 Today I wish to share some of my thoughts on what I call the research mindset. I hope you are able to watch my slides. I will of course be uploading these later on on the conference website and all participants are welcome to download the PDF version and use because all my talks are in open source always. The title you might find slightly funny, Building India Where Dreams Come True. While I am speaking on research mindset, I want to particularly emphasize that all our efforts have to lead to a better India, a prosperous India, a more knowledgeable India and a greater contributing India to the polity of the whole world. I wish to begin with an observation that our knowledge is often classified in fields. When you do such classification, classification has some advantages and some disadvantages. The advantages are that the growing body of knowledge in every field can be more comfortably handled. So that is the advantage because the growth of the knowledge is so fast and humongous. It is not possible for a single human being to simultaneously study all fields to the great depth. However, there are disadvantages and the disadvantages are that we build ourselves into silos of knowledge. I will proceed for the time being without my slides. What I was trying to tell you is that we have divided our knowledge classified into various fields primarily so as to ensure that we can handle the growing body of knowledge in every field properly. When it comes to advanced knowledge, it becomes mandatory that people concentrate on a particular field to be able to manage to understand the depth to which that field has advanced and then to add more knowledge to it. However, in the process we forget that knowledge actually cannot be separated out into independent silos. Knowledge is a single connected entity spanning everything that is there in the universe. It is for this reason that the fundamental requirement for every researcher to begin research is to acquire adequate breadth or adequate understanding of many fields particularly those which are intrinsically related to our field of study. If I can get these slides in time, I would have like to share with you some examples of what significant things we miss out because of our lack of breadth imposed primarily because of our artificial classification of knowledge into different silos. Let me begin with some examples of engineering systems. Engineering is my field so forgive me for giving examples from the engineering field. Are we aware that nature has built some of the best engineering systems? Consider the following. You would have seen a delightful firefly in late evenings and early nights when large number of fireflies fly around emitting with beautiful flickering lights. Look marvelous. Have we ever wonder how do they convert energy into lumens? If they use the method that we deploy in our conventional engineering namely converting heat into light they would burn themselves in order to produce the lumens. They will have to generate so much heat that they will burn themselves. They do not do that. What does nature do to produce such bright luminescence without any heat? Consider nitrogen fixing. Many of you would be familiar with this term. Nitrogen fixing happens in nature where the trees actually absorb nitrogen from the surrounding environment. Notice that these plants and trees do so at normal temperatures and pressures. As against that imagine all the complicated chemical reactions that we need to put in place in order to produce nitrogen and nitrogen related useful materials such as urea. Consider another example. A coconut tree. What is great in engineering about coconut tree? Well not about the tree but about the sweet water that gets into every coconut. Just imagine how tall the coconut tree is. If you were to pump that much water from bottom of the tree to the top of the tree where the coconut hangs how much energy would be required? No coconut tree comes inbuilt with a pump at the bottom. And yet probably through a large number of capillary actions this water goes up all the way from ground into the coconut and gets sweetened there. That is nature's engineering. Perhaps the best form of engineering that nature has created is human body itself. There is no field of engineering which cannot derive tremendous knowledge and understanding from the study of human body. Take for example heart as a pump. It is one of the best designed pumps which is self-healing, self-operating does not require rest ever. In fact the moment it goes to rest we rest. Look at the structure of the human body, the bones. Architecturally the human body is one of the best examples of a mobile architecture of a flexible architecture. Just think of the degrees of freedom that the fingers and hands give you. No robo has yet been designed to match the dexterity of the human hands. People complain about the knee joints. A friend of mine, a very senior professor, Professor Gupta was commented that people wrongly blame God for not designing the knee joint properly. Actually God had designed the knee joint assuming that human like all other animals will continue to walk on all fours. But the human being decided to walk only on two legs and not on all four limbs and that is the reason why the knee joint is greatly stressed in human beings. But jokes apart the architecture and the structural design of the human body is an extraordinary feat of engineering. I mentioned heart as a pump but how many of us are familiar with the pulse pumping and the flexible piping which handle non-Newtonian fluids. Human body does that regularly. Consider intestine. Have you ever wondered if you consider intestine as a pump? Well that is what it is. The intestine as a pump is not ordinarily considered as a pump. It is only a passage for food but notice that the solid food actually is because of the flexible pumping mechanism that the intestine creates by compression and expansion the whole food is pumped down. Kidney as one of the best designed filters. Those of you who understand filter design will appreciate how kidneys function tirelessly throughout one's life. I come closer to my own field of academic activities namely computer science and information systems. Many of you would have heard about message passing through synaptic junctions. So those of you who have considered how the message passes through synaptic junctions I had some visuals which somehow have not appeared in this version of the slides but there you will see neurons with their dendroids and the number of dendroids that each neuron has and those dendroids connect to other neurons. It is an amazing message passing network that the human brain possesses all created by God's evolution over millions of years extraordinary amount of engineers. Now visual processing is an example of both the scale and complexity of information processing that human body is capable of. You are already aware of the number of millions of cone cells and rod cells that human eye has. Now what is interesting is that the human eye captures every scene that it looks at converts it into an image in the retina and then there is a huge pipe going to the brain which actually carries the entire visual information. It is as if a frame by frame is being captured and the movie is going there every second that your eyes see something. We do not know how all this information is processed and filtered but it is very obvious that before the information reaches brain much of the processing has already happened in the way much of the consolidation has happened in the way. This is something that is so extraordinary not yet understood by human knowledge. Why do we not know how all of it works? You know my explanation for that? My explanation for that is that we as engineers have limited ourselves into a division into a classification into a silo called engineering which itself is a subset of science. Please note that life sciences are not studied by engineers and engineering is not studied by bioscientists. This situation prevailed till very recently and a majority of engineers in the world and a majority of bioscientists in the world are still divided into two independent silo and that is the reason why beauties of both these disciplines are often unknown to the other people. This is particularly harmful to a researcher who must start with a proper appreciation and understanding of all the relevant fields that may be important for one's own area of research. Let me now talk about research. Research has often been mentioned as something different from education. I entirely disagree with this notion. According to me research and education are two soils of the same coin, a coin of progress in knowledge. It so happens that whenever we study towards a degree, we call it an education. Whenever we study towards a 10th standard exam or 12th standard exam, we call it an education. We do a bachelor's degree, it is an education. We do a master's degree, it is an education. We do a PhD degree, it is an education but things start changing. After the bachelor's degree, when you do a master's degree, you are required to do education and a little bit of research. And when you do PhD, you are required to do a little bit of education and more of research. This is actually nonsense. How can research and education be considered to independent activities has been my curious question all these years. Let me explain to you what I think is required, what I think is necessary for research. And then I will explain why I consider research and education to be one and the same thing. I believe that in order to do good research, we need to develop a mindset, what I call the research mindset. Let me explain what do I expect this mindset to possess to represent. First, the ability to understand breadth. All the examples that I gave earlier are indicative of the breadth of knowledge. Not only the knowledge that exists but knowledge which we all must acquire adequately to understand and appreciate the presence of discoveries, the inventions in all related areas coupled with the breadth. In fact, an essential requirement to acquire the breadth is a mindset full of enquiry. If there is no spirit of enquiry, there cannot be any generation of knowledge in one's mind. The spirit of enquiry therefore, must perpetually propel the mind and is an important aspect of a research mindset. Ability to do critical analysis and when I say critical analysis, I mean non superficial analysis. An analysis which goes and understands each and every aspect of whatever you are studying. Ability to succinctly articulate your ideas. In fact, this one aspect which I will later on stress again is so critical that it must be part of your research mindset. Unfortunately, it is one area in which India as a whole lacks because of our societal challenges. Our knowledge traditions right from the beginning were actually through spoken words. The written script came much later. We do read occasionally. We write very rarely. Our history is written by others. We do not write diaries. In general, we do not have strong traditions of writing. Unfortunately, the modern persuades of knowledge and particularly research require you to write down your idea properly and succinctly. I am not talking only about research publications. I am talking about your internal memos, internal reports, internal proposals shared with other research colleagues shared with the institution and so on. Please do look back and check whether every piece that you articulate in writing does it convey exactly what you want to say. Does it convey it in properly written language? How much time do you spend in correcting a draft? All of these are part of the mental discipline which I say is a mindset ready for succinct articulation. Meticulous work. There is no shortcut to good quality work without being meticulous. Synthesis. Ability to synthesize is different from ability to analyze. This requires experimentation. Setting up experiments, not one but multiple. Conducting those experiments with the thoroughness that the true scientific practice requires, not a shoddy experiment. But very meticulously conducted, well planned and then detailed analysis of the experimental results. Even if the experimental results do not support the hypothesis with which we started, maybe it will mean that we will have to revisit the hypothesis, maybe it will mean that we will have to reconduct experiment in some other way. But a synthesis backed up by experimentation is often required particularly in applied research. Solving hard problems is a key to that research mindset which will permit you to achieve newer heights in the pursuit of knowledge. This is another area in which we are generally weak because our conventional education system does not encourage us to attempt to solve hard problems. I will give you a couple of examples of why this is important and how perhaps some of our institutions are able to achieve this kind of mindset because of some rigorous practices. But it is important to appreciate that a good research mindset is automatically ready to attempt to solve very hard problems. A mindset which is ready to experiment with innovative approaches is absolutely essential for research. Innovation does not necessarily mean some earth shaking different thing to be invented or something. Even small little things done differently might lead to a great impact on whatever you are achieving. So, innovation is not just doing something new but also doing the same thing in a different manner such that the result is something different, something better, perhaps something more affordable, perhaps something more convenient and so on. Absolute honesty in the approach is an absolute requirement of the research mindset. This is another area where the Indian society sadly lacks grit, sadly lacks determination and sadly lacks recognition globally. You will be surprised to know that at least in the areas in which I have been working, the global research community looks at Indian submissions through an eye of great suspicion because of the large number of cases of plagiarism which have prevailed in conferences after conferences, conferences after conferences. I will try and analyze this with some reasons why this happens but this is most unfortunate. Nowhere in the world such a thing is permitted, it is considered a criminal activity. For ordinarily criminal activities people go to jail for academic criminal activities. Unfortunately, India does not have an equivalent of jail yet. A few cases which get thrown up, some action is taken, it is tom-tom in newspapers and then everything is forgotten. The fundamental fact is that unless we achieve that mindset then no matter what temptation, no matter what reason, no matter what justification, we shall be honest. We shall report only the work that we have done and if ever we have to report work done by others due credit will be given, complete credit will be given. No verbatim reproduction of any material will ever be done. Please understand that when I do a citation of a reference paper it does not give me the permission to cite paragraph after paragraph from that paper. I can speak for significant time on the academic honesty as absolutely an essential thing. I think all of you are aware of that as I said later during my talk I will perhaps try to indicate why dishonesty happens in the first place. Another important aspect of the research mindset is quality consciousness. You see when we speak of quality how do you define it? Can you define it quantitatively? No, in fact that is why you say qualitative and quantitative are two different aspects or two different parameters of measuring a particular thing. So when I produce a research or forget a research, when I produce any representation of a knowledge, let us say I am writing an explanatory note for my student. It will not be considered researched by most people but whether that explanatory note is not only correct does not only have appropriate quantitative information but is qualitatively superior. How do you define a qualitatively superior note or a research paper? Well there are a few things which stand out. First a few quantitative measures which actually define quality use of language is your language grammatically correct or punctuation marks all in place are paragraphs properly delineated or sections named properly. Simple things but many times not attended to result in a bad quality document. I am giving document as an example but you can see this reflecting in each and every activity that you do. Quality does not happen by accident, it happens by design and that is another lacuni that many of our researchers have. Whenever they do an activity they do not design that activity, they simply start that activity, continue working on that activity but without planning for it in advance. Sadly another reason is that an important aspect of knowledge called management is considered a different size. Engineers and scientists in this country are not exposed to basic minimum management processes which are so vital in governing all our lives any which way. I believe it is important to do so but I digress. People who are familiar with management processes however will understand the importance of design. Those of us who deal with systems understand how important is analysis and design before you build systems and before you start working with them. So, I again suggest that quality cannot be by accident, it has to be obtained by design. Another important aspect of the research mindset is the ability to persevere, persevere through failure. Failures will happen in any long span of life and researcher typically has a span of 4, 5, 7 years while working towards PhD and the entire life for rest of the life for a research. Failures will happen, life is not fair, life is as it is. Sometimes we get what we wish to do, sometimes we do not get what we wish to do, sometimes we succeed in our endeavors, sometimes we fail in our endeavors. It is the psyche of a human which actually decides how long a human will remain frustrated after a failure. If we do not have the proper research mindset then the first failure in let us say a theorem not being proven right or a counter example being given by someone on our work or an experiment failing or something like that. These things will occur. In fact major failures will happen in life and my mindset example or the importance of this mindset will find in every walk of life not only in research. You see whenever I fail I have two choices, one I keep sulking about it, making my life more miserable and wasting more of my time or I sleep over it and next day morning I get up and say ok big deal I fail, start all over again and persevere through my grit and determination to succeed again. You can see which one is better unfortunately this simple logic does not pervade the human mind because the psychological frustration blocks you from reaching that mindset. So my request to you is that when you try to look at a research mindset consider these last few points to be very very important points ability to persevere through failures is absolutely essential. If I have to achieve this mindset what comes in the way? Well what comes in the way is my humble opinion is our attitude. Our attitude which is set by the rat races that we have been perpetually participating in right from the childhood. Every rat race creates a few winners and many losers. Winners acquire over confidence and therefore lose sight of the need to do more work. Losers, winners by the way acquire over confidence to such an extent that sometimes it borders on arrogance. The moment human mind acquires arrogance forget research mindset even the human mindset is lost and the human is lost to the society. On the other hand the losers acquire diffidence and many times this diffidence borders on despondence. I have seen people including researchers who because of the failures because of losing out on some rat race or the other become so despondent so dejected that they stop being active and useful at all now forget to the rest of the world but to themselves. I would like to put several of these points together to say that in order to acquire this research mindset you should do these 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 things properly. But before proceeding let me answer a question which I had raised are education and research 2 distinct entity. I had opined that they are not let me explain. Recall the points which I mentioned on the research mindset consider some of these and consider different stages of human growth. Consider a child do not we expect a first grade student first standard school 6 year old 7 year old student to be able to succinctly articulate his or her feelings his or her thoughts clearly to everyone. So, is an succinct articulation a requirement of a 7 year old? Do we not expect a earth or 9 standard student to understand mathematical formulation properly if the student has studied maths, algebra, simple arithmetic. Don't we expect logical thinking from a earth or 9 standard student? From a 12 standard student do we not expect ability to solve complex problems or hard problems? From a second year or third year science or engineering student or any college student in any field be it arts, commerce, history, geography wherever. Do we not expect the ability to analyze multiple things and to prepare some kind of a thought process which may eventually lead to new knowledge or at least the discovery? Do we not expect the ability to analyze? Do we not expect the ability at least to perceive the synthesis? Third year student my take is that this research mindset does not happen or start happening suddenly at the level of PhD or research. It happens right from the first standard when a child goes to the school and builds slowly and slowly and slowly. PhD is nothing but a culmination of that process. That is the reason why I say PhD is not just a degree. It is a mindset. It is a recognition by the larger society that you seem to have achieved perfection in these various aspects and you have now achieved that mindset. That is why we recognize you. But the parts of mindset are required at every part of the education. In fact I would say a better school education and a better college education is one in which such components of the research mindset as are relevant at that level are very strongly put into the minds of the students who are studying. In short that is why I say that research and education are not two distinct things but are two sides of the same track. In conclusion I would like to list out the steps that we ought to take in order to ensure that we achieve this research mindset quickly and properly. Number one acquisition of knowledge. Well this might be an oxymoron because all of us who do any kind of research particularly the teaching community or the academic community and the academic fraternity we do regard ourselves as perpetual students or perpetual learners. So this is nothing new except that do we make acquisition of knowledge as a fundamental aspect of our life or not is what is important. Do we study as many domains as possible as may have a reflection on whatever our field of study is or do we limit ourselves only to one field is another question. Remember what I talk about the breadth. The breadth must be achieved and it is not one time breadth that you achieve and then you say now I am doing this research on this narrow area. So I have constructed from a broad base the pyramid and now I am here I will concentrate only on this area rest of my life which is completely incorrect because you never know what other things which you never study or what other things which are happening around you in other areas which might have an impact on what you are doing today. Breadth like depth is a perpetual pursuit keep looking at each and every aspect of knowledge that comes your way equally important is to master the skills you will have to be proficient in using each and every trick of the trade as we call it the skill in your own field so that you use it properly and correctly. This involves knowing all the methods and all the techniques that are particular to your own field although I have listed this as a third point according to me it is the most important point and represents unfortunately the most important inadequacy of the entire Indian research community. Ability to make a perfect proper articulation is sadly lacking unfortunately many rightly point out that such an ability should be built at the school level at most at the high school level and certainly at the undergraduate and the researchers are paying the price or education system not being able to do so. But that is a perpetual problem every level of education always feels that it is spending a lot of time in doing what should have been done by the earlier phases. So, everybody blames the lower phase lower phase lower phase for this deficiency or the other and that way we cannot solve the problem. In IIT Bombay for example, we have a compulsory course at the postgraduate level compulsory for both our master students and PhD students on effective communication. Such is the importance of effective communication for those colleagues of those colleagues who are attending this workshop I would like to specifically request you to spread this message among all your colleagues who are not attending this workshop among all your students. It has wrongly been assumed that in science and technology education and research the 90 percent of your time is spent on scientific and technical work and only 10 percent on articulation. It would have been alright if your articulation was so perfect that in that limited 10 percent time you were able to articulate properly. But if you are not then spend as much as 50 percent of your time in perfecting your articulation and only 50 percent time in the scientific discoveries and knowledge. Believe me it is that important particularly in this globalized world where everything that you say gets examined by millions of people it is absolutely essential to be perfect in your articulation. Be meticulous what they say you know be the god of little things you cannot miss out and mess up small things because one small thing messed up may mean a very big thing may be messed up eventually. Work hard is another oxymoron there is no shortcut to hard work. I will only say that I am also a clever man like most of you. I have worked very hard in my life to find out a substitute for hard work. Many people smarter than all of us have tried it for thousands of years there is no evidence that anybody has succeeded. If you have to achieve something extraordinary hard work has to be put in hard work to solve problems and hard work to solve hard problems very essential. As I mentioned perseverance so face failure squarely recover speedy. This is an interesting point that I suggest emulate what is good. We often refer to role models particularly for researchers whether it is C V Raman, Chandrasekhar, Basu, Indian Names, Einstein and all other we are all great role models and we look towards these great role models to get inspiration from them. I would humbly like to point out that it is not necessary to do so at all. We can actually pick up role models from amongst our own near and near friends and other acquaintances. So, here is an interesting theory. I call it Fartex hypothesis because it is not a proven theorem but I have not found an counter example yet to this hypothesis. This hypothesis says that randomly sample 10 people around 10 researchers, 10 students, 10 teachers, 10 persons, whatever. Prepare two lists. In one page or two pages try to list out all the good attributes of each of those 10 persons. Somebody is very meticulous write it meticulous. This person is meticulous. This person is always on time. This person has fantastic articulation. That person has such a great sense of time. This person is very polite etcetera all the desirable characters. Now take another piece of paper and prepare a second list. In the second list list everything that you dislike about each of those 10 persons. Somebody is arrogant. Somebody is so lazy that he does not come in time. Somebody is not meticulous at all. Somebody cannot write two sentences properly. Write everything that you think is not desired. My humble claim is that if you then look at these two lists independently, the first list will describe a person who is extraordinary provided there was a single person who had all the qualities in the list. Equally the second list will describe a totally undesirable person provided you ever come across a person who has all of these undesirable qualities. The fact of life is each one of us has some plus points, some minus points. We all come as a bundle and we are unique individuals. We are not automatons, robots. We are similar only in being humans but each human being is an individual and is different. I have seen that this strategy of mind of selecting any 10 people. I did that when I was a student. I did that when I became a teacher. I took 10 teachers and I listed down a good point for which each teacher was known. Somebody was known for the exact sense of timing. Somebody was known for the beautiful board work that he or she did while explaining. Somebody was famous for the extraordinary polite way in which he dealt with students. I attended their classes just to understand how they do each one of these things well. And believe me I learnt a lot. It is not that these were perfect human beings. There is no perfect human being otherwise it will be gone. But if you concentrate on what is good in whom then here is my theory what to learn from whom is left to you. Often the mistake that we make is that we do have this kind of list in our mind. But whenever we are comparing ourselves with others we always look at deficient point in others and plus points in others. If we just look at the plus points in others and what is deficient in us is such a great opportunity to learn from them. So, my contention is you do not always need to see role models outside your own circle of movement. Of course, you should look at great role models. Of course, there is a lot of learning from them. But there is enough learning enough useful learning possible from amongst our friends. So, as I was telling you it is for us to decide what to learn from whom. The earth point I would like you to remember is to insist on quality whatever you do let it be as perfect as possible. And remember what I said quality generally will not happen by accident. In fact, very rarely it will happen by accident. Quality can happen only if you plan for it you design for it. Please try to imbue this philosophy in yourself that whatever work you decide to do whether you write a single page you will write it very well. I will tell you how long it takes to do produce even a quality later. When I was dean of resources I was required to interact with our alumna. I have been fortunate enough to have got lot of love and affection of my past students and we normally communicate regularly. But as a dean whenever I would write a letter I would send a draft to professor Sukhatne. Professor Sukhatne once told me that he never sends any important letter immediately upon drafting it once. He slips over it and if the letter is important he circulates it to two or three people. Each one suggests some modifications or corrections then he edits it finally and then he sends it. And he sends his experiences that there might be delta changes but overall the quality of that document improves significantly. I have learnt this art from professor Sukhatne and I tell you that quality takes time. But that time must be built and factored into our planning itself. I just give example of a note because it occurs to me but everything that you do please ensure that you do it to the best of quality. I have listed this as ninth point last but not the least. Be scrupulously honest. It is absolutely essential for nothing else but just for preserving your own peace of mind. Just for preserving your true recognition that you deserve in life from others. Believe me dishonesty has an uncanny way of catching up with the truth. Please do not even think of indulging into any dishonest activities. After all the researchers are senior people in the city. Younger students look forward to us as role models. If one small instance happens through our what should I say deliberate or inadvertent act it gets spread. It gets known to large number of people and they themselves then may start thinking that it is all right. It is ok. I would like to expand on this particular point as to why this happens. Why does the dishonest creep in at all? Part of the answer lies in the human cycle. A human by nature is not built to be honest and ethical. Honesty and ethics are actually society driven centre. But let me go back to the basic point. I have listed 9 points here. Are these the most important points? No. The most important point is the 0th point. Remember I mentioned is the attitude which comes in the way I will spend next 5 or 7 minutes in describing what are the problems with the attitude. Why the attitude is as it is today with all of us and what can be done about the attitude. I mentioned that we have participated in rat races right from our second standard, third standard, fifth standard. First board exam probably 8 standard. If we do not get good marks we will not get admission to good colleges rat race. If we do not get good marks in 12 standard we do not get admission to a better junior college rat race. If we do not get marks in 12 standard or competitive exam we do not get admission to IIT rat race. And this continues. Each rat race has the same effect whether it is for marks later on it is for wealth and it is for recognition. Please appreciate that recognition and academic recognition is also a rat race. I want a promotion from a lecturer to a student professor, a student professor to associate professor and so on or I simply want a recognition that so many papers have been published or I want a recognition that I have guided so many research scholars. There is a rat race perpetually at whatever level earlier when we were students we come out of that student relationship but the rat race mindset continues. So, whether it is for marks or whether it is for wealth or whether it is for recognition we all seem to live only by the rat race. I would like all of you to remember that every rat race will produce some winner rats and many loser rats but only rats and not human beings. It is important to understand and appreciate this we are human beings we are not rats. So, even if we are forced to participate in rat race we shall participate as human beings with due dignity and without being affected by the rat race both for our own mental peace both for our mental strength and both for our self respect. Comparison with others which is the hallmark of a rat race will eventually stink it will not help proving better than someone else is only a temporary feeling of greatness. It will not last the moment we realize the fallacy in absolute terms. The right comparison the right comparison to be made all the way in my humble opinion is with oneself. Now here is the question I would like to ask you go back and examine all the instances of rat races that you would have participated in. Examine all the instances where you have done something and others have done something and your work was compared with them and you took a call on whether your work was better than them or was not adjust better than them and then decided whether you succeeded or did not succeed. On each such occasion the right question to ask should have been could I have done this task better. This does not involve how others have done this whether others have done this task better than what I have done or whether I have done better than others have done is of no consequence actually because I am me I am not him or her but if I were to do this task again could I do it better. How many of us actually without fail ask this question every time you do it every time I have learnt it the hard way the importance and the beauty of this question believe me every time I have asked this question could I have done it better the answer has always been yes. Why because I analyze my shortcomings and I found that I could have done it better means what I have improved by simply asking this question I am prepared now to do better why then waste our time and energy in comparing with others. Let the world come to its own conclusion but if I want to become a better researcher in fact if I want to become a better person and what better than to ask a question could I have done it better. My humble suggestion is if you ask this question you will find that the answer is yes and that is because you have forgotten what extraordinary potential you have each one of you remember a rat race which produces a few winner rats produces a large number of loser rats and a majority of us while we might win some rat race here we might lose several rat races somewhere else. So all of us are winners at some places and losers at many places where accumulated baggage of losses and frustration that is all nonsense that baggage is not required and that baggage happens because we are basing the judgment of our own abilities on the comparison done by the world with rest of us. Is that the right attitude I would like to give you an example of learning a foreign language it is a difficult task some people do it well some people spend months and years together learning a course let us say in German and elementary course advanced course and so on and then are able to speak German with a little bit difficulty can read German and translate in English and so on and we say anybody who learns a foreign language is a very intelligent person. How does a child learn a foreign language do not forget that between the age of two to five every human child learns a foreign language which is later on called the mother child the child does not go to any school at that time the child does not appear for any exam the child is never compared with other children there are no certificates there are no pass or fail and yet the child learns the natural language which is later on called the mother without any of such how and why here is every child is endowed by these four fundamental characteristics by God one the curiosity child is extremely curious about everything around it. Second it has boldness child can boldly ask questions anytime to anyone in fact many times these questions are embarrassing to us elders but child lasted it is not just consider the following as the child grows up does it preserve the childhood curiosity and boldness what happens to the boldness of a child I grow up I go to the fourth standard I still boldly start asking questions the teacher says do not waste class time and I go to junior college I raise my hand twice or twice some teacher says do not ask idiotic question my boldness is suppressed I stop asking question but sadly it also suppresses my curiosity please understand that when a child asks a question to you it is actually asking itself the question that is the manifestation of the child's curiosity you suppress the boldness you suppress the curiosity. So, these important aspects of curiosity and boldness are not carried through and through by the child they exist only in the childhood. The third quality that the child has is perseverance a child never gives up after deciding on doing something no matter how many times you scold no matter how many times you say something harder the problem the child will perceive it will try 10 times 15 times do we do that when we grow up how many times we try a hard problem once and say it is not worth it we do it during our educational phase I remember a sad incidence in one of the institution that I studied I and a friend of mine went to a teacher and we asked him sir we not able to solve this problem it was problem number 27 in some problem set and sadly the teacher said oh this is not important these questions are not asked in the examination. So, unfortunately we were willing to work on that hard problem to attempt to try but we are being discouraged saying it is not part of the examination process well such thing should not happen we should encourage our students to attempt harder problems we should encourage our students to persevere and equally well if we are researchers we must build on that perseverance ourselves last but not the least a child is excitement a child is always passionate about everything it does are we so excited are we so passionate about everything that we do why I mentioned the is that curiosity boldness perseverance and excitement were built into us by God himself when we were given birth we had all of this and we used all of this to do an extraordinarily difficult logical task learning a foreign language without anybody's help after that we goofed up maybe our entire educational system or something somewhere down the line we lose part of our curiosity part of our boldness part of our persevering abilities and part of our excitement. So, my dear friends my 0th point is that discover the child in you however remember the child does not have humility and ethics as I said these are social traits built by humanity for a better and beautiful society these are as important as the fundamental traits that God has given and that is why my 0th point says rediscover the child in you and build a great human I am sorry to have elaborated on this aspect none of it is directly related to research but I do believe that all these points are very very significantly related to a research a mindset which is so fundamental in pursuing whatever research that we do I am sure that excitement and passion humility and ethics and vision and value all together will help you achieve great things in your research I will conclude by saying that we can make our life as beautiful as dew drops I have a special meaning for this word you we ordinarily understand you drops as these beautiful drops that you see on this flower this beautiful image of dew drops was sent to me by my friend Professor Vagh of MGM College in Noida when I described how beautiful these dew drops are and said for me that you means the following D is for dreaming big because our dreams limit our achievement E is for enjoying life we must enjoy life every moment of it because each moment is precious it comes only once in our lifetime never comes back so we must enjoy everything that we do not only the work not only the documentation not only the experimentation but even seeing a movie we must enjoy discussing with a friend we must enjoy fighting with a friend we must enjoy not fight very regularly every moment whatever we do we must enjoy and W is for working hard because without working hard we cannot create history so dream big enjoy life work hard make sure that a great research mindset is imbibed on all of you any two of these three is not an option it is like an IIT exam where all questions are compulsory I will conclude by giving an unsolicited advice you as researchers have to be the change agent for this nation I will again repeat that this nation itself is an extraordinary experience in the world there is no other nation which has so much of diversity we have all major ethnicities in this nation we have all major religions in this nation we have all major languages in this nation and as an added attraction we have developed a great expertise in fighting with each other on each of these issues and yet for 60 years we have survived as a strong sovereign nation against the thinking of many other nations in the world and we shall continue to do so primarily because there is some common thread some common thread of humanity some common thread of what may grossly be called an Indian culture that binds us all and that binding if it has to take us up further then in the next century which is going to be knowledge driven century which means that the wealth generating mechanisms of this century are going to be based on knowledge a lot will depend upon what you and your colleagues do through your research endeavours to enhance the knowledge levels to contribute to the new knowledge to contribute to new discovery and invention which will make human life better and please remember it is stated that India has the second largest scientific and technical workforce in the world and yet our contributions to science and technology in the world are not even two percent so please remember that numbers or quantity alone is never ever sufficient it is the quality in every number that when enhanced to a significant level that the contributions acquire a punch please help build a great nation for all of us thank you so much God bless you.