Professor Yash Pal

(26 November 1926 – 24 July 2017)

Prof Yash Pal was at ease with technology as well as science, and among many activities in his life, he had served as a charismatic Director of the Space Application Centre, Ahmedabad. Computer networks were but a dream in India in 1979; however, he encouraged Dr A. R. K. Sastry and me to carry out R & D in this field using the APPLE satellite which was being built at that time. We were but two among the hundreds of young scientists he had encouraged.

A visit to SAC was always inspiring. I remember escorting to that Centre a group of visitors from commonwealth countries who had come to participate in a workshop on computer networking. Most questions to Yash Pal were on the cost of setting up and running something like a SAC in their own countries!

Yash Pal was a visionary. He had shared Vikram Sarabhai’s early enthusiasm for the use of satellite communication and TV education. There was a TV studio brimming with teachers and actors with a rural background, producing TV programs with a development orientation. Mr. Kiran Karnik was then heading this activity.

Entertainment has gobbled up TV channels over the next few decades and the old dream did not quite materialize, but now there are hundreds of people working in India on technology for education. They use video and the Internet and keep working in the direction Sarabhai and Yash Pal pointed.

I remember a meeting of some group he had called as the then Chairman of the University Grants Commission. I was among the invitees. He was embarrassed by the fact they could not offer even a cup of tea to the invitees – the “karmacharis” were on strike! I remembered a time, ten years earlier when at the SAC many people had been voluntarily working on the campus hours beyond office closing time! Here was a man from the new-era institutions coping with one that is a left-over from the days of the British Raj!  

Yash Pal would be remembered by the hundreds of colleagues he had encouraged, by the millions of young people he had communicated with over TV, and by people now working in the institutions he had helped develop.

Srinivasan Ramani  

Pioneer of Technology for Education – ANUP K. RAY

Over a hundred of us involved in research for Technology for Education had gathered for our annual conference on Dec 20 2013. The Conference was hosted by IIT Kharagpur this time.  We took some time off to honour Prof A K Ray who is a pioneer in the field and to celebrate his reaching seventy.

I must share his story, which sets an excellent example to young engineers learning new technologies. It was the technology of television that had beckoned Anup Ray as he completed his under-graduate work at the Jadavpur University in 1964. There was a lot of research in progress in the field, and the promise of the technology was great. Anup Ray went to work with Phillips starting with work in the camera division in Holland. He then went on to do a PhD at the Essex University, working on the Human Perception of Color in Images.

Visionaries could look ahead and see great potential for educational applications of the TV technology. Anup Ray was not alone. Dr Vikram Sarabhai and Prof Yashpal had already started using satellite broadcasting to low cost terminals for educational TV. Mr. Deodhar who was Chairman, Electronics Commission, in the eighties, wrote a book named “the third parent” http://www.psdeodhar.net/pdfs/thirdparent.pdf.

Anup Ray returned to India heading a Dept at the Technical Teachers Training Institute in Chandigarh. In 1987 he moved to Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, as Professor of Educational Technology and set up a full-fledged Centre for Educational Technology. Serious production of educational videos for nationwide use began. Soon IIT Delhi would start up-linking educational videos to a satellite for broadcast.  

He moved to IIT Kharagpur in 1997 where he established the largest and most diverse Centre for Educational Technology in India. He created and led the program named Electronically Networked - Life Long Learning which trained over 12000 professionals in the field of ICT over five years. It depended upon centrally produced video lectures which were used by tutors and facilitators at a large number of Centres. This model enabled discussions by local groups, introducing a networking element.

Anup Ray introduced the first Video on Demand service at IIT Kharagpur in 2001. His team created a variety of tools for video classrooms. Anup Ray has served as a consultant to UNESCO and has also served on several company boards.

Over the last ten years, Prof Ray has played valuable roles in the NPTEL programme (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Programme_on_Technology_Enhanced_Learning) and other national programmes related to technology for education. Going beyond technology, he has worked for years in the recent past on pedagogy.

What an exciting way to enter a new field in its salad days, focus on its socially valuable uses and to serve India with all one has learnt? A dream for every engineering/science student to live for!

Srinivasan Ramani