Convocation Address at IISER Tirupati
I consider it to be a great privilege and a special honour to deliver this convocation address of Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Tirupati as it begins a decade of glorious journey.
I look back nostalgically at the journey of not only IISER, Tirupati but IISERs as a whole as I have been not only a witness but an active participant right from the very beginning.
I remember that I was a member of the Science Advisory Committee to the Prime Minister (SAC-PM), which was chaired by Prof C N R Rao, nation’s foremost legendary scientist. Dr Manmohan Singh was then the Prime Minister.
In a SAC-PM meeting, I remember making a presentation to the Prime Minister, about the rapid growth of science institutions in neighbouring countries like China, South Korea, Taiwan, etc., where both physical and intellectual infrastructure for science education and research was being built at a feverish pace.
And then I brought out the sharp contrast in India. I mentioned that for a country of a billion, surprisingly, in around hundred years, India built only one institute dedicated solely to science. I said it was going to celebrate its centenary in 2008. I was referring to Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.
And for an effect, I added that it was not built by the Government, but by Jamsetji Tata – indeed some people still call it Tata Institute!
In the discussion that followed, there emerged a full consensus that for fulfilling the aspirations of new India, the Government had to take a call on a massive expansion of our educational and research infrastructure, with great emphasis on Institutions fully dedicated to science.
But a good intent has to be followed by determined action. Our nation was lucky to have Professor C.N.R. Rao as an amazing thought and action leader at the helm of affairs. With his incredible dynamism and persistence, he worked with the Government and ensured that the dream of building five such institutes of science education and research in the country will be realised. And then IISER, Tirupati became the sixth IISER.
I have been involved in the early phases of building the IISERs. As the Director General of CSIR, I remember offering 100 acres of NCL land for IISER (Pune). I was also the Chairman of two of the five IISERs, namely Mohali and Kolkata.
I am very proud of the fact that IISERs have occupied the place of primacy as great science education and research institutions globally. And our IISER, Tirupati is no exception.
In particular, it is gratifying to see a nice balance of excellence and relevance. I am happy to see, among others, climate related research in green energy ranging from green hydrogen from methanol to more efficient electrocatalysts for energy storage to advancing plant sciences to create draught resistant plants.
Besides this, a thriving ecosystem of education, research, and innovation matters. It is truly remarkable that an IIT (for engineering) and IISER (for basic science) coexist in a spiritual city like Tirupati. A National Sanskrit University, a private university, KREA, in addition to Sri Venkateswara University and Sri Padmavati Mahila Visva Vidyalayam make Tirupati as an Educational Hub with a unique synergy.
After paying my tribute to our great institution, let me turn to the heroes of the day, the students graduating out today.
At the outset, let me congratulate the graduands of the day, their teachers and their parents. To the parents especially, I want to say that education is the best gift you could have given to your child.
My young friends, you will be stepping out of the portals of this great Institute today in a new India that is full of challenges but also great opportunities.
Remember, India today is not just being looked at as a third world country – it is being looked at as potentially a third most powerful country in the world.
My young friends, it is going to be your responsibility to build the great future of Vikasit Bharat.
But how do you build your own future in this land of opportunity of this new India?
Here are some lessons that I have learnt in my own life. I will like to share them with you, some of them may be useful in the great journey of your life, that lies ahead of you.
First, it does not matter as to where you are born, to whom you’re born, under what adversity you’re born, your destiny is in your hands.
I was born in a very poor family. My father died when I was six. I walked barefoot until I was 12. I studied under streetlights. My young, widowed mother, who never to a school, struggled to make our two ends meet.
Growing up under such trying conditions, when I was studying Newton’s laws of motion, if someone had told me that you will receive one of the topmost global honours for a scientist, namely, FRS, and you will become only one of the three engineering scientists from India in 364 years to sign in the same book, where Newton had signed, I would not have believed it. But it happened on 17 July 1998.
Second, your aspirations are your possibilities, so keep them always high. Keep your eyes on the stars, with your feet on the ground.
Let me explain this lesson from my own learnings. When I took over as Director of National Chemical Laboratory in 1989, it was in the pre-liberalised India, which protected the Indian industry through huge tariff barriers.
All our scientists were busy doing just import substitution by only copying foreign processes, products, etc.
On the very morning of my taking over as Director on 1 June 1989, I addressed my entire NCL family. I said “It is not the size of the budget that matters, it is the size of the idea. Let’s keep our aspirations high. Rather than just being borrower of ideas and technology from foreign companies, let’s export our technology, let us license our patents to them.”
This statement was audacious. NCL did not have a single US patent in its 39 years of its journey, and here I was saying that we will license our own US patents to leading US multinationals!
However, within just 4 years, we were able to license three of our US patents for close to a million US dollars to a multinational company, who was a leader in the field in which we had got these patents. This was the first ever reverse transfer of technology from an Indian national research laboratory to a foreign multinational. It was sheer magic!
But who made this magic possible? The same NCL scientists who were merely copying so far were fired up by the high aspiration of moving from following to leading, from copying to creating – from importing to exporting.
Third, my young friends, you can do anything but not everything. So, focus. I learnt the importance of focus early in my life. Let me tell you that story.
I remember going to a poor school in Mumbai. But that poor school had rich teachers. I remember Principal Bhave, who taught us physics. I remember his taking us out into the sun to demonstrate as to how to find the focal length of a convex lens.
He took a piece of paper, moved the lens till the brightest spot emerged on the paper, and told us that the distance between the paper and the lens was the focal length.
But then he held it on for some time and the paper burnt. For some reason, he turned to me and said “Mashelkar, if you can focus your energies like this and not diffuse them, you can burn anything in the world!”
I was so impressed with the power of science that I decided to become a scientist. But that experiment gave me the philosophy of life too; ‘focus and you will achieve’.
As I grew, I saw more meaning in the experiment that was done by my teacher. Sun’s rays are parallel. They never meet, but the convex lens makes them meet. I called such leadership, that makes people with huge diversity converge, as convex lens leadership.
When I took over as Director General, of CSIR, I found that our 40 laboratories behaved as though they were independent 40 laboratories. They hardly talked to each other. We said we will become One CSIR, Team CSIR.
11 May 1998 was a magical day. We had CSIR directors’ conference in Bangalore. All 40 Directors signed the Bangalore declaration with a headline of ‘Team CSIR’. The declaration had touching words. “India matters to us, we want to matter to India, more”.
Later on, the transformation of CSIR in the 1990s found a place of pride as one of the top 10 achievements of Indian science and technology in the 2Oth century in Prof Jayant Narlikar’s book ‘Scientific Edge’. It was the convex lens effect of CSIR focusing as a Team CSIR that was the first step in this transformation.
Fourth, purpose, perseverance and passion always pays. It is always too early to quit. Winners never quit and quitters never win. There are numerous examples but let’s pick up the latest.
Perseverance was the silent engine behind the recognition of the Nobel Prize to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for their groundbreaking work on mRNA technology. Karikó, a Hungarian-born scientist, and Weissman, an American immunologist, toiled for decades in relative obscurity, driven by an unwavering belief in their work.
Karikó faced significant skepticism and funding difficulties throughout her career. She was demoted from her position at the University of Pennsylvania and struggled to secure grants for her research. Despite these setbacks, her perseverance with a never-give-up spirit propelled her forward.
Fifth, look at the world FAIL differently. FAIL is First Attempt in Learning. Your best Guru is your last mistake, as long as you learn from it.
Thomas Edison famously tested thousands of materials for the filament of the electric light bulb before finding the right one. Many of his early experiments failed. Edison viewed each failure as a step closer to success. He stated, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” So there was a learning from each failure.
Nearer home, our own Chandrayan 3 succeeded, since all the lessons learnt from the failure of Chandrayan 2 were incorporated in the design of Chandrayan 3.
Sixth, just don’t keep on knocking on doors of opportunity. If they don’t open, create your own doors.
Let me again explain through my own experience. I returned to India in 1976. I needed an imported Weisenberg Rheometer to carry on my research in the field of polymer rheology, which was a key part of the Polymer Science and Engineering Division that I was setting up. There was acute shortage of foreign exchange in India. DGTD clearance & not manufactured in India certificates were needed for importing any equipment. In my case, I was told that it would take 2 years.
So, I opened my own new door of opportunity, which did not require any equipment. I got into the field of mathematical modelling and simulation. I began my research in 1977. I got the S.S. Bhatnagar Prize in 1982. Just imagine what would have happened, if I had just waited for that door of opportunity to open.
Seventh, in science, only those are remembered, who say the first word in science. So be creators of new windows yourself rather than looking all the time through the windows that others have opened.
All my top global honours have come, only because I was able to say the first word.
For instance, our team was the first one to create synthetic enzymes, whose activity could be switched on and off by using stimuli sensitive biomimetic hydrogels. We were the first ones to show self-healing in stimuli responsive gels. We were the first ones to show self-organisation in stimuli sensitive gels. we were the first ones to discover a magic molecule, A6ACA, which found applications in amazing fields like elastic enteric implants to biomineralisation to stem cell differentiation to oil well drilling.
Eighth, remember that breakthroughs occur when you challenge the current best practice and create the next practice.
Sir C V Raman questioned the existing theories of light scattering and the discovery of the Raman Effect, which revealed that light changes its wavelength when it is scattered. provided profound insights into molecular and atomic structures, earning Raman the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930.
S N Bose challenged the classical statistical mechanics and worked on quantum mechanics, focusing on the statistical behaviour of photons. He developed the Bose-Einstein statistics and predicted the existence of a new state of matter, later called Bose-Einstein condensate. His work laid the foundation for quantum statistics.
Ninth is a special message for today’s young generation. Like instant coffee, there is no instant success. There is no substitute to hard work for becoming successful.
I am running 82. I have myself worked 24×7, week after week, month after month, year after year and will do so till I take my last breath.
The golden rule is the following. Work hard in silence. Let success make the noise. Your overnight success is always the result of everything that you have done through that moment.
Tenth, remember that there is no limit to human endurance, no limit to human achievement, no limit to human imagination excepting the limits you put on your mind yourself.
Let me illustrate this with a personal example.
Bharat Ratna Professor CNR Rao has been my inspiration. Whenever I got a top international honour like getting elected as FRS, or getting elected as Fellow of US National Academy of Science or getting Lenovo Science Prize (which is the highest science prize of The World Academy of Science), I will call him to give the good news and seek his blessings.
And each time Prof Rao will only say ‘not bad!’ This was the case even when I was the first Indian in India to get one of such honours from US National Academy of Inventors.
After a while, I became impatient, and I asked Prof Rao “Sir, what do I have to do to impress you?”
Prof Rao told me “You are climbing on a ladder of excellence, which has no limit, excepting the limit that you put on yourself”.
What he said then in response to my question is the message that I will like to leave with you, my young friends, as my 10th lesson.
Translating his message in other words, it means that no matter what you achieve, you have to keep on saying that my best is yet to come.
So, my young friends, each morning that you get up in the rest of your life, you should say that my best is yet to come – and today is the day that it will come. And your best is not just for yourself, it is for our society, our beloved nation.
Can you imagine if 1.4 billion Indians promised to give their best every morning every day – we will create an India, that is not just one of the top in the comity of nations, but that will be at the very top.
So, all my best wishes and choicest blessings are with you my young friends in this journey of building Vikasit Bharat of our dreams. May these ten Mantras for climbing the limitless ladder of excellence be your guiding lights as you embark on your exciting journey after learning the portals of your great alma mater on a road to limitless success, when you build your glorious future.