Dr Faqir Chand Kohli has passed away

Dr FC Kohli (19 March 1924 – 26 November 2020) was a great mentor. He was the founder and first CEO of the Tata Consultancy Services. His role in developing TCS into a leading software company has been recognized in various ways. He has been named the Father of the Indian Software Industry; the Government had conferred the Padma Bhushan Award on him. Seven or eight universities conferring honorary doctorates on him have indicated the esteem in which academics have held him.

I have had the fortune of benefitting from his mentorship during my career. I will focus here on the first few years I had known Dr Kohli. Some of you would know about his work for the Tata Electric Company, and later for the Tata Consulting Engineers. It was during 1965-67 that I first met him. Tata Electric was getting interested in computerizing data acquisition at its power generating stations. The plan was to start in this manner and then gradually build up to implement computer control and load balancing. I was assisting the Radio Astronomy Group at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research to plan for computerizing data acquisition at their radio telescope using minicomputers. Dr Kohli came over with a couple of colleagues to visit us. I got to visit the thermal generating station at Chembur and later a hydro-electric station in Lonavala.

A few years later, TIFR Radio Astronomers started designing and building their Giant MeterWave Radio Telescope (GMRT), one of the biggest structures I ever got to see being planned. It was a precision structure, and a one-of kind structure for its designers. Tata Consulting Engineers (TCE) had been selected by Prof Gobind Swarup, the Scientist leading the project. TCE was to do some structural engineering for the GMRT. Dr Kohli was the Director in Charge of TCE at that time. TCE was in the early years of using a large computer to do big-time structural engineering. I was in the TIFR Computer Group which was running a large computer (a CDC-3600) which we made available for institutions such as TCE.

So, I had the pleasure of seeing Dr Kohli work as a power engineer, as a high-tech engineering consultant in structural engineering, and as a top-level manager. I had the privilege of being treated as a member of his extended team, and being given privilege to ask the expert himself  and to learn from him.

Then came IT revolution which changed the face of India for a few millions of us, besides making a significant contribution to the Indian economy. Dr Kohli, with his unique range of experience and skills took charge of TCS. One small event during his years at TCS is particularly memorable to me. He invited our team at TIFR to play a small role in a project of TCS. We had completed designing a state-of-the-art message switching system using an up-to-date minicomputer and up-to-date software including a high-level programming language. TCS got an order for a message switching system from a multi-national company which was the leading supplier of message switching systems in the world at that time. We made our computer and software available to TCS as development tools for use in this project. For me, what was special was the TCS invitation to give a presentation along with the TCS team to the visiting client team, describing our experience in implementing an up-to-date message switch. Implicit was the understanding that if the TCS team needed to consult us any time, we would be available. The TCS team did not need that consultation but our software development resources played their role.

The Computer Society of India had been founded in 1965. My mentor at TIFR, Prof R Narasimhan was the founding President. Prof V Rajaraman, Gen Balasubramanian, Dr Kohli and Dr PP Gupta were some of the pioneers who played a leading role in setting CSI on the right path. As a young scientist at that time, CSI gave me great opportunities to work with pioneers.

I had written in 2014 an article Growing up with the Computer Society of India! http://obvioustruths.blogspot.com/2014/06/srinivasan-ramani-and-computer-society.html (posted on theoccasion of the Golden Jubilee of CSI). I invite the reader to read this article to learn about my experience of working with Dr Kohli.     

Some closing comments: The basis of the IT revolution was the recognition that the skills of Indian professionals were worth a lot on the international market and that Indian Corporates could find a big market abroad for these skills. However, this needed high standards of leadership and commitment to customer interests. When Dr Kohli pitched a fledgling TCS in this arena, very few realized that one day not far into the future India would succeed in a very impressive manner in creating an entirely new industry. An industry that would grow up to rival the whole of agriculture in its contribution to the Indian GDP. The contribution of TCS has been very substantial. Even today, TCS earns over 10% of the revenue earned by the whole of the Indian software industry. In addition, the TCS experience has been valuable to many leaders who went on to found their own IT companies.

Very few engineers have been as successful in their quest as Dr Kohli has been in his.       

7-Dec-2020

Hawa badal rahi hai: Air Quality is better in Bangalore on Deepavali

 

I looked up https://aqicn.org at 8 PM on Saturday, and was happy to note that air quality in Hombegowdanagar, Bangalore,  was “Moderate”. Usually, it would be Unsatisfactory on normal days. That it is Moderate on Deepavali is amazing. It shows the ability of the Govt and Corporation to control the usage of crackers and cooperation from the people. At this rate, India would progress fast! Perhaps this discipline also explains how India has been able to control the Covid-19 pandemic reasonably well.

 

Visit  
      https://aqicn.org/city/india/bengaluru/hombegowda-nagar/  

It is a great site.

My sister is a bit of a sceptic. She says that the improvement in air quality could be due to some rain we had yesterday. She says some parts of Bangalore got some rain today too. 

Srinivasan Ramani

 

 

 

Prof Gobind Swarup (March 23, 1929 – September 7, 2020)

 

Photo from Twitter Tribute    

 A very well made photo-essay on Prof Swarup can be found at https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/govind-swarup-pioneering-radio-astrophysicist-tata-institute-of-fundamental-research/KQIylXP1ZillIg?hl=en

The Wikipedia article on him offers a brief description of his scientific contributions.  

I will say a few words here about my memories of Prof Swarup. My friend Ramesh Sinha and I joined Tata Institute of Fundamental Research more or less at the same time, in 1963. Ramesh joined the Radio Astronomy Group of TIFR. I was completing my project work for my IIT M Tech as an intern in the TIFR Computer Group during the first year and was recruited by TIFR in 1964. Swarup was a member of the Selection Committee that had interviewed me. He was deeply interested in the work I was doing in the computer field – building a real-time data acquisition system. He was keen to equip the Ooty Radio Telescope he was building with an UpToDate data handling system including a real-time computer. Minicomputers were coming of age then. I became an informal consultant to the Radio Astronomy Group. Ramesh and I enjoyed participating in the teams’ decisions in buying India's earliest real-time computers. I had a serious interest in Radio Astronomy and had a number of friends in the group.

An interest I shared with Swarup in later years was education. I will touch upon this by mentioning a June 2011 letter he had written to four of us. It included a copy of an email from another radio-astronomer, Prof Ananthakrishnan, describing a visit to a school with 2600 students. Ananth had been asked to address the top hundred students and found that not one had an idea of wavelength of light, distance of the earth from the Sun, the nature of stars, etc. He pointed out that students were more interested in getting marks in competitive exams and less in real learning. Swarup agreed, and decided to do something about it. He thought often about Indian education in general and what can be done about it. This made him attach to his email a brilliant article by Sanjay Srivastava, “The End of Education”, published in the Open Magazine:
https://openthemagazine.com/features/living/the-end-of-education/ For those of you who want to read more in this direction, I will mention another excellent article: “How Kota became India's capital for educational coaching”,

https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/india-s-garish-free-market-in-education-115123100033_1.html

Prof Swarup’s prodding usually worked at different levels and has had good effect, but talking it about requires another article.

Another act of Prof Swarup that had touched my heart was his attempt to run science related activities for school children in and around the villages surrounding the Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope that the National Centre for Radio Astronomy built under Swarup’s leadership.

A great mind and a caring heart do go together!  Then you find a rare human being, like Swarup! 

Srinivasan Ramani 

 

I didn’t know that smoking was this costly!

 

I saw an advertisement selling term insurance. The monthly premium was Rs 500 or so. There was a question: do you smoke? You could press a button saying yes and find how the premium would change because of this information. I pressed the button though I am not a smoker to see the cost of this habit. The premium went up to Rs 800!

I did not store a link to that advertisement. But searched the web again for the connection between disease and smoking, and found this:

https://www.icicilombard.com/insurance-information/health-insurance-info/article/what's-killing-india-knowing-top-10-killer-death-diseases-in-india

The article shows causes of death in percentage terms and lists main causes. In some cases, it advises on prevention, by asking you not to smoke or “to avoid consuming tobacco”. The numbers are as follows:

Disease                                              Listed Main Cause                      Listed Prevention Method

Cardiovascular Diseases                 24.8%                                           Avoid Consumption of tobacco         

Respiratory Diseases                       10.2%                                           Avoid Smoking

Malignant & other tumours             9.4%                                           Avoid Tobacco Usage

Digestive Diseases                              5.1%                                           Quit smoking and avoid alcohol

Tuberculosis                                      10.1%  

However, WHO says A Strong Association is: Smoking substantially increases the risk of TB and death from TB.   https://www.who.int/tobacco/resources/publications/factsheet_tb_tobacco_sep09.pdf

How dangerous is Covid-19 compared to the Tobacco Epidemic? Confirmed Deaths due to Covid-19 as of 9-Aug-2020 have been 43,379. The total number of deaths in India per year is approximately 95 Lakhs according to Wikipedia.

Srinivasan Ramani

 

Let us look fifty years ahead (Talk Delivered at VJTI)

·       If you buy a bike today, it may serve you five to ten years, but the degree you earn today will serve you about fifty years or more. I look back to 1962 when I earned my first degree. I thought of what my life was going to be and what choices I would make. What would be fast-growing technologies? What kind of jobs would be available? My principal had told me not to risk getting into newfangled topics like electronics! “Do your electrical engineering”, he said, you will never worry about a job, there will always be Rs 150 per month in the electricity board! If you like, you can do post-graduate study in electronics after your B.E.! To simplify my task, he turned down my application to transfer to a sister college where I had to go for electronics!

·       What can I tell you that would help you look ahead a little better? A lot of scholars have tried to look ahead and written about their findings. Reading relevant books can make your looking ahead successful.  This reading if continued life-long can give insights all your life. After all, it is not as if you can make all your decisions for your career by Dec 31!

·       I will attempt in the time available to share a broad perspective with you. You will now make the decisions I had to make, like going abroad or not, and if so, when to return. I went abroad in 1971 and returned in 1973. India today is very different than what it was when I returned in 1973. There was a rationing of milk! I could not buy butter easily; the shop keeper would sell butter only to those who bought a loaf of bread as well! We have now Indian milk production at three times the per capita level we had in 1973. Life is a lot easier for the average Indian than it was in those days, so it is even easier to return now, but still it is not a bad idea to go abroad to get better learning opportunities, to get a better professional background, and to enjoy combined opportunities to learn and work for some time. But come back! You are needed here!

·       Let me come back to the economy. As I see it, the basic challenge of life in India is this.  We get a ton of rain water per year and solar energy equivalent to 5.5 KWh per day for every Sq. M of land, along with several other things.  We have to use these as efficiently as we can and manage within these limits. Can’t we?

·       What about capital? We seem to have more money as market cap in the Indian capital markets than Germany! About 2.12 Trillion $. The people may be poorer, but they are saving 30% of the GDP every year! Some of that saving goes into industry and creates jobs for young people. As more young people come out of school, our population becomes a better-educated one every year. 

·       How good India’s economy is going to be will depend upon how well-educated our young people are. Statistics show that if you looked at Indians 20-24 years old in 1970, their average length of schooling had been only 3 years. If you like at a similar group of Indians now, you find the average schooling is 8 1/2 years. The average is going up every year.  Don't sneeze at it! The average years of schooling for Japan in the year 2000 was 91/2 Countries Compared by Education > Average years of schooling of adults. International Statistics at NationMaster.com 

·       What about jobs? As a student, I had learnt that India was a developing country, mainly dependent on agriculture. India has changed since then. Agriculture gives us 15.4 % of our GDP. Oil & Petroleum industries give it 15%. Manufacturing gives it 16%. Auto industry gives it 7.5%. Information Technology gives it 7.7%. Banking & Finance sectors give 7.7%.

·       You may wonder why you need to hear about the economy and about different sectors. Many companies, particularly in the IT sector, expect employees to have domain knowledge in one or more sectors of the economy. Every one of these sectors hires engineers. Even Banking & Financial sectors also hire their own share of engineers. Enterprising engineers who start a business also have opportunities to work in any of these sectors.

·       There is another reason to be aware of economic issues. Look at how fortune turns. When I passed out of college, one of the high technology fields I admired was nuclear energy. Now, look at the economics of nuclear power plants. Each plant location needs an exclusion zone, 3 km in diameter around it, to limit the risk of any adverse incident. What is the cost of such a piece of land? Who wants to live near it? How much nuclear power will you generate there? A few gigawatts? How much solar energy can you generate from the same piece of land? At what cost? Do we need nine sq. km in one piece for solar energy?

·       There are huge forces at play reshaping the world. We need to be aware. I don’t think it would hurt a young engineer to take a map of a coastal city, say Mumbai, Goa, Ratnagiri, Kolkata or Chennai, and draw contour lines showing low-level areas. Which of these areas would lose commercial value due to climate change in your lifetime? 

·       On October 5, 1973, my wife and I returned after two years stay in the USA. Ours was a TWA flight from Pittsburgh to Mumbai via Jerusalem. We landed in Mumbai and learnt that a war had broken out in the middle east. The price of petrol went up five times in the aftermath of that war. Can you imagine what changes an event like that can bring in the careers of young engineers?

·       One of the things it did was to encourage researchers to develop more efficient batteries. Three of them developed the lithium-ion battery which has brought us closer to the electric car. They won a Nobel prize in 2019.

·       Their science is working for the world already. Our cell phones would not be what they are without these batteries. There are even one-lakh rupee electric bikes available in India now. What do you think would happen to electric cars in India in your lifetime?

·       Look at the LED revolution. Their usage in India has gone up more than ten times during 2012-2018.

·       Consider what is happening to some cities in the north due to air pollution. The cost of disposing of stubble left over after the harvest poses a major problem and endangers peoples’ lives. Who can save them? Obviously, engineers can and should do that.

·       Also consider what app-controlled cabs have done: created over a million part-time jobs for drivers and have even reduced the demand for car purchases.

·       So, air pollution is not the only problem that engineers can handle. Traffic problems, water supply problems, employment problems, affordable housing problems, a whole lot of these are our problems. We design and implement the solutions. It would be necessary in future for engineers to be involved in dealing with problems from the policy level downwards. I am glad that two of your alumni are already senior ministers!

·       Let me conclude by saying you are going to have your hands full. There are lot of problems to tackle. There are lots of opportunities. You can bet that the India of the 21^st century would be a great place to live and contribute. I offer my best wishes to you.    

end

The victory of the Sapiens

Photo: Via Wikimedia, Author: www.vperemen.com / CC BY-SA

My cousin and his wife, living in the US, had bought tickets to come to India on the 23^rd March 2020. Then came the deluge, what my cousin called the pralaya. Visit YouTube for a visualization https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9D5sqgqEYA , but don’t take it literally. What descended on us this time was what our prime minister correctly named a MahAmArI, a plague! 

Widespread disease and death is not a stranger to India. Tuberculosis has been killing over 200,000 Indians every year over the last few years. 

What is new now in the case of Covid-19? A worldwide response based on a few widely accepted ideas. One powerful idea is that of the germ theory of disease, in this case that the infection is caused by a virus. The other is an idea of a very fast and exponential spread of infection. The idea that the disease could spread even ten times within two or three weeks. That it could kill hundreds of thousands in a month or two. Such evidence-based understanding of a pandemic has been rare in the population as a whole. 

The author Yuval Noah Harari has argued that only humans are capable of cooperation on the large scale and in a flexible manner, including cooperation with strangers. The use of sophisticated language for communicating a variety of ideas no doubt makes this possible. The worldwide modification of behavior, including lockdown on a very large scale, social distancing, use of masks and frequent handwashing with soap have not been adopted as fast anywhere earlier as they took place over the last few months. They were never as effective. The cooperation went beyond all forms of tribalism and nationalism. The phenomenon clearly demonstrated what Harari had described.

Social engineering has succeeded where genetic engineering is asking for 18 months to produce a usable vaccine!

Is this a turning point in human history? What can we achieve if we perfect this technique, communicating with people, persuading them to do work together to achieve a common goal? 

Can we defeat an enemy like tuberculosis? It is a disease with strong socio-economic dimensions. It does not yield to any simple treatment with one or two medicines. Human commitment and social care would probably be essential to defeat it.

I have a glimmer of hope, that Indo-Sapiens will at last be able to do something in this direction.

Srinivasan Ramani

What After the 3-Week Lockdown?

Most people would admire India for the quick and determined way it is implementing a three-week lockdown against Covid-19. I personally believe that the coming warm months would be a boon to India in controlling the spread of the virus. However, I do not believe that the number of active cases would be less than 1000 on April 15 when the current 3-week Lockdown is to end, but one cannot imagine extending the lockdown with the same severity. 

What would be the drop in GDP for the current year below what it would have been without Covid-19? How would it compare with the reduction that demonetization of high value currency notes caused? What would be the impact of this reduction on the employment situation?

On the other hand, we cannot go back to business-as-usual on April 15. The virus would very much be there, and we would need control measures. The war on Covid-19 would have to continue. We have a short time in which we have to plan control measures that are medically and economically wise. My suggestion is that we need an easy-to-implement scheme that would permit essential movement to keep the economy ticking, while at the same time making public places less crowded. Non-essential movement of people needs to be effectively controlled. Essential production and movement of goods should be allowed. Essential services should be allowed not just to support survival, but also to support jobs.
Who is going to decide what is essential and on what basis? For instance, should the production of cigarettes and beedis be allowed? What about liquor and lipstick?

I am sure that there are smart people in decision making places, but the world has seen on many occasions the danger of letting a set of insiders make all the decisions without public discussion. So, we have to promote nationwide discussion on an urgent basis. The media have a big responsibility in enabling this. Perhaps every channel should devote an hour everyday for this discussion. Every newspaper should devote a page everyday for this. We cannot probably complete all the discussion required by 5 PM on April 14! We should plan for a gradual loosening of controls starting on April 15, but we do not have all the year to do this. The hot months are going to be the golden months. We should have won the war well before the end of summer. We have to do this without driving millions out of the economy!

Srinivasan Ramani        

Reducing Deaths due to Traffic Accidents

As I write this on 24-March-2020, WHO has reported (Sitrep No 63 dated 23-March-2020) that the total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases reported by Indian authorities was 415 and the total number of Covid-19 deaths was 7. In terms of numbers what matters is a third number: confirmed new cases reported in 24 hours prior to report-publication time. It was 132! It is the rate of increase that concerns the authorities. The Covid-19 threat is no doubt very real.

However, let us not forget other threats. India has approximately 150,000 deaths per year from traffic accidents. That is over 400 deaths per DAY! We should aim to reduce traffic deaths to half the current rate in three years. Do we have the political will to do that?

Srinivasan Ramani  

Swine Flu, Bird Flu etc. Is it time for some of us to switch to vegetarian food?

Many Indian cultures treat non-vegetarian food as taboo, but permit the consumption of dairy products. This seems to be a reasonable compromise between vegan diet and non-vegetarian diet. It is widely believed that humanity is slowly evolving to a time when non-vegetarian food would be an exception rather than the rule.

Several epidemics like Swine flu and bird flu are believed to be associated with unhygienic conditions in which pigs and chicken are raised in huge farms. Visit
Article in the Guardian

Pollution, parasitic infestation and bacterial contamination are problems associated with fish and seafood.

Apart from the above concerns is the question of how much water is required to produce meat and poultry. With increasing consumption of these products, can we really sustain current farming practices? Visit 
https://www.peta.org.uk/blog/10-shocking-stats-about-water-and-meat-eating/

Given all this, it seems worth asking: Is it time for some of us to avoid or reduce consumption of non-vegetarian food?

Srinivasan Ramani

Avoiding mouth-to-mouth spread of germs

There are prohibitions in a few cultures, including Indian cultures, that seemed to be related to the notion of ritual impurity. Sharing a cup, vessel or cutlery while eating or drinking beverages is one such prohibited habit. Tasting food using a spoon and putting it back into food being cooked is another. Ordering a dessert and sharing it with everyone around the table dipping their spoons into it is yet another. Many Indians who have spent some time in Europe or in the Americas have “learnt” to overcome these prohibitions. In fact, they find it amusing when they see some of their compatriots show inhibitions to be “westernized”!  

In a world in which virus diseases are threatening to become pandemics, the old cultural practices may be valuable to prevent saliva-borne infections. Comments are invited, particularly from medical doctors and microbiologists. Actual prevention of the spread of infections is one thing, and creating awareness of undesirable practices is another. A clear unwillingness to practice habits that could possibly harm others helps both ways.

In this context, it is worth reading about how mumps spreads and what damage it can do.

Srinivasan Ramani

Say Goodbye to the Welcome-Handshake!

Conscious change in social habits is not very common in the human race, but it is time for one such change now.  These are times of the Covid-19 or the Corona virus epidemic! Visit https://fortune.com/2020/02/13/singapore-air-show-coronavirus-handshake/ The Singapore Airshow 2020 is enforcing a no-contact policy!

I would go further.  The handshake is as out-of-date as wearing a sword to work! However, don’t dismiss handshakes as insignificant. They play a vital role in meetings. Meetings between people are more than substitutes for a bunch of emails! They build working relationships and trust. Handshakes play a very important role in this!

The challenge is how to replace the handshake with something equally effective. Bowing and Namastes are candidates, but the best seem to be words of welcome thought out in advance. “We have been waiting for this day!”, “Our team has been looking forward to this visit”, or something like that! These words do not really indicate that you are softening your negotiating position one bit! These are words with warmth but no commitment. They are what the blockchain people call a zero confirmation transaction.

Are they unethical? No, unless you don’t really mean any of what you say. Meetings start with an expectation of possible positive results.  If you are sincere about that, warm gestures to start off the meeting are fair. They are no more unethical than handshakes! Besides, the substitution of handshakes by well thought-out words of welcome could reduce the chances of your being hauled off to the quarantine ward!  

Srinivasan Ramani

   

Fragility of life in the 21st century

It is strange how we take our life for granted and make plans for weeks and months ahead as if we will continue to roll on during that time just as we are doing today.  I got another lesson why I should not do that, last week. It was a cold starting on Sunday the 9^th Feb. It took its usual course of four days and thoroughly messed up my plans for these four days. What if it had been a flu? Well, it would have been worse. Whatever I read seemed only to say it would have been more severe than a cold, but otherwise more of the same. The one distinguishing mark might have been that flu would have had a fever associated with it. 

Well, what if I had gone to one of those conferences in one of those exotic countries/regions? I could have been accidentally caught up in one of those “plagues” of modern times, an acute respiratory illness, like Covid-19, also known as the corona virus disease. The one difference would have been the quarantine! An exotic land would suddenly turn into a frightening dystopia where one would have to play the 3:97 dice game with death, in isolation. What does that mean? Everyone is cagey with numbers, but the mortality rate among Covid-19 patients seems to be 3%. It seems absurd to hear when sane doctors tell you, “Well! We have confirmed to you that you have it. Unfortunately, if you insist on knowing it, the mortality rate is 3%”. Consolation, it doesn’t sound as bad as the death rate! Unless, you have the pesky patient’s habit of looking it up on the web. You don’t even need to know that a thesaurus lists synonyms of words. You need not know anything more to type “mortality death” into the box on Google!

Well, that is a fact of life. Life is as fragile as that: 97:3, 99:1, or 99.5:0.5 sometimes, week after week. It is always a dice game. sometimes safer, sometimes not. A fellow passenger wearing a mask, on the next seat on the plane. Sometimes it is the engine problem you had read about, on that model of plane! It is sometimes those VIP kids in their crorepati cars! I now know who a human being is! He/she knows a few dozen facts of life like this, but keeps going all the same, week after week!

लगे रहो, इनसान!

Incidentally, every pandemic is a chain reaction. In a nuclear weapon, an exploding atom causes one or more other atoms to explode. The result is a rapid release of an enormous amount of energy as a whole lot of atoms explode in a very short time. For a pandemic to continue spreading, all that is needed is for one case to trigger one or more cases in turn. As population densities increase and airlines carry millions of people around, pandemics are inevitable. New forms of healthcare preparedness are necessary. Major hospitals proudly announce that they are ready with a 30-bed isolation ward! What do they plan to do if a pandemic reaches 300 cases a day in that city? We need a national task force to prepare a plan for coping with all eventualities and to monitor the progress of the disease in India. This task force need not even meet; it can do its job over the Internet and submit its report in a week followed by weekly updates. If the Chinese can build a hospital in ten days, can’t we organize a task force in ten days? Can’t we announce an emergency fund to fight the disease and review its size regularly in consultation with the task force?

Srinivasan Ramani