September 2019 – The KGP Chronicle

Every Frame Has a Story

The office door creaked open and in walked a gentleman in a pink-purple striped shirt and grey trousers, with his laptop bag hung from over his right shoulder. It was 6:05 pm by the clock.

Shyamal Biswas – the name was synonymous with photography, in the campus. He is an ace photographer with credits from the National Geographic.

“My passion for photography goes back a long way. It accelerated after coming to IIT. I remember I just passed out of my 10^th standard, and was awarded a national scholarship of Rs 300. I spent 150 rupees to buy a Snapper camera and it all started from there”.

“I joined Jadavpur University and used to attend all their photography exhibitions. In one such exhibition, I came across a picture which captured a tribal Rajasthani lady smoking a beedi out of a moving bus. That struck me! I knew I could take pictures like these.

Here, around the campus, the Subarnarekha will always be my favourite photography spot”, he said.

“One year, Prof D J Sen, Chairman, Nehru Museum, approached me to capture the flora and fauna of IIT Kharagpur as the annual calendar theme, giving a 15-days deadline. That was the beginning of my pictures getting featured. I started taking birds’ pictures”.

“The genres of my photography kept changing with time. Initially it was general photography. Then it was wildlife that focused mainly on birds. Now I am more inclined towards human character, landscape and most importantly, street photography. This is closest to my heart. Each picture captured, has a story in itself. Either they have motion, or they have some unique subject, or some particular moment. I try to keep a human figure in most of my pictures. Presently, I am exploring subjects like colours of sunset and abstract photography. I do this out of my own satisfaction. I do this because I love doing this. I do this because it keeps me going”

“The best part is when you get recognized for your passion. I consider my greatest achievement when National Geographic featured two of my pictures. Interestingly, one of them was captured on my mobile. I was driving around the campus, when suddenly I came across a structure being constructed. I found the concept fascinating – one person on each step of the structure. I brought out my mobile and captured it. The framing and the context of this picture was what stood out”. I named this picture, ‘Stair to Heaven’.

The second picture featured by Nat Geo, was taken with a high end camera. Titled, ‘The Petal Collector’, the picture was clicked in Satkosia Gorge Sanctuary, Odisha. I randomly took a few shots of birds. It was later while I was going through the pictures back in my camp that I found a petal stuck in the bird’s claws. I was awestruck”. His face lit up with pride as he narrated this.

“Evolution of photography is very interesting” he continued. “People today, are moving over still photography. Point and shoot cameras will no longer exist. What will stay are high-end cameras, lens and mobiles phones. With the coming of digital platforms, photography has gone up by a few notches. In recent future, it will be dominated by mobile cameras. These days, the inclination is more towards video-blogging or Vlogs, than still photography. This is one area that can be developed”.

“Photography is an art”, he continued. “And why do you think people take up such art forms? To share it”. “No matter how much I say that I do not own my pictures, but somewhere deep in my subconscious, if someone likes or comments on my pictures, I feel satisfied, motivated”, he confessed.

“How do you manage all these with your job?’” I asked.

“Very tricky question”, he laughed. “I extract time and just drive off. It gets a bit taxing at times, but they’re worth it. It is my oxygen”, he signed off.

Agenda for the future

Natural biopolymers made from silk, chitosan, collagen, gelan gum are now not only used to make scaffolds for tissue engineering, but they can also be used to create a “3D cell culture microenviroment” to investigate the proliferation and migration of cancer cells. The information was given to the audience by Dr Subhas C. Kundu of the University of Minho, Portugal at the International Conference on Advances in Polymer Science and Rubber Technology (APSRT) at IIT Kharagpur held from September 24-27. At another session at the same conference, Prof. Sanjib K. Patra of the Department of Chemistry of IIT Kharagpur explained how a new class of polymers developed by his department could be used to develop cheap and efficient chemical sensors for detecting explosives such as nitroaromatics (NACs).

Inauguration of the International Conference on APSRT

From the use of polymers in life science, to the development of smart materials and composites, novel synthesis and modification process of elastomers to green and sustainable processes and technology for the rubber industry, everything was discussed under the sun at APSRT that saw 250+ delegates from 10 countries, 4 plenary lectures and a cumulative 130 lectures and presentations.

From conventional applications in the field of automobiles, construction, commodity materials and engineering, polymer and rubber materials are finding smart applications in different critical and strategic areas such as defence, microelectronics and the life sciences.

Keeping with the needs, researchers have been developing polymer based composite materials that have unique self-healing and shape-memory properties. But to explore new possibilities, new products and technology, collaboration between industry and research institutions is necessary. In keeping with this objective, APSRT brought together distinguished scientists, faculty members and technologists from the academia and industry the world over.

Prof. Tony McNally of WMG delivering his plenary lecture

“The main objective of this conference is to bring the scientists and technologists working in polymer science and rubber technology under one umbrella to discuss recent advances and innovative technologies…They will discuss the future trends towards 2030,” said Prof. Nikhil K. Singha, Head of the Rubber Technology Centre, which organized the conference.

Sustainability was a predominant issue at the conference, with the speakers not only emphasizing on sustainable technology but also the circular economy within which polymer science and the rubber industry had to root itself. The circular economy approach in fact was driving innovation within the broad sustainability framework, that is through waste prevention, re-use, repair, remanufacture and recycling. Attention was directed at the making of automotive tires from dandelion, the use of biobased products like wood scraps being as substitutes for rubber additive. Sufficient attention was also drawn to recycling technology of not only rubber but also PET bottles, and the use of polymeric materials as sustainable solutions for various applications like architectural coatings, protecting coatings, refrigerants and fire suppressing agents. Prof. Sadhan K. De, retired professor of IIT Kharagpur, who was the Guest of Honor at the inaugural session, stressed on the effective utilization, recycle and reuse of plastics.

An overwhelming number of lectures brought home the novel ways in which polymers are being used for biomedical applications. Attention was drawn to how niche products like fluoropolymers can be used to fabricate nanoengineered 3D printed anatomical models for surgical planning and clinical training, nanogels can be used to target and kill cancer cells preferentially, how hydrogels are already being used to produce polyurethane wound dressings capable of indicating infection, how resilin and silk-based hybrid biomaterials can be used to produce hydrogels for cartilage tissue engineering or how molecules are being developed for long term drug release by controlling hydrophilic-hydrophobic balance of the superstructure of molecules that are designed through urethane linkages and other myriad innovations.

The development of new and smart materials drew as much attention. Take the synthesis of PEEK (polyether ether ketone) polymer and its composites that are already being used in aircraft, Dielectric elastomers that can be used in actuators, sensors or artificial muscle, Nanocomposites with periodic arrangement of nanoparticles that can be used in photonic devices and sensors, or the composite polymer material that can immobilize and catalytically degrade nerve agents.

Novel polymerization techniques and the functionality of polymers were also discussed. Some like Dr Huiqi Zhang of Nankai University, China, suggested controlled radical precipitation polymerization. Others suggested the use of ultrasound or ultrasonic polymerization to synthesize polymer nanoparticles or new ways to do RAFT polymerization, design and synthesis of step-growth polymers, or electrospinning to engineer biomaterials for biomedical research. Prof. Anton Klok of EPFL (École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne), Switzerland, spoke about the bio-application of polymers.

Yoshikuni Teramoto from Kyoto University, Japan

“I am confident that the delegates participating in the Conference will make significant contributions for the development of science and technology and the deliberations by the peer in the field will enthuse the budding scientists to find new directions for further research culminating in sustainable development of rubber science and technology,” said Prof. Sriman Kumar Bhattacharyya, Director, IIT Kharagpur during his inaugural address.

The Chief Guest for the occasion was Prof. Tony McNally of WMG, who also delivered a plenary lecture at the conference. He mentioned that rubber and polymer composites have been one of the main focus of WMG and there are lots opportunity of collaboration in this field with IIT Kharagpur. The American Chemical Society has been associated with the conference and interacted with authors and young scientists on the last day of the conference.

Facebook Awards IIT KGP’s AI Research

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Animesh Mukherjee, Associate Professor at the Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Kharagpur has been selected for the Ethics in AI Research Award in the ‘operationalizing ethics’ category for his project “Targeted Bias in Indian Media Outlets”.

The Award is part of Facebook’s initiative to encourage research on AI ethics and address intricate challenges and complex ethical questions in the AI domain. The award-winning project is part of collaborative work with Prof. Pawan Goyal and Ph.D. student Souvic Chakraborty.

This award-winning project deals with the burning issue of fake news. The scope of the project involves leveraging available information on online published media to predict fake news or identify bias in the news media articles. One of the major challenges in this work is formulating something as abstract as “bias” in a quantifiable manner.

Fake news has become a major point of concern in India owing to the explosive growth in the total number of smartphone users and a massive increase in the number of overall Internet users. Also, the emergence of social media and other forms of digital media make it difficult to identify the actual source of fake news among the huge number of secondary or even primary sources. In India, most of the laws being of the pre-internet era addressing this issue remains a legal complication. Rise of data analytics is adding to the issue with targeted content creation. When conventional media platforms propagate such bias they end up shaping the view of readers. During elections, such bias could lead to violation of EC regulations through its sparse, abstract and non-quantifiable nature. The situation could lead to narrowing down the voices of individuals and groups who do associate with targeted campaigns making use of such bias.

There has been little research to identify bias automatically in news media apart from manual studies done by independent journalists. As India crosses the half a billion smartphone users mark, it is more important than ever to characterize information available online through automatic algorithms and auto-updating crowd-sourced knowledge bases to restrict the spread of falsehood.

Prof. Mukherjee, who has been working in the areas of AI, ML, big data analytics and information retrieval, has identified the solution in leveraging available information on online published media to predict fake news or identify bias in the news media articles.

“One of the major challenges in this work is formulating something as abstract as “bias” in a quantifiable manner,” he remarked.

The team has collected 20-years’ data of three national media outlets and quantified bias on three metrics – coverage bias, word choice bias and topic choice bias. The team further plans to extend the reach of their study to local and digital media outlets.

Explaining the methodology, Mukherjee said, ”for a study with two datasets, the coverage bias was formulated as the ratio of the number of mentions of terms pertaining to two datasets. In case of more number of datasets, the researchers propose inverse of entropy in the distribution of words pertaining to each dataset. Word choice bias was formulated as the ratio of the positive and the negative words for each dataset. Topic choice coverage was formulated as the divergence score from the aggregate topic distribution for each data set.”

Talking about the future roadmap of this project Mukherjee confirmed they have plans to develop browser extensions to show bias score in real-time for identifiable sources.

On June 17, 2019, Facebook launched an India specific request for proposal seeking projects on Ethics in AI Research under three themes — a) operationalizing ethics, explainability and fairness b) governance and c) cultural diversity. The objective of the initiative is to help support thoughtful and groundbreaking academic research in the field of AI Ethics that takes into account different regional perspectives the three selected thematic areas. Synergy with the line of research that the TUM Institute for Ethics in AI was a key parameter.

A statement by the company says, “AI technological developments pose intricate and complex ethical questions that the industry alone cannot answer. Important research questions in the application of AI should be dealt with not only by companies building and deploying the technology, but also by independent academic research institutions. The latter are well equipped to pursue interdisciplinary research that will benefit society.”

Going forward

Professor Tony McNally, Director- International Institute for Nanocomposites Manufacturing; Director-National Polymer Processing Centre of WMG, was the Chief Guest at the International Conference on Advances in Polymer Science and Technology (APSRT) being held at IIT Kharagpur between September 24-27 by the Rubber Technology Centre of the Institute. He spoke to KGP Chronicle on the legacy of Lord Bhattacharyya and WMG’s long relationship with IIT Kharagpur.

On Lord Bhattacharyya and WMG:

Lord Bhattacharyya with Margaret Thatcher (Courtesy: WMG website)

Lord Kumar Bhattacharyya was the Founder of the WMG in 1980 at a time when British industry was in dire straits and needed help. He was a man before his time. He was a visionary. He had the idea of merging academic excellence with industrial relevance so that the results of academic research could be translated quickly and, more importantly, industries could get the help of universities quickly. He had this idea at a time when many were not interested. So he approached the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Warwick. Lord Bhattacharyya, along with a secretary, started WMG and here we are 40 years later with 10 buildings, tens and millions of pounds in turnover, 300 PhD students, 300 post-doctoral researchers and about 2000 staff and internationally focussed units.

Over the decades, Lord Bhattacharyya built relations with industrial partners and leading companies. Most of the early successes were with Indian industry – Tata Motors for example. He was great friend of Ratan Tata and following from that success he started working with companies like TVS in India. But the key contribution he made in UK was that he brokered the purchase of Jaguar Land Rover by the Tata group, thereby creating thousands of jobs in the UK that are in existence today because of Lord Bhattacharyya’s contribution. That is a tremendous legacy to leave.

Eventually, Lord Bhattacharyya’s services came to be of great demand by other industries,other universities around the world and particularly by other governments. He ended up being advisor to many governments – South Africa for instance- over many years. The model that he adopted is being discussed in great detail by other countries, such as in Australia, which is looking very closely at this model of co-location of industry with an university department.

The other major contribution of Lord Bhattacharyya was in teaching, particularly teaching for industry. He set up many courses related to the needs of industry – supply chain, logistics, manufacturing systems engineering, engineering management and so on. As a consequence, today there are 13-14 different executive courses run by WMG which are very popular. The other model he introduced was designing bespoke engineering programs for companies. There are many people who work in companies who have not been able to go to universities for some reason. What he used to do is design programs from the scratch so that employees could attend university – one week per month they would study at the university and the other weeks of the month be with the company. This proved to be very popular. WMG has implemented this model while working with Jaguar, with Tyson Technology.

Overall, the contribution is immense in terms of the opportunities he gave people, like myself, also the model which is now being adopted across the world on how to transfer research to industry, how to train industry or transfer skillset that the industry really needs..

On WMG’s collaboration with IIT Kharagpur:

Prof. McNally at the International Conference on APSRT, where he was Chief Guest at the inauguration function

Lord Bhattacharyya was very proud of being an alumnus of IIT Kharagpur. I joined WMG six years ago, and since then have been witness to an integrated system of PhD programs, Masters and UG programs. Then there is also the UKRI (UK Research and Innovation) link with IITs, especially IIT Kharagpur, and there is a drive for collaboration to focus on global challenges like clean water, energy, sustainability, recycling and electrification of transport. And this is an area that IIT Kharagpur, WMG and Tata Group, especially Tata Motors are very much focussed on. As I speak, there is a delegation from IIT Kharagpur at WMG looking at the battery facility.

So the plan on electrification of vehicles is already moving and the reason why I accepted the invitation to come to the International conference on Polymer Science and Rubber Technology is that we wanted to do exactly the same kind of research with new materials, polymers and rubber technology, functionality, and intelligent materials. The Rubber Technology Centre at IIT Kharagpur is globally famous, long established, with its alumni spread all over the world, occupying top positions in universities and industry. Unfortunately, UK has not invested greatly in rubber technology in universities, so it makes sense to collaborate with the best.

Prof. McNally delivered his plenary lecture at the APSRT conference on ‘Composites of Functionalized 1D/2D Nanomaterials and Polymers

WMG also has collaboration with IIT Kharagpur in autonomous vehicles. WMG is working on driverless cars and driverless transport. WMG is also an international partner of IIT Kharagpur’s Centre for Advanced Manufacturing. Also, we have students of IIT Kharagpur come over WMG for internships and Masters. This has been historically in the case of Metallurgy but now we are looking at Joint PhDs as well.

On carrying forward Lord Bhattacharyya’s legacy:

Lord Bhattacharyya’s shoes are very difficult to fill because he was unique. It would be a silly thing to even try to do that. We will carry on as usual. But there is, I believe, a vast influence missing. As a university we will try to get another person of similar standing who had influence in the government, around the world, and in industry and try to possibly continue with the legacy. The groundwork is set and the foundations are strong. Lord Bhattacharyya used to meet professors every month and his favourite phrase during that time was ‘consolidate’. Nobody could stand still and his directive was “go, go”, “build, build”. If you hear that once a month it becomes instilled in you. So that mentality is there. In that sense, we will continue to build on the foundations. But we need someone as influential as Lord Bhattacharyaa so that we can have that kind of presence globally.

Banner and Pics of Prof. McNally: Suman Sutradhar

Gone in a flash?

It is that time of the year. The beginning of a string of festival months that keep both online and offline stores busy. It is also that time when customers are most likely to be wooed with online flash sales (OFS) that give them the opportunity to purchase goods at large discounts.

Big e-tailers prepare for OFS as they would prepare for war as this is also their golden chance to not only attract buyers but also ensure that disloyal customers come back to their site. They spruce up the operations, marketing and logistics components, especially beefing up the technology backbone in preparation for the onslaught.

Most of the preparation is done keeping in mind pre- and during- OFS services, given that such sale invariably carries risk of service failure. However, latest research by a joint team which comprised members from the Vinod Gupta School of Management of IIT Kharagpur, shows that there ought to be as much preparation for post-sales operations for OFS. This is because a responsive recovery protocol does wonders to the buyer’s self-esteem and level of satisfaction, thereby ensuring e-loyalty to the e-tailer.

One might recall with ease “The Big Billion Day” sale introduced by Flipkart in October, 2014 that received a massive backlash from customers due to technical glitches that the site encountered as it’s servers crumbled under the pressure of heavy traffic. A generic apology email issued to all customers post the incident was intended to restore the buyer’s self-esteem and trust in the website.

Why buyer’s self-esteem? This is because, in case of OFS, which is a ‘time-pressured failure-prone environment’, the opportunistic customer enters into play in order to secure a short-term financial gain despite knowing the potential risk of service failure. In case of service failure, the customer attributes the failure to self, which is what makes the failure recovery process more complicated. However, as this study finds, perceived justice with service recovery (PJWSR) in the mind of the customer could go a long way in leading to customer satisfaction (post-recovery satisfaction or SSR). This may even lead to e-loyalty, which is what all e-tailers target.

A few prior studies have explored customer behaviour in familiar online environments, but none have examined e-service failures or the consequences of recovery of those failures. The joint study by the research team not only looks in depth into e-commerce service failure and contributes to customer opportunism literature, but also proposes a new contextual scale for measuring OFS e-commerce service failure and the impact of recovery-induced justice on a customer’s loyalty. The research team consisted of Prof. Saini Das from VGSoM, Prof. Abhishek Mishra from IIM Indore and Prof. Dianne Cyr from the Beedie School of Business, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada.

Drawing from previous research by Tan et al., the joint study classifies service failure as functional, information and system failures. The first kind of failure may include website crashing, becoming inaccessible during purchase, or increasing customer efforts for making a purchase. Incorrect or incomplete information regarding product specifications, offers, hidden charges, firm policies, security features etc constitute information failure. System failures include poor overall system quality of an e-commerce website which inhibits effective product/service delivery to end-customers.

It is not that customers are unaware of the risks. “Yet, such failures during OFS cause customer disappointment and have a negative effect on the PJWSR,” says the study, probably more than what would be expected under normal circumstances.

The study defines PJWSR as the “customer’s cognitive and hedonic evaluations of the efficacy of the overall recovery process, including apology and subsequent compensations received after the service failure….” PJWSR is composed of all three – Distributive justice, which indicates the customer’s perception of fairness of the monetary/non-monetary compensation received as part of the post-failure recovery process; Procedural justice, which refers to the customer’s belief about the adequacy of the flexibility and efficiency of the recovery process itself; and Interactive justice, which refers to the extent of fairness, honesty, courtesy and empathy with which service providers communicate with the customers during the recovery process.

The recovery process is crucial in the case of OFS because customer opportunism has such a dominant role to play in this kind of sale. The dynamics of recovery in OFS is very different from that in a regular shopping environment since an opportunistic customer is easier to recover despite her dissatisfaction due to failure. The study says, “…an opportunistic customer, with failure self-attribution and lower expectation of acquisition from an OFS, considers a service recovery as more judicious, compared to a non-opportunistic customer, even though (s)he is equally disenchanted with the failure.”

The study goes on to say that PJWSR, by mitigating the negative experience of the customer in case of an OFS failure, makes the customer satisfied and lowers their intention to switch.

The study has the job cut out for managers of the e-tail business. They must not only ensure that their OFS avoid functional, information and system failures. They should also be extremely concerned about providing appropriate service recovery that includes a high sense of distributive, procedural and interactive justice for customers after a service failure.

In fact, the study suggests, the e-tailer can adopt targeted service recovery efforts for OFS customers. They have to avoid failures, but “if the failure does happen, they need to create justice through effective recovery” in order to “latch” on to customers who engaged with them out of opportunism in the first place.

Circle of reason

It has been six years since Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, published her landmark book, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, and stirred the hornet’s nest. She not only raised questions about the severe dearth of women in leadership positions or their difficulties in the workplace, but she did something different – she asked women to question themselves about what they were doing to change the status quo and encouraged them to take charge.

The book, and Sandberg’s NGO, LeanIn.org, have since caused a ferment of sorts, inspiring women, young and old, to be vocal about their dreams, ambitions and aspirations. Employers across the world have felt ‘Lean In’ insidiously changing the weather, if not the climate, of the workplace. They are witnessing more and more women asserting their rights to equal or better pay, negotiate for a vacation or that deserved promotion.

‘Lean In’ does not work in thin air. It works through ‘Lean In Circles’ that can be formed in colleges, communities or the workplace where women talk openly about their ambitions and are encouraged to take on new challenges. Women in over 170 countries have joined the Lean In community. And now many of IIT Kharagpur’s women are part of that growing community.

The Lean In Chapter at IIT Kharagpur started in 2017 when Ayushi Mrigen, then a student of maths and computing, read Sandberg’s book and felt inspired, Jasmine Jerry, a 3^rd year UG student of Aerospace Engineering informs me. She has been part of the Lean In Chapter since early 2018, and is already feeling the change. “I feel more confident while approaching people,” says Jasmine, who is also exploring her interest in aerial robotics with an alumni the Lean In Chapter has got her in touch with.

Mrigen, who has now graduated, enumerated the chapter’s objective in an article (https://medium.com/lean-in-iit-kharagpur/what-are-we-doing-at-lean-in-iit-kharagpur-bbb3d3832a26): “The major objective of this group is to create a community for women in IIT Kharagpur, and to give them a platform where they can learn, be inspired and serve as role models for others in the community.”

Samruddhi Pataskar, a member of the Lean In Circle, states the reason more explicitly (https://medium.com/@samruddhipataskar.pune/lean-in-iit-kharagpur-chapter-cae9706f5c18), “Although girls have displayed engineering proficiency and conquered challenges in STEM across the globe, we are yet to see a balanced gender ratio in engineering colleges. With a small peer group, it can get intimidating to pursue tasks that require teamwork. We aim at bringing together the girls of IIT Kharagpur to a common platform where they can find people with common interests, learn from each other, form teams and collaborate to work on projects.”

The Circle meets every week, where about 15–20 women come together for about an hour and engage in debate or discussion regarding at least one aspect which they believe will help them grow. “We try to discover our strengths, weaknesses, priorities, goals etc. through these activities,” writes Mrigen.

Complementing this slow and steady engagement are the “targeted workshops” that try to expose women to a variety of skills and options. They have seen overwhelming response from the campus girls. Take the two from the ‘Skill series’ – one was on Competitive Coding and the other was on Communicating with Confidence. There have also been two ‘Career series’ workshops – one a webinar with a former analyst of McKinsey to give an idea of what consultancy means, and the other a workshop where Mr. Rahul Sachdev from SAP Labs gave them a lowdown on Design Thinking.

A mentorship program with the alumni is picking up as well. A recent interactive session on August 31– titled ‘The Power of Us’ – saw lectures by Dr Malathi Lakshikumaran, a renowned Intellectual Property Rights lawyer, and Prof. Sudeshna Sarkar, Head of the Centre for Artificial Intelligence. The Lean In Circle has also been regularly interviewing successful female alumni and publishing these interviews in order to provide an opportunity for the college students to interact with their role models, and give them ready inspiration.

I talk with Shruti Shaunik, one of the lead coordinators of the Chapter and a fifth year student of Chemical Engineering. She has also helped set up an FQ Lounge, which is supposedly a “destination”, be it at conferences, companies and college campuses, where women connect, collaborate and activate change together. It is quite obvious that Shruti is thinking ahead.

Shruti says, “The idea behind Lean In is that if you have a group of women actually invested in your success and who believe in you, you will definitely develop the confidence to approach anyone who you believe would be helpful. Just because the next helpful person is a guy, you will not hold back because now if you have the sufficient confidence or the skills to approach anyone who can help.” True to her words, the Lean In Chapter at IIT Kharagpur has not held back from either enlisting or seeking the help of the opposite gender in furthering its objectives. Take the Competitive Coding workshop, which was run by the boys.

The Lean In movement in general has been criticized for selling women wrong ideas – among them the belief that the woman is somehow to blame for an inequitable workplace, that she needs to behave like a man to be paid like a man, that all women are necessarily her well-wishers, giving women a misplaced sense of fulfilment and so forth. But Lean In the world over, quite evidently, has had as many detractors as ardent supporters.

Most certainly, Shruti and her team mates, who have taken charge of their future, belong to the second category. They are clearheaded about a lot of things – they want to stand up for themselves and are eager to learn and teach themselves ways of doing it. They believe that perceptions need to change, as much of women as that of men. And they also believe that it would help the cause if women bolstered and mentored one another.

“The larger aim of the movement is to make women realize that their power lies in unity,” says Shruti. Despite the mid-sem, the needs of the Lean In Circle is never far away from her mind. She is already thinking of how best to inform and involve 1st year students into the Lean In Circle for giving them a headstart and a more permanent place to hold Lean In Circle and FQ Lounge meetings.

New ways of using science

How important is the skill of listening in research? Plenty. Anyone who attended this week’s International dissemination workshop on ‘Qualitative methods for Research in Socially Inclusive and Sustainable Agricultural Intensification’, organized by the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences of IIT Kharagpur, could not have missed this obvious conclusion.

The workshop was part of the ongoing research project – “Promoting Socially Inclusive and Sustainable Agricultural Intensification in West Bengal and Bangladesh” or ‘SIAGI’ – sponsored by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), Government of Australia.

Director, IIT KGP, talking to Prof. Christian Roth (right) of CSIRO

But the SIAGI team, drawn from Australia, India and Bangladesh (IIT Kharagpur is an integral part of it), attached a rider. It could not be just listening. It had to be what they called ‘ethical community engagement’ or ECE.

ECE is an overarching engagement strategy that the SIAGI team has developed in order to explore and understand how agricultural intensification affects disadvantaged rural communities in villages of West Bengal and Bangladesh, and how it can enable these people to access the benefits of agricultural intensification.

Some of the other key methods and concepts used by SIAGI, such as Theory of Change, Bio-economic modelling, Integrated Assessment Framework for Evaluating Interventions, Inclusive Agricultural Value Chains, Nutrition Sensitive Agriculture and Social Empowerment, were also introduced to the participants of the workshop by speakers from CSIRO (Dr. Christian Roth, Dr. Lilly Lim-Camacho, Dr. Lucy Carter, Dr. Uday Nidumolu), Australian National University (Dr. Wendy Merritt) and Livelihoods and Natural Resources Management Institute (Dr. V. Ratna Reddy).

But it is ECE that clearly lies at the heart of the SIAGI project, and it is ECE that informs the other concepts in SIAGI’s operational framework. The research project has also adopted another unique approach of disseminating the research outcomes to the academia, policy makers and government agencies and community based organizations.

Prof. Roth taking a question from Prof. Jenia Mukherjee, a participant at the workshop

Ms. Michaela Cosjin of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO, Australia), which is the lead agency of SIAGI, explained ECE while talking about “Community Engagement and Changing Approach to Collection of Primary Data”: “In SIAGI, we have used a participatory approach. This builds on an approach developed in the late 1980s and we pushed it further so that it is much more based on the ethical principles of respect, dignity, inclusion and ensuring that there is equity between all participants.”

Researchers and experts, typically, go about their research using specialized methodologies that treat people as subjects and themselves as especially endowed experts with special qualifications and credentials capable of exploring and authenticating knowledge. Even in Western models of ethical research practice, the relationship between the researcher and the subject continues to mechanically draw from traditional paradigms set within biomedical contexts.

This often does irreparable harm to research partners. “Participation as research subjects rather than partners automatically triggers a risk averse approach to engagement, which impedes rather than empowers,” says a SIAGI report.

The Australian team with Prof. Pulak Mishra (right) at the workshop

Contrary to this, SIAGI holds the conviction that the community has the potential to understand, analyse and interpret dynamics of knowledge transaction as equal partners. It believes that the community can become a decisive partner and co-creator of knowledge and is able to use this knowledge for transforming and empowering themselves and their situation – which is often defined by others and not by themselves. Communities need to be able to identify what makes them, who they are and how they can change themselves from where they are.

But how to achieve this? This is where listening comes in. “At SIAGI we are embarking on a journey of ethical community engagement, where especially the NGO partners are trained to listen and work with households to create their own unique voice,” said Dr. Christian Roth of CSIRO, who heads the SIAGI project.

At the workshop at IIT Kharagpur on September 16-17, Ms Michaela Cosjin reiterated that inclusive engagement demanded specific skills and attitudes integral to the engagement. It requires non-judgemental listening and very sophisticated interpersonal skills. It also involved employing qualitative methods, such as listening to stories and scenario analysis, careful thinking and careful planning before going to the community with questions. A flexible monitoring and evaluation process, creating circumstances for co-learning and co-creating with the communities involved is also needed.

ECE has brought results. For example, in Uttar Chakuakheti of Alipurduar district of West Bengal, where two faculty members from IIT Kharagpur – Prof. Pulak Mishra and Prof. Bhagirath Behera, as well as three PhD students have been actively involved in carrying out the research on agricultural intensification. It is observed that despite initial indifference from the community, persistent engagement by the SIAGI team has helped change the attitude of the tribal community of this village in Alipurduar into active participation and collaboration. The community has been able to intensify agriculture and simultaneously claim due entitlements from the government to establish their rights to land. Community engagement has catalysed the inclusion of farmers –men and women belonging to different socio-economic groups.

Working with NGOs, such as CDHI, PRADAN, and Sushilan (Bangladesh), has been able to gradually and systematically, mobilize and bring on board various stakeholders. The most important manifestation of this mutual trust has been the creation of water and silt management committee with visible representation from the community.

Dr. Christian Roth said, “We wish to take the results outside SIAGI and inform other academicians in Australia, India, Bangladesh, and NGOs so that they can replicate the lessons and practices that NGOs working with SIAGI have developed.” Thrilled to introduce to research scholars at IIT Kharagpur the “new way of using science”, he pointed out that “Qualitative methodologies may not be about numbers but they are a rigorous scientific method and, in my mind, qualitative and quantitative methods complement each other.”

Prof. Jenia Mukherjee of the Department of Humanities and Social Science of IIT Kharagpur, who was a participant at the workshop, said of its efficacy, “The workshop gave us hands-on training on how to go to the field and talk to the community, not only to involve the community but also to engage it. It taught us about what methods can be used in ethical community engagement so that the legacy of the project goes on for a long time. And that is what is required in social science research…so that we can transcend our theoretical research to action research by deeply involving and engaging the community.”

[As part of SIAGI since its inception in 2016, Prof. Pulak Mishra and Prof. Bhagirath Behera and their team of students have been engaged in economic analysis of value chains, model policy implications, and mapping the institutional landscape of West Bengal]

Get Electric Power from Your Wet Clothes

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Indian scientists have the reputation of innovating unique solutions to global challenges befitting the key factors of affordability and resource availability. While the success of such innovations has made ISRO one of the most respected space agencies in the world, several such innovations by researchers in academia have brought in momentous changes in the lives of people in India.

In one such feat, researchers from IIT Kharagpur have ventured into the avenue of clean energy generation in an unexampled way of sourcing electricity from the drying of clothes in open space. Drying of clothes is a part and parcel of our lives and who could have thought that it can meet the power requirements through Nanoscale Energy Harvesting.

Traditionally woven cellulose-based fabric contains a tiny channel network which has been used by the group of researchers for electrical power generation. They successfully guided the movement of saline water amidst continuous evaporation quite analogous to water transport across the parts of a living plant. The device design inherently exploits a large transpiration surface for achieving a sustainable motion of salt ions, through natural evaporation phenomenon.

“The clothes we wear are made from cellulose-based textile which has a network of nano-channels. Ions in saline water can move through this interlace fibrous nano-scale network by capillary action inducing an electric potential in the process,” explained lead researcher Professor Suman Chakraborty, a professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department, and a lead researcher of the group.

The device has been tested in a remote village across a surface area of 3000 sq. metre. Around 50 cloth items were put up for drying by washermen in the village. These clothes were connected to a commercial supercapacitor which discharged electricity of around 10 Volt in almost 24 hours. This stored energy is enough to glow a white LED for more than 1 hour.

The novelty of this innovation is in its frugal means instead of energy harvesting from complex resources emphasized Prof. Chakraborty. “It was beyond imagination that a wet cloth being dried in a natural atmosphere could be made capable of generating clean energy. This would be extremely beneficial in addressing the essential power requirements for the underprivileged community and in remote areas,” he opined.

Another novelty of this device is the use of intrinsic surface energy of the fabric for driving the current. In contrast other artificially engineered power generation devices need external pumping resources.

The economy of scale can be achieved by drying a set of regular wearable garments under the sun-light. “This eventually culminates into a utilitarian paradigm of low-cost power harvesting in extreme rural settings,” explained Chakraborty.

India’s summer climate would serve as an enhancer to maximize the flow-induced electrical potential. However, any geographical region with a hot and dry climate would be effective for using this technology seamlessly.

The above research has been recently published in Nano Letters (https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.nanolett.9b02783), a high-impact Journal from the American Chemical Society. The research team consisted of Ph.D student Sankha Suvra Das, MS student Vinay Manaswi Pedireddi and Assistant Professor Aditya Bandopadhyay, under the overall supervision of Professor Chakraborty. The research has been financially supported by the Institute Challenge Grants, a unique initiative from IIT Kharagpur.

Deshla hits the road

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IIT Kharagpur lived up to the ‘Make in India’ challenge by launching Deshla, prototype of a fully indigenous next-gen electric auto, on September 11. The vehicle was designed and built from scratch by Electric Vehicle Group (EVG) of the Institute. Deshla, when commercialized, is bound to give the makers of both Totos (e-rickshaws) and autos a run for their money for the rare combination it has been able to produce.

With its powerful motor, lithium ion battery that can last up to 6-7 years, high load carrying capacity, sturdy frame and yet easy manoeuvrability, Deshla is a better option than diesel-guzzling, polluting autos and even the flimsy and high-maintenance Totos. It is not only clean and green, but it also steals a march on both when it comes to the issues of safety, reliability, performance, and comfort.

Why is Deshla a better option in every way? Here’s how.

Battery: It uses lithium-iron-phosphate batteries that last for 6-7 years. Totos have lead acid batteries that have a life cycle of 9-10 months at the most and need to be replaced at a cost of Rs 20,000-25,000 every time. Deshla’s batteries are more expensive but given their long life, it gains in the cost-benefit analysis. Besides, they provide uniform power delivery unlike lead-acid batteries. As a result, the pick-up and performance of Totos get consistently sluggish, while Deshla gives uniform performance.

Motor: Totos’ lead acid batteries provide less amperage and they can serve only up to 1 kW motor. Deshla’s battery can provide a higher amperage and easily powers the 3.5 kW motor, which in turn provides more torque and therefore higher speed. Deshla can travel at a peak speed of 50 km/hr.

Suspension: Deshla’s back wheels have independent suspension, as in cars and unlike in Totos, which have rigid axles, as in trucks. This means that the Deshla is far more stable and jerk free on bad roads.

Steering wheel: Unlike the handle bar in Totos and autos, Deshla has a steering wheel that works on gear mechanism with high mechanical advantage. This was a conscious decision of the team to make it impossible for the vehicle to make very sharp turns which autos are infamous for. The gear mechanism allows for only one way motion. So bad roads will not automatically turn the steering wheel of Deshla as they do to the handle bars of Totos and autos.

Brake: Hydraulic braking instead of mechanical braking is used for more effective braking.

Director, IIT KGP, congratulating the team

Easily serviceable: Unlike the Totos, which have their mechanical and electrical components shipped from China and assembled here, Deshla is completely indigenous. The EVG team of IIT Kharagpur has created the embedded and power electronics subsystems like BMS (battery management system), Motor Controller, Battery Charger, GPS and 3G Cellular connectivity modules in-house. This means the Deshla will be more reliable, easy to service/repair, and customizable.

As Prof. Vikranth Racherla, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and PI of the project, put it, “Instead of retro-fitting an existing vehicle, we thought we would build one up from scratch, especially because the design is so important for an electric vehicle. It was also important for the students to learn to do things from scratch… Each design has been conceived, analysed, prototyped and the cycle repeated many times before the actual product came out.”

Prof. Baidurya Bhattacharya, trying his hand on Deshla

The project is the brain-child of Life Fellow of the Institute, Shri Bijoy Chatterjee, and funded by another distinguished alumnus, Dr. Purnendu Chatterjee. So far, funds to the tune of around Rs 46 lakhs have been provided for the project.

Around 50 students from various backgrounds have been associated with this project since its inception three years back. Two students who graduated in 2018 have even stayed back on campus to steer the project together with Prof. Racherla. Shyama Agrawal, who worked on the motor controller and worked on the mechanical side along with Prof. Racherla said, “The fact that the vehicle is now on the road is an exhilarating experience. I am so glad that we pulled it off in the end.” The project has also attracted interns from various engineering schools across the country.

Prof. Sriman Kumar Bhattacharyya, Director, IIT Kharagpur, who both rode and drove the Deshla, said, “The ride was beautiful, jerk free and the drive was smooth. I thank and congratulate the whole team and hope that the Deshla team will go on improving the product.” He also pushed for the commercialization of Deshla.

Prof. Partha Pratim Chakrabarti, former Director, IIT Kharagpur mentioned in his social media post that the ride was excellent. He also said, “… going from here to a start-up is the way to go…. we must develop technology which is very good and spawn as many start-ups as possible.”

Prof. Partha Pratim Chakrabarti, former Director, IIT KGP, giving a thumbs-up to Deshla

Prof. Suman Chakraborty, Dean SRIC, who also drove the Deshla, said, “Let us have many of these vehicles on the campus so that they enhance both campus life and livelihood.” Equally impressed with the achievements of the team was Prof. Baidurya Bhattacharya, Dean, International Relations, who said, “This is truly ‘Make in India’ and a remarkable achievement of the EVG team.”

Among the bunch of Deshla’s admirers are a growing number of Toto drivers on campus. One of them who has already tried out riding Deshla concluded, “I would be the first one to buy a Deshla when it hits the market.” Two others who hung around on the day of the launch, longingly looking at the Deshla, said, “It would be great if IIT Kharagpur could arrange for us to get loans from the bank to buy a Deshla.”

Prof. Racherla, Shyama Agrawal, and Manuj Agrawal (leaders of team EVG) have already floated a start-up for commercialization of the vehicle. Manuj Agrawal said, “We are now looking for angel funding so that we can take it forward. We have the concept model ready and now we need funds to make a production worthy prototype that can be certified.”

Photographs: Suman Sutradhar

The Summit it is!

IIT Kharagpur alumnus Romil Barthwal has achieved the highest frontier of mountaineering – Mount Everest. He scaled the Himalayan heights along with his 14-member team this Summer.

Trekker and impact maker he is an endurance runner by passion and has done many half, full and ultra-marathons and several other adventure sports including podium finisher in an ironman event, randonneuring, white water rafting, bungee jumping, duathlons, kayaking, paramotor, parasailing, paragliding and paratrooping. Leaving no stone unturned, he has done the advanced, rescue and special mountain courses. He has done 9 mountaineering expeditions as team leader culminating with summiting the mighty Mt Everest.

Romil completed his M.Tech. from IIT Kharagpur in 2012 from the School of Information Technology which is now a part of the Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering. An exhilarated Romil shared his experiences ranging from his days at IIT KGP days to Boston Marathon to Ultramarathon and now Mt Everest. He aims to inspire the current generation of youth to pursue a lifestyle which will help build endurance and resilience towards real-life situations.

“Even though I am an IITian from Kharagpur, I feel the balance is important to stay happy in life. Academics and books alone are not enough,” he said.

“It feels very gratifying. While getting an opportunity to scale Everest is itself great, it gives a different perspective on life,” he added.

As an ultra-endurance sports enthusiast Romil emphasized the significance of planning and practice which he considers critical not just to avoid incidents and casualties but also to transact with situations conveniently. This is reflected in training his daughter who aspires to follow her father’s suit.

List of expeditions done by him:-

Mt Kedardome (6800m)
Mt Golep Kangri (5900m), summiteer & team Leader
Hanging Peak, Siachen (5300m), summiteer & team Leader
Mt Stok Kangri (6153m), summiteer & team Leader
Mt Saruchi Lungpa (5400m), summiteer & team Leader
Mt Lobuje, Nepal (6100m), summiteer & team Leader
Mt Kun (7077m), summiteer & team Leader
Mt Everest (8848m), summiteer & team Leader
Unknown Peak in Mamostang Area (5900m), summiteer & team Leader
Unkown Peak in Siachen (5400m), summiteer & team Leader

Romil is also a popular motivational speaker and has held talks and workshops at various academic and research institutions and corporate houses.

“I take a keen interest in reaching out to people and learning from their life experiences which further helps me to inspire people towards a life of planned adventure and health and fitness,” he concluded.