and a particular thanks to Professor Sugrachunawala who has been playing a central role in organizing this VGK Memorial Lectures for past several years I also lastly thank our current director Professor Arnabhattacharya and Dean Professor Savita Ladage who has made this event possible for this year and a lot of team who worked at the background so just to mention few names thanks to Archie Singh and others from the entire computer lab who have played a great role in making this event possible on an online platform and thanks to Manoj Nair who made this beautiful poster for today's event thanks to Ravindra Savan from Dean's Office, Sumana Amin and other colleagues from the PRO office for email communication and sending invitations on social media and publicizing this event which has reached to a really large number of audience then we anticipated and we hope to hear the thoughts which similar or inspiring thoughts which were shared by Professor Uddhgaukar in today's lecture and hope we get more VGK Memorial events hopefully in person at HBCSE organized in near future so in that note thanks again everyone who personally attended on Zoom platform and also attended or listening us through the YouTube streaming and wish you all a good evening so now I think I will announce that the event is officially over but though the tech support can go ahead and close the live streaming but we can keep Zoom meeting on for some more minutes