Prof. Chintamani Nagesa Ramachandra
Rao FRS, famously known as Prof. C.N.R. Rao is well known researcher in the
field of nanotechnology. He has authored more than 1400 research paper in
journals of international repute and 45 scientific books. He is fellow of
several academies all over the world including Royal Society, London. More than
60 universities awarded him honorary doctorates around the globe. He is
recipient of most of the major scientific awards. Recently, Government of India
awarded his the Highest Civilian Award of India- Bharat Ratna. Mr. Meher Wan
got the opportunity to discuss on the various issues related to science,
education and scientific and technological future of India. Here are excerpts
of the discussion-
MW: So, first of all
congratulations to you for recent achievements, specially for the announcement
of Bharat Ratna, The Highest Civilian Award of India to you. How do you feel
now?
C.N.R.Rao: Well!! I think its fine and very nice that’s
all I can say. I was not expecting or anything like that, so it’s nice. Many
thanks for considering me for this award.
MW: So let’s start with some memories of your
past times, how did this journey in science begin?
C.N.R.Rao: Well!! You know, it has been wonderful sixty
and odious years, since I first started my research in Banaras University (BHU)
for my M.Sc. degree, that was exactly sixty two years ago or more than that. Since
then, many things, of course I have been a professor, in fact, member of the
faculty, last fifty four years now. So, it has been a wonderful thing. Lots of
students who have worked with me for PhD and a few hundred people worked with
me, so it has been wonderful.
MW: Yeah, When did you realize
that chemistry is your cup of tea?
C.N.R.Rao: When I
was 17 years old.
MW: So, at that time you were in
B.Sc. or M.sc.?
C.N.R.Rao: I just
finished BSC at seventeenth then went to Banaras to do my MSc and then I
decided that I want to be a scientist. I was not attracted to become or take up
an IAS exam or that type of stuff, so I decided to take up science at that
time.
MW: So, why did you decide to
remain in chemistry?
C.N.R.Rao: Many
reasons, I was very much excited by
science in school actually, by wonderful school teachers here in Bangalore and
C.V. raman of course given lecture in
our school that somehow I saw him giving a lecture, I got very impressed by
that and then after that of course after my BSc in wanted to do MSc and research
that’s why I went to Banaras to do part research, part thesis, part course
things like that, so I went there and there you know I read a very famous book
of Linus Pouling – “Nature of the Chemical Bonds”, that book was very important
book for me, even now in the history of chemistry if there is one book which
changed the nature of chemistry was that book “Nature of the Chemical Bonds” by
Linus Pauling and I thought, I must do this kind of research that’s one reason
I left Banaras and went to United States after that.
MW: How do you remember the times
of Banaras Hindu University?
C.N.R.Rao: Oh!
Fantastic, BHU was a very good university, at that time you know everything was
DC not AC (Electricity- Power Supply). To do experiments, we had to work in
night when we had to convert DC in to AC, it is unbelievable there was no
regular alternating current electricity, any way in the midnight or in the
morning I used to came back from the library everywhere there were lab people
working BHU was a very active place in science, you know those days many UP
universities, Allahabad also was quite active, no longer the case, BHU is no
longer what it was, Aligarh was very good at one time, so it was a very nice
place to work I enjoyed , I owe a lot to BHU I am very loyal to BHU even now.
MW: Prof. J.V. Narlikar was also
student of BHU?
C.N.R.Rao: Yeah,
his father was the professor of mathematics. He is junior to me in age as well
as study.
MW: How do you perceive the
current condition of university system?
C.N.R.Rao: Oh! It’s terrible. Universities
are in very bad shape, we don’t have many universities with high standards in teaching or in research. We have to improve and have to put in a lot of
effort and lot of money to improve universities and first of all get rid of the
politics in universities, bureaucracy in universities, in addition we have also
to improve the facilities the lot of work has to be done and in the meantime of
course, we can’t wait for that to change so we are to create new institutions,
India requires many-many good institutions like this one where you are sitting
(JNCASR, Bangalore) where we have outstanding facilities where young people can
do very-very good research work, so we are to improve such things.
MW: I feel basic education of
science is very important and it plays a key role in development of scientific
scenario in the country, so how do you perceive the basic education in our
country?
C.N.R.Rao: Main
thing as I told you, the teaching of science at school level itself is not very
good. In spite of that many young people come up, in spite of this all there is
not so happy situation in school but still we have to do lot more to schools
education. Teachers and teaching have not got the adequate recognition and
importance in India. See, teaching profession is not respected for example I
don’t know the statistics of the world, which are the countries and where
teachers are given very high regard.
Number one country in this regard is Finland, it is very difficult to
become a teacher there, very easy to become an administrator, here it is
opposite, anybody can become a teacher. So, I think teachers should be given
importance, teaching profession should get more respect and facilities for
schools, lot of things have to be done and if we don’t do that in next five-ten
years, India will no longer we can expect to be a powerful nation. It won’t
become just by economic state, we have to improve the education, everybody in India
should get a good opportunity for that schools and colleges become very
important.
MW: So, does it need political
will?
C.N.R.Rao: Partly political, you know. Industries should
also help. After all, all of science for example let us take scientific
research, all of scientific research is supported by govt. how can that be?
After all America South Korea or even China industries should contribute at
least forty to fifty percent of the science expenditure for example. Education
also private investment is important. At least in this state in Karnataka where
we have a lot of private universities, private collages they are bit too
commercial, I think we have to worry about having Harward or Stanford and such
universities, they all are private. The best universities of America are
private universities of course there are some govt. universities like
California which is equally good but some of the top ones are private. Why do
we don’t have that? Even I can mention names of some industrialists, who can
easily start and easily set up with no govt. interference can be there due to
privatization, I don’t know why we have
not done enough for that?
MW: What is the state of industry-
academia relationship in India?
C.N.R.Rao: There is
not much relationship, you know, I have done extensive research publishing tons
of papers for last fifty and half years but I have never been approached by any
Indian industry for help. And there is a lot of foreign interest in it, my
research is being used quite a bit in industries abroad not in India. Because
Indian industries are not quite based on hi-fi technology they are based on
technologies which do not require modern science they manage with some old
stuff, now things are going to change and if India is to compete with other
countries then they will have to support science they will have to support
universities more. It has become the necessity of these days and I hope they
will do something in this direction.
MW: You have contributed
remarkably to scientific research in our country, so what are the great
achievements of Indian science according to you?
C.N.R.Rao: Well,
there are a few achievements. See, for example, in India whenever we have
mission oriented science or technology project like atomic energy or space, we
have done great, whenever we have been given well defined project to build reactors,
rockets etc, we have done well. Where there is no new science involved or
application of known science but that type of projects oriented or technology
oriented missions have succeeded fairly well. Where we have not succeeded is
real science. Real science means physics, chemistry and biology done in small
laboratories that are the ones that give progressive background. Reactors or
space science is based on the concepts evolved by the ordinary people, working
in small ordinary laboratories like you and me, that’s the one that made
science what it is today. Small lab level science should be supported more. Big
science has always been supported more, like atomic energy and space, small
science in universities and other labs have not had that much of support. But
now, even if you give money, our universities are not in such position to use
that money to improve. There is also too much otherwise politics, I don’t want
to say go in to politics as I am not a politician, on the other hand total bureaucracy
and other things don’t allow science to thrive in many of our education
institutions, but IITs are all okay, but even IITs, how come one of our IITs is
like MIT? They should be like MIT, but they are not. It is not just money, so
we have to, that’s why I said, we are facing grave problems where we have to
improve in a very big way. Individuals do, there are few individuals are
outstanding as far as people in Harward but institutions are very few as best
in the world, one, two or three, not many but the few individuals have done
extremely well internationally. But that number is very-very small, even I can
count in fingers them.
MW: We have started with Prof.
J.C. Bose, Prof. S.N.Bose etc.….What went wrong in the mean time?
C.N.R.Rao: Don’t
count that names, J.C. Bose was different, he created science; he was the first
great scientist of modern India. In 19th century he discovered the
coherer, he should have got the Nobel Prize. S.N.Bose and others are different,
they did little research rest of life they didn’t do much. See, personally speaking
I only respect those scientist who do science till the last date that’s why I
am admirer of J.C.Bose. Of course Raman did wonderful physics and Ramanujan did
great mathematics but he died in very young age. However, many others also did
great works, but J.C.Bose was scientist till last day. All the professors with
whom I worked very well known people of America or UK like Prof. Mott with whom
I am associated is also a Nobel laureate and at the age of 93, he is still
publishing papers. Personally, I like such people who are really dedicated, you
know, I still publish papers like a young man, in fact I give a competition to
young men to work and compete with me.
MW: I have seen it in your
lecture actually, few days back in Indian institute of science at a union of
material scientists.
C.N.R.Rao: Oh! Were
you there? How did you like that?
MW: I liked your work about
hydrogen generation through artificial photosynthesis for energy applications.
I liked it much. If we talk about materials science we legged behind in
micro-revolution but in nano science and technology this is not the case….
C.N.R.Rao: Yeah, in
nanotechnology we are not doing too badly due to targeted funding. What happened,
we have funded many institutions through the “Nano Mission”. Until “Nano Mission”
came, there was electron microscope in Kolkata only in that whole region. So
because of that some results have been obtained. Now, India is showing reasonable results in Nano
science and technology because micro electronics we did nothing. But in all aspects
of science, very few scientists are on frontier and that’s unfortunate.
MW: Much credit goes to you for
“Nano Mission”.
C.N.R.Rao: Only
“Nano Mission”.
MW: What type of support our
scientists still need?
C.N.R.Rao: Mere money would not help. We have to create
institutions. See, for example, you give
a lot of money to some educational institutions, they are not able to use that
money, because of local conditions bureaucracy, politics whatever. I don’t know,
is it same in all universities but I was told it is very bad generally many
places. We have to improve that part of infrastructure and everything in
universities. In addition, like IISERs on the other hand we have created are
outstanding. If we can create few more good institutions like IISERs they can
give us a boost and in the mean time we can improve our universities and we
will do that.
MW: Media can play a very
important role in highlighting the scientific achievements.
C.N.R.Rao: Yeah.
Media has done almost nothing for science. You see the TV program you will
start depressing, they will show murders, rapes and this kind of stuff or
politics, very rarely science has been figured in the value system of the
Indian society. In Indian society science come at the bottom, I don’t know why.
See china is different; I just got a letter just half an hour before in a
formal letter being induced as a foreign member of the Chinese academy. They
invited me for a function; I will have to go there. Anyway, they are so
organized I mean they are so proud to be Chinese and everything is so different from here. We are not so well organized we are
not so nationalistic somehow we are paying a price for it.
MW: So, I feel science
communicators should play an important role in this direction.
C.N.R.Rao: Of
course, Science communicators can, media also. Suppose media decides to make
science as important thing people will listen to that, because look at
television every day and night we are blaring all kinds of thing but never
education, science when did you see last program on science on TV.
MW: There may be reason behind it;
we teach how to do reporting on politics, crime but not how to do reporting on
science? Is it so?
C.N.R.Rao: No! No!
This is not the reason behind that, after all nobody teaches you how to
communicate all the rotten things, many things you learn yourself. It depends
on the interest. In china, are there people who taught them? No. They give
importance, Chinese give; South Korea invited me to give a lecture in a major
meeting of scientists. South Korea is fantastic, I would say in all the little
countries South Korea has done best. They got the freedom at the same time as
we Indians got in 1947. Look at what they have done see they give amount of
importance for education, scientific research. It is unbelievable.
MW: Sir, you are chairing the science advisory
council to prime minister.
C.N.R.Rao: yeah, we
have done many things, I will give a book to read to see what we have done,
there are a lot of important things we are concerned about.
MW: Yes, I will surely read,
please mention some important issues here, Sir.
C.N.R.Rao: It’s a
very large list you should read it, I can’t mention all here, but IISERS were
created by us, Ramanujan fellowships, improving scholarships to research students,
again we are going to improve it, many such important things. Creation of
IISERs is very obvious example; you know getting this big computing power for India.
Govt. has just given five thousand crores to improve the hyper computing. In
computation, you know India does not have good computing power; china has very
high, America of course has very high computing power. So we want to have some
computing power so that young people like you can do computing in a big way, so
many such things we do.
MW: We will have highest number
of youth in the world.
C.N.R.Rao: I tell
you the future belongs to you. Even, I agreed to see you because of that;
otherwise I may be wasting my time. Future belongs to young people. Sixty
percent of India is below thirty and thirty five years. Even imagine, after
thirty years later when Indian population become 1.5 billion there will be more
young people, that is the why I am in worry. We should work out a plan, well architectured
plan for education, progress and employment opportunities for young people,
until we do it we will be in very bad situation.
MW: How will we plan for it?
C.N.R.Rao: That is
a very big question, I will not go deep in this question as it will need
another many hours to discuss here, but I have been requesting you that you
should read this book and govt. should appoint a visionary group to think on
what should be done for younger generation in next twenty years but they have
not done yet. We should do that I have been telling them. You know, that
question is very serious to work on; it is not like an education commission. We
have to chock out the program for the youth as soon as possible in India.
MW: As I have mentioned that I
listened your lecture in IISc recently, you have shown very new research done
by your group on hydrogen production through artificial photosynthesis. You are
very actively engaged in research in spite of you administrative and other
engagements, your public life, how do you manage it?
C.N.R.Rao: Most of
the time I do only my research. Other things are my overtime. I work very hard,
I get up in 04.30 am in the morning everyday so by the time till normal working
time, I do 2-3 hours work. I spend much time with my student. I write papers
with them, I actually sit and work with them so that we get maximum amount of
research output, we optimize our effort. I write a lot, I write a lot of books,
review papers. But in addition to it a little bit, I contribute to our country in
various ways too, now I am not in regular administration as before I was president
and director of Indian society of material scientists, now only I am asked for
advisory.
MW: still it is a mystery to
youngsters like me, how do you manage your time?
C.N.R.Rao: See,
time management is an important thing, you know, Michael faraday has a very
famous statement, he said-
What is it, that can be made short or long,
What is it, that can be compressed or elongate,
What is it, that can you enjoy or detest,
What it is, that god almighty thought so precious,
to give us limited amount of it,
That is time….
You know
how have to use it. 90%of the people in the world do not know how to manage
time. They waste a lot of time. I try to use it. I don’t have people come to
chat; you are only an exception today. I just do my work. If I don’t have such
work, I read something.
MW: Finally, my last question,
what do you want say to youngsters?
C.N.R.Rao: I tell
you, young people should be left alone to follow the path, they want. They
should not be forced to go in to engineering etc. They should do whatever they like; they want
to be poet, economists, scientists doctors, whatever they want, but they should
not give up their passion. At least few of them should have high level of passion;
they are the ones who save India. We don’t need a lot of them, 5-10 % of the
population is enough and unfortunately that is not happening, people are forced
to go to engineering, everybody in Bangalore goes to engineering, science
colleges are being closed down, this is bad, very few goes to economics, etc,
only leftover go for that. We should not be like that, all professions need
very good people, As India need to come up in all areas so young people should
not listen bad advice of fool people like me and they should do what they think
is best with full passion. Even I have done that way, my parents allowed me to go
BHU very far to here to do MSc, they never told me do this do that, wonderful
parents I had. I owe a lot to them because this freedom of thinking and freedom
of working is very important for young people. Second, I think three important
qualities should be retained
by youngsters inside doggedness, perseverance and
tenacity, a little intelligence is also useful but, that comes afterwards. You
must not give up after all.
MW: It is very nice to talk to
you sir. Thanks a lot to you for such visionary words.
C.N.R.Rao: Same here;
Best wishes to you too.
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