Aloke Kumar's Blog

Awakening Vishwakarma: reinvigorating craftmanship in India Not long ago ‘land of Snake Charmers’ was a widely used epithet for India. By the turn of the millennia, it had a new sobriquet – land of IT engineers. By any metric of progress, this was a tremendous advance.   Many economists, column writers and business leaders considered this achievement so unique, so path breaking and so mesmerizing that they came up with new developmental paradigms around this alleged Indian exceptionalism. Aided by a ‘flat earth’ [1] , India was supposed to ‘leapfrog’ into a developed economy without investing in craftsmanship and manufacturing. An average 21 st century Indian engineer would, much like the ancient snake charmer, travel the world, mastering and executing complex codified protocols using a pungi [2] made by someone else. As an unprecedented global boom followed the dot com crash, the dying public sector engineering firms and derelict factories were soon forgotten as foss...

Engineering India’s Engineers Absorbed in unrivalled decadence and internecine warfare, medieval Indian elites slept through the Newtonian dawn of science. Bypassed by the industrial revolution, India became easy prey for western colonial masters. It soon lost the entirety of its traditional industry, in return gaining the dubious title of the crown jewel of British Empire.   Founders of the modern Indian republic therefore, saw technological pursuit as an essential tool preserving independence and asserting self-respect. This resulted in an early emphasis on establishing federal technical universities such as the Indian Institutes of Technology (modeled after the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), vast network of scientific research and nuclear laboratories, and a state led industrial development model based on mathematically conceived Soviet style five-year plans. The stage was all set for India to “step out from the old to the new,” led by the ‘bridge builders’ and...

Bacteria that turns to stone “Daadii ( दादी ) , please tell me a story”, I pleaded with my grandmother for the millionth time and, as always, she obliged with a smile. That night, my daadii recounted the story of Ahilya who, cursed by her husband for infidelity, was turned to stone but was eventually freed by Lord Rama. “Daadi, living beings cannot turn to stone”, I said with the assurance of an all-knowing young scholar with biology lessons to his credit. I thanked her for the story and went to sleep. Imagine my surprise, when years later, I found myself staring through a microscope to investigate a bacterium called Sporosarcina pasteurii (SP) and watching it slowly turn to ‘stone’! This was not    a case of my eyes playing tricks on me; rather I was witnessing the process of biomineralization.  Biomineralization refers to the process of mineral precipitation due to chemical alteration of the environment induced by the life processes. Many organisms are capab...

(Ram says) Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the most eminent of all? I have looked far and wide, there is no one on the right, On the left a chosen few, but who more eminent than you, my dear Ravan.  Copyright: Intellectual property posted on this Blog is copyright of the author(s) About the author:  Dr. Aloke Kumar is currently an Assistant Professor at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He tweets at @aalokelab Disclaimer:  The article expresses the personal opinion of the author

Yantra-Vigyaan Advaita: The Non-dualism of Science and Technology It is impossible to construct an engine which will work in a complete cycle, and produce no effect except the raising of a weight and cooling of a heat reservoir . The reader may not be faulted for concluding that this is one of those perfunctory disclaimers in an automobile, refrigerator or a pump repair manual. Perhaps written uninspiringly by a dreary mechanic plodding through a listless day at work. In that case, you may be surprised to learn that this single statement is pivotal to explaining profound conundrums such as why time seems to only move forward, how even black holes can emit radiation, the nature of life itself, and why it is extremely unlikely that Humpty Dumpty will spontaneously come together after the fall. This statement is the second law of thermodynamics expressed by none other than the father of quantum theory, Max Plank. This veritable law of nature is perhaps more familiar to non-scie...

Art, Science and Dharma- The Indic triad of education The most strident criticism of the Indian education system is that it stifles creativity and bores the students to death through rote learning. One tech guru even went public so far as to say that Indian culture lacks creativity [1]. In private, the criticisms are even harsher. This issue is recognized by several educators and industry leaders and unless it is stemmed, it will become a roadblock for growth and prosperity of Bharat. This is not a mere academic coffee table issue or fervid paranoia. Lack of creative juices can not only stifle long term growth but also imperil the long-term dividends of important strategic initiatives such as ‘Make in India’. Without inculcating creativity, India’s demographic dividend will soon turn into a deadwood nightmare. A perfect trap of stagnation. In fact, few countries have managed to get out of the vice-like grip of long-term growth loss before fully reaching their potential. For a ci...