On the occasion of the National Mathematics Day 2020, Pride of Bharat had organized a webinar to commemorate the birth anniversary of Srinivasa Ramanujan. Prof. K. Vijayaraghavan, Principal Scientific Advisor to Government of India, and Prof. Abhay Karandikar, Director of IIT-Kanpur, were the chief guests for the event which was attended by several academicians, students, and Math enthusiasts across the country.

The program commenced traditionally with a prayer to Mother Saraswathi, the Goddess of Knowledge. Smt. Padmapriya then took the audience through a pictorial journey of the short-yet-remarkable life of Srinivasa Ramanujan— from being a precocious child, to his college days, to adulthood in India and England culminating in recognition of his mathematical genius, and the abrupt end.

Narendra ji and Ravindra ji took over and provided an outline of initiatives undertaken by Pride of India to nurture innovators in India, help them reach global markets; and efforts in diffusing and indigenizing first-world technologies in India. Pride of India has been supporting innovations in sustainable refrigeration, agricultural marketing, e-mobility, waste to electricity, and biomedical technology, through engagement with faculty members at IITs and young entrepreneurs.

Continuing the line of thought, Prof. Vijayaraghavan offered tributes to Srinivasa Ramanujan and highlighted the Government’s approach to channelizing talent in the country for national good. Recalling the genius of Srinivasa Ramanujan who despite rudimentary training made it big in the field of Mathematics, he averred that a country with a billion people will surely have many with gifted abilities. Pradhan Mantri Innovative Learning Program – DHRUV is aimed at identifying and supporting prodigious students in Arts and Science in every district of the country.

With regards to the next class of students, the naturally talented ones, he said there are systems in place to carefully guide them in their areas of interest. It is for the average but hard-working students— and there are a large number of them— institutions like schools, colleges, and universities need to be strengthened to build their skillset. Such institutions, he said, must focus on finding the right balance between discipline and flexibility. Discipline, so that the educational quality isn’t compromised and flexibility to enable students to pursue multiple streams of knowledge. While highlighting the need for a socially responsible education system, he lauded the efforts of higher education institutions like IITs that are actively reaching out to the society by contributing to local issues. In summary, he said that for India to be Atmanirbhar, our education system should gear up to cater to the aspirations of all three classes of students: the gifted, the talented, and the hard-working.

Echoing Hon’ble Prime Minister’s call for Atmanirbhar Bharat, Prof. Abhay Karandikar emphasized the crucial role of Science & Technology for national progress. While India has done well in scientific publications, it lags in Intellectual Property and Patents, he observed. He lamented that our expenditure on R & D is still less than 1% of the GDP, whereas other nations are formulating trade policies based on patents. As nations transition into knowledge economies, intellectual property, he argued, will become the cornerstone of self-reliance. As an example, he presented the case of China and South Korea in the telecom sector. US & Europe which held most of the patents for 2G/3G have now been overtaken by China & South Korea that collectively account for 40% of the patents in 4G and 5G technologies. In a digitally connected world, technological dominance is closely tied to economics. As such, the clarion call for Atmanirbharta couldn’t have come at a better time, he observed.

Clarifying his position on Atmanirbharta, he said, India should look beyond manufacturing and focus on design and innovation. Unless India works to indigenize the entire cycle— invent, design, develop, commercialize, and manufacture— we will remain only a market and Atmanirbharta will be a distant dream, he argued. This lacuna is even more pronounced in sectors like Electronics and Biomedical Technology (surgical instruments, implants…etc.) where trade imbalance is high due to heavy reliance on imports.

Challenges notwithstanding, India has also been proactive on multiple fronts, Prof. Karandikar observed. For instance, India has made substantial contributions to telecom standards through Telecommunication Standards Development Society, India (TSDSI) which was set up in 2014. TSDSI’s 5G radio interface technology “5Gi” has been approved by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). As a more recent example, he spoke about a company incubated at IIT-Kanpur that manufactured and supplied ventilators to about 500 hospitals across the country during the pandemic. Generally, licensing and certification for critical care devices is a lengthy process, but Prof. Karandikar was delighted to share that it took them less than 90 days. This, he said, shows that with able leadership we can successfully channelize home-grown talent for nation building.

Calling on the academia and industry, he said, both need to work in tandem with the Government to put India on a mission mode. In particular, the academia has a greater responsibility in shifting focus from publications to translational research with larger public good in mind. He was appreciative of Government’s efforts in this direction and hoped academicians, investors, and entrepreneurs will propel India into a technological and economic superpower. This would not only mean an Atmanirbhar Bharat, but also a peaceful world. This would ensure Atmanirbhar Bharat, besides global welfare.

Sri Ravi Kumar Iyer, technocrat and thinker, enlightened the audience on India’s contribution to Mathematics before and after Ramanujan. Some of the prominent names included Bodhayana, Pingala, and Panini of the Vedic times; grandfathers of Comp Science, Aryabhata, Mahaviracharya, and Sridharacharya; Nilakantha Somayaji and Narayana Bhattathiri of Kerala School of Mathematics; the more recent Sri Radhanath Sikdar, Pathani Samanta, Sri Bharati Krishna Tirthaji; and the most recent Indian mathematicians like Dattatreya Kaprekar, Sujatha Ramadorai, Narendra Karmakar, Akshay Venkatesh (Fields Medal Winner), and Manjul Bhargava (Fields Medal Winner).

He reminisced on watching as a child Sri Dattatreya Kaprekar, known for the discovery of Kaprekar’s constant, traveling from village to village on cycle teaching Mathematics to students. Dedicating his talk to Sri Narender Singh Kapany, the Indo-American physicist considered the ‘father of fiber optics’, Raviji remembered “unsung heroes” like Sir JC Bose, Yellapragada Subbarow, and ESG Sudarshan whose achievements didn’t get the recognition they deserved. He hoped that in future, at least, Indian inventors and scientists will take up prominent positions in the scientific landscape of the world.

With a Q & A session and vote of thanks, the webinar on National Mathematics Day 2020 drew to a close.

 

 

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