Changes like that occurring at the Mining Engineering Department of IIT Kharagpur could lead to momentous changes for women in mining in India
Could the historically male-dominated mining industry be inching towards greater gender parity? The answer from IIT Kharagpur’s Department of Mining Engineering is yes. The department has seen a sharp rise in the number of female students in the undergraduate studies – from a trickle of one or two in a year to 18 in the year 2019.
All the centrally funded technical institutes in India are mandated to increase the number of women graduating from these institutes. The number of female students admitted at IIT Kharagpur stood at 15% (with supernumerary seats created to make up the shortfall through JEE) in the year 2018, and 20% presently, even including the Mining Engineering departments. In a matter of three years, these female students will be knocking on the doors of the mining companies for opportunities to work and to contribute to the safety, profitability and productivity of the industries.
In India, women were not permitted to work underground and even in surface mines, they were not allowed to work at night. Interestingly, coinciding with the change of decision in the female participation in undergraduate studies in mining engineering, the Ministry of Labour and Directorate General of Mines Safety which is a constituent body of the Ministry opened up through Gazette notification in 2019, hitherto unimaginable opportunities for underground employment for women. These opportunities cut across not only supervisory work but all types of activities of the mining profession.
According to the Directorate General of Mines Safety, the average daily employment of women in mines in 2011-12 accounted for 4.4% (24,294 females) of the total mining workforce which is considerably less compared to women labour force participation rate (22.5%) in India. The key occupations of engagement in the mining sector for women were reported as miners (mainly in the extraction of Iron, Gypsum, Magnesite and limestone), loaders and clerical and supervisory (Deloitte study on Human Resource & Skill Requirement Study for Indian Mining Sector, 2016).
Given that mining relies heavily on engineering talent, and women have proved that they can be capable engineers, the industry could gain a lot from greater diversity in its workforce and by having women in leadership roles. But the perception that mining is a ‘man’s job’, given the demanding nature of mining activity, has been a major contributing factor to the poor gender ratio.
In modern day mining, where automation is the key, physical capabilities should not be a determining factor. Besides, there can be little doubts about the correlation between business growth and diversity. Companies with more women, specifically with women on their boards, have shown overall better performance: more efficiency, greater sustainability and higher profit margins.
Quite obviously, perceptions need to change, and at every level. At IIT Kharagpur, things changed in 2002-03, when the Department of Mining Engineering opened its doors to women at the undergraduate level.
Prof. Ashis Bhattacharjee, Professor at the Department of Mining Engineering, who was then Vice-Chairman of JEE, recalls the move. “We convinced the Joint Implementation Committee, the Senate approved the move and IIT Kharagpur, together with IIT BHU, began to offer Mining Engineering program to women.”
Things did not change overnight. The inflow of students at the undergraduate level remained a trickle.
“There were some exceptionally committed students though. One, B. Niharika of the 2012 batch worked in a top Australian mining company, before relocating to Hyderabad,” says Prof. Bhattacharjee.
Perceptions also needed to change at a more fundamental level. And that seems to be happening now with more girls taking up mining.
“Before taking up Mining Engineering, I hardly knew what it was. But now I feel quite interested. There are so many facets to it,” says Samiksha Sharma, a 2nd year BTech Mining Engineering student, who has taken up Oil and Gas belt Testing and Enhanced Oil Recovery as her additional subjects. “Dual degree students can also specialize in Petroleum Engineering,” she reminds.
Like Samiksha, Niveditha Adari, a fourth year student, is also interested in the many opportunities that the Mining Engineering course at IIT Kharagpur leads to. She is interested in finance and management and as a Dual Degree student, she has ‘Financial Engineering’ as her specialization.
“I could go into operations research, which is an important part of mine planning. Or be part of finance planning for mining companies, where I could use my mining engineering knowledge.”
Given the focus of the Mining Engineering Department of IIT Kharagpur, which is into interdisciplinary fields such as environment, health and safety, and so on, and the advantage of the varied specializations (Safety Engineering, Petroleum Engineering, Financial Engineering) women graduating from the Department will be open to varied roles both within the Mining sector and elsewhere. But what has also changed substantially for them is the government opening up to what is believed to be the “new realities” of society. Taking these realities into account, the Union government in 2019 lifted the restrictions of the Mines Act of 1952 and allowed women to work in underground mines and also in opencast or above ground workings of the mine during night hours.
“Somehow we need to prove ourselves,” says Samiksha, “About 20-30 years ago, when women were not common in Mechanical Engineering, if some of the women had not proved themselves, then others would not have followed in their path.”
Some, like Parama Mukhopadhyay, a PhD scholar at the Department of Mining Engineering, believe that the regulation is not enough and there are still enough restrictions in place to stall women’s full participation in hands-on mining (Read her story here).
“It is not about where women have greater scope. The idea should be that they can work everywhere,” says Prof. Sunita Mishra, who joined the Department in February 2020 and is the first lady to join the Mining Engineering faculty at IIT Kharagpur and probably in the country as well. A Mechanical Engineer, Prof. Mishra did her Masters in Tunnel Engineering from Mining Engineering from ISM Dhanbad and PhD in the area of Rock Dynamics from the Department of Civil Engineering at the IIT Delhi. Prof. Mishra, who is teaching Rock dynamics and mining machinery in the lab, is already a role model for students in the Department.
As she exemplifies, and the girls of the Department are beginning to understand, proven skill and expertise will take them places. Samiksha’s worry is that if the industry will come around and change itself as fast as the changes are taking place with women and mining. “Rest assured,” say her professors, “This is just a transition, and things will fall in place.”
Why? This is because their toilets were now powered by microbial fuel cells (MFCs) that ran on “Pee Power”, that is human urine, and they were much enthused by this fact, even to the extent of wanting the technology to be extended to their villages.
Like several speakers at the recently-held (Feb 26-27, 2020) Indo-Belgium SPARC workshop organized by the School of Environmental Science and Engineering and the P.K. Sinha Centre for Bioenergy and Renewables at IIT Kharagpur, Prof. Ieropoulous argued the case for MFCs – which used waste as its feedstock to produce bioenergy and other valuable products – as a platform technology for multiple uses, including sanitation, renewable energy generation, production of value-added products via elemental recycling and wastewater treatment.
The Indo-Belgium workshop in fact brought to the fore new technologies and processes being developed by the scientific community throughout India and many parts of the world to improve the capabilities of BES. Like Prof. Ieropoulos, Dr Harold Leverenz of the University of California Davis, Ms Jeanne Sabin, also from the University of California Davis, and Dr S Gajalakshmi from the Centre for Pollution Control & Environmental Engineering, Pondicherry University, were working with human urine. Some of them were trying to see if pre-treatment of urine waste streams could optimize MFCs and maximize nutrient recovery from urine, which is high in nutrients. Others were looking to see if hybrid, self-powered super capacitive air cathode MFCs could be used for human urine treatment.
Gas diffusion electrodes (VITO), more efficient cathode catalysts, polyvinyl alcohol-based ion exchange membranes for microbial desalination cells, novel MFCs like sediment MFCs or auto-dripping MFCs or flat plate MFCs or clay-pot coupled MFCs, bamboo biochar as low-cost electrode material, forward osmosis technology, study of the bacterial isolates from MFCs or electrogenic bacteria growing in BES, the treatment of water from distilleries or dairy farm or secondary effluent water or pharmaceutical waste water, various reactor technologies, different kinds of catalysts, everything was considered at the workshop.
The most attractive feature of the workshop was the number of research scholars who talked about their ongoing work on different aspects of BES. As Prof. Ghangrekar pointed out, “more scientifically organized cross-discipline research efforts are required further to scale-up these [BES] systems to gain benefit of recovering useful energy/valuables from waste materials.” The Indo-Belgium workshop that showcased the ongoing work from different corners of the world, seemed to boost this effort.
Congratulations to Sumana Ghosh, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Technical University Munich, for winning the DAAD PRIME fellowship! Sumana completed her PhD from IIT Kharagpur from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering in 2019 and is an experienced researcher with a demonstrated history of working in the field of embedded systems, real-time systems, and formal methods.
The DAAD PRIME (Postdoctoral Researchers International Mobility Experience) is an extremely coveted fellowship. Since its initiation in 2014 by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the fellowship is awarded to postdoctoral scholars for a period of 18 months to support their international mobility for collaborative research, including that in Germany. Only 2-3 candidates are usually awarded the fellowship in the ‘Engineering’ category, and this year, Sumana was among only 27 candidates out of 201 who were awarded PRIME, making her feat even more commendable.
Sumana’s research interests are Design, Verification, and Analysis of Embedded Control Systems, Application of Formal Techniques in Real-Time Scheduling and Fault-tolerant Control Design Automotive Security, Cyber-Physical Systems Security and Formal Methods and Robotics. Her thesis topic was ‘Formal Approach towards Pattern Guided Scheduling in Embedded Control Systems’. She was part of the Formal Verification Research Group of the Computer Science and Engineering Department of IIT Kharagpur and has worked on FMSAFE (A Networked Centre for Formal Methods in Validation and Certification Procedures for Safety Critical ICT Systems) and AUTOSAFE (Architecture-aware Timing Analysis and Optimization of Safety-Critical Automotive Software) projects that are being conducted by the Institute.
She helped organize a two-day Indo-Israel joint research workshop between IIT Kharagpur and Ben-Gurion University, Israel, held at IIT Kharagpur in February 2016 and a one-day Indo-German technical workshop as part of the AUTOSAFE project in December 2015. Sumana received ‘Honorable Mention’ at the VLSID Conference in 2019. She was recipient of the Microsoft Research travel grant and ACM-India IARCS grant for attending ACM-SIGBED EMSOFT Conference 2017 in Seoul and was awarded scholarship for attending the international conference CAV 2016 and VMW workshop in 2016 in Toronto.
A novel Science Communication Conclave at IIT Kharagpur tries to bridge the gap between the scientific community and the media to pave the way for better news dissemination
The poster exhibitions of the work of Ms. Jain and Ms. Panda at the conclave, which drew a lot of attention, clarified their point even better.
A greater interaction with mediapersons, in fact, had helped both Prof. Abhijit Mukherjee, renowned hydro-geologist and Associate Professor, Geology and Geophysics, and Prof. Bhargab Maitra, a noted expert in urban planning and development, and transportation and Head of the Ranbir Chitra Gupta School of Infrastructure Design and Management and Professor at the Department of Civil Engineering at IIT Kharagpur, to make an impact at the level of policy-making. Both of them pointed this out during their talk at the conclave.
Another way that emerged from the discussions was training scientists and researchers on public communication. Several among IIT Kharagpur’s faculty acknowledged the need for it to ensure correct reportage of scientific developments. Some like Prof. Suman Chakraborty, Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Dean of the Office of Sponsored and Industrial Research Consultancy at IIT Kharagpur, had already started the initiative by asking his students to put down their research work in the simplest possible language. “The more effective the communication, the more effective the way the journalist can disseminate the news. In fact, this kind of training is part and parcel of advanced research for students around the world,” said Prof. Chakraborty.
The Clinical Biomarkers Discovery Laboratory at IIT Kharagpur is actively involved in using the newly emerged field of metabolomics, which is capable of providing biological end-point markers of the cellular processes that occur as a result of disease. The lab focuses on the use of metabolomics for comprehensive identification of disease biomarkers and understanding of the pathogenic mechanism underlying complex human diseases. Prof. Koel Chaudhury, who heads the lab, talks to the KGP Chronicle about how she has used the metabolomics approach to investigate women’s health, the progress her team has made and the future challenges. 
The approach to illness and disease management has changed considerably with the evolution of medicine. In the past, medicine was strictly practiced according to the symptoms presented by the patient and was essentially based on the individual expertise of the physician, and thus was known as intuition medicine. Presently, medicine is based on the evidence produced by scientific research which also include the clinical trials, and is termed as evidence-based medicine. Most of the medical treatments today are designed for the average patient using the “one-size-fits-all” approach. Unfortunately, this type of treatment is seen to be very successful for some patients but not for others. In future, medicine is to be practiced according to algorithms that will take into consideration the patient’s characteristics, e.g. their genome, epigenetics, microbiomes, proteomes, metabolomes, environments and lifestyle to make diagnostic and therapeutic strategies precisely tailored to individual patients. It is envisioned that this will lead to the emergence of an effective P4 (predictive, preventive, personalized and participatory) healthcare system.
Our team uses the multi-omics approach including quantitative proteomics, NMR and mass spectrometry-based metabolomics to identify robust biomarkers in serum/urine/tissues/exhaled breath condensates/bronchoalveolar fluid which can assist in early disease prediction, identify disease sub-categories and predict individual disease risk. We also use ‘omics’-driven studies to enhance our understanding of the disease pathogenesis and monitor the therapeutic effect of drugs so that personalized therapeutic strategies targeting the underlying disease etiology can be developed.
Some of the clinical research questions our team is presently addressing using the ‘omics’ approach are listed below:
In what stage of development is this research?
Our research is translational and interdisciplinary in nature. We have active collaboration with clinicians and faculty members of various departments within the Institute. The aim of our team is to carry out ‘omics’-driven translational health research which will provide the ideal platform to diagnose diseases early in a non/minimally invasive and cost-effective manner.
It was in 1920 that Hermann Staudinger, the legendary German organic chemist, proposed the concept of ‘macromolecules’. Since then macromolecules have revolutionized the materials sciences and biosciences and supported the rapid growth of the plastics industry. It is not without surprise that the Rubber Technology Centre of IIT Kharagpur, which has spearheaded research in rubber and polymers since its inception in the 1980s, should think it fit to celebrate the beginning of the second century of the macromolecule with the holding of the International Conference on ‘Green and Sustainability in Polymers and Functional Materials: Opportunity and Challenges’, particularly at a time when the environmental alarm bells have been ringing loud.
The conference, held under the aegis of MHRD’s SPARC scheme and in collaboration with the University of Melbourne, saw three plenary lectures and 14 invited lectures by distinguished scientists, faculty members and technologists from the academia and industry, who talked about the recent advances in green polymerization techniques, the development of new and sustainable functional materials and the use of these in diverse applications that ranged from the automobile industry to drug delivery.
In his inspiring plenary lecture, Dr S. Sivaram from IISER, Pune took the audience through the fractious yet scintillating history of the discovery of the ‘Macromolecule’ and showed how polymer science is indebted not merely to Staudinger, but to a host of other scientists, starting from Michael Faraday in 1826 – who first noticed ethylene and butene differed in their gas density, but had the same elemental composition, and opened up immense possibilities – to Wallace Carothers – who gave polymers its most acceptable definition – to Herman Mark in the late 20th century, who led the way for the X-ray crystallography of Macromolecules to show that a molecule could be larger than its unit cell.
Dr Sivaram also talked about the future possibilities of aliphatic polyesters such as polylactic acid (PLLA) and its competitive advantage over PET as a biodegradable, sustainable option. “There is still scope for new monomers and improved chemistry to tailor the structure and properties of aliphatic polyesters as a platform for sustainable materials.” Prof. Vimal Katiyar from IIT Guwahati too talked about PLLA and explained how bionanofillers could vastly improve the properties of PLLA.
New techniques for the development of new functional materials were elaborated severally by the speakers. Among them were Dr Sayam Sen Gupta from IISER Kolkata, who talked about fabricating porous materials through self-assembly of inorganic nanoparticles and silk proteins, Prof. Kinsuk Naskar of IIT Kharagpur, who gave an overview of the generation of thermoplastic elastomers and thermoplastic vulcanizates, and Dr Nabendu B. Pramanik from the Department of Chemistry, Lehigh University, USA, who talked about the development of hyperthin polymeric membranes for the separation of carbondioxide from flue gas as a way to fight global warming. Dr Hirendra N. Ghosh from the Institute of Nano Science and Technology, Mohali, elucidated on a new technique regarding metal-semiconductor interface that could majorly impact the production of solar cell and optoelectronic devices.
Both the industry representatives – Dr Virendra Kumar Gupta from Reliance Industries, and Dr Sujit S. Nair from Ceat talked about their initiatives in developing high performance elastomers with self-healing properties or functionalized polymers for new generation green tires that will make up 90% of the need of the automobile industry in the near future. Both of them talked about their company’s collaboration with IIT Kharagpur in the development of these polymers. “We have collaborative projects with different industries like major petrochemical industries in India and abroad, different tire industries, different rubber and polymer manufacturing industries in India and abroad, coating, paint industries etc.” reminded Prof Santanu Chattopadhyay, Head of the Rubber Technology Centre.
A major emphasis of the conference was on the use of various polymers for drug delivery. Dr Suhrit Ghosh from the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science talked about the use of biodegradable polydisulfide in efficient drug delivery and drug release. Dr Braja Gopal Bag of Vidyasagar University, Midnapore, talked about the use of hybrid material –terpenoids – extracted from plants which showed great promise in drug delivery. Prof. Santanu Dhara of IIT Kharagpur talked about the various advances made by the Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering group of the Institute in the development of customized biodegradable implants and the use of biological wastes for development of biopolymers and materials for healthcare delivery.
Dr Nabanita Saha of the University Institute, Tomas Bata University, Czech Republic gave the audience an introduction to her work in the development of magnetic insoles to help blood circulation in diabetic patients and the future prospects of ‘magnetic hydrogel’, a biomaterial that involved a polymer matrix. Prof. Rajat Das of IIT Kharagpur also talked about the development of highly stretchable, strong dual cross-linked self-healing hydrogels.
Academics from IIT Kharagpur and beyond, activists, conservationist architects, and research scholars revisited these questions and raised new ones as they participated in a unique workshop titled “Urban Riverine Heritagescapes of Bengal: From Nostalgic Yearnings to Visions of a Resilient Future”, on January 28-29 organized by the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences in collaboration with the Rekhi Centre of Excellence for the Science of Happiness.
They not only agreed that cultural heritage is not confined to monuments and objects, but that it included traditions inherited from ancestors and passed down generations – such as the oral traditions, unique crafts produced by any particular community, performing arts, social practices, rituals, cuisine, festivals, knowledge and practices, and skills. In other words, that cultural heritage constituted both their tangible and “intangible” evidences. But they together emphasized that this heritage can only be sustained through intercultural dialogue, or “polylogue”, mutual respect, and the involvement of the community or common people. For unless it is recognized and valued as heritage by the communities, groups or individuals who create, maintain and transmit it, heritage cannot survive.
To facilitate this, the organizers of the workshop, Prof. Jenia Mukherjee and Prof. Anway Mukhopadhyay sought to promote the idea of ‘heritagescapes’, borrowing and furthering the concept of ‘scapes’ of noted anthropologist Arjun Appadurai, who showed how knowledge and culture flowed across different ‘scapes’ across the world instead of the binaries of North/South or East/West. “It is within such a framework of critical heritage studies which locates the heritagescapes within concrete (local as well as global) social and economic relations that one can situate the cultural heritage constellating around the urban riverine systems of Eastern India, especially Bengal,” explained Mukherjee and Mukhopadhyay, Assistant Professors, HSS Department.
The workshop, in fact, grew out of Prof. Jenia Mukherjee’s experiences with handling the ‘Hugli River of Cultures Pilot Project, from Bandel to Barrackpore’, a recently concluded project jointly funded by the by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK, and the Indian Council of Historical Research. Looking at the five former trading posts and garrison settlements along the Hugli River – Bandel, Chinsurah, Chandannagar, Serampore and Barrackpore – the project tried to evolve a sense of the ‘Hugli corridor’ by drawing on the collective history of the stretch and the role of the River in this geographical space.
The ‘river’ figured prominently in the workshop as it focussed on a cultural heritage that is largely a product of the historical experience, unique ecosystem and social, political and economic interactions fostered by the riverine system of Bengal. And not only because of that. The river, explained Prof. Partha Pratim Chakarabarti, who laid out the theoretical underpinnings of the conference, also encapsulated the true meaning of heritage. “River stands for the continuity, the flow of heritage. It gives the sense of timelessness and the idea of infinity… It is fluidic, continuous, in its upper motions, yet deep down it is still, unchangeable. Heritage is like that. It moves, changes with time, but it has stillness and steadiness, and yet it has that churning from which new things mingle the new with the old,” said Prof. Chakrabarti. Drawing from her empirical pool of project expertise, Prof. Sanghamitra Basu introduced the coupled nature-culture dimension to tap multiple meanings and interpretations making way to ‘heritagescapes’.
Within the spatial scale of Bengal and across pre-colonial, colonial and contemporary times, the workshop addressed vertical themes consisting of physical, cultural and ecological infrastructures and the complex intersections among these. Detailed empirical investigations and case studies within the ‘Bengal frontier’ involving marginalized social actors – such as that of the kumors of Krishnanagar and Nabadwip (Souvik Majumdar), the boat makers of Balagarh (Arpita C. Mukhopadhyay), waterscapes of Cooch Behar (Arjun Mukherji), conservation initiatives in Midnapore (Sanghamitra Basu), clay makers of Kumortuli (Amrita Sen), new fish epistemologies evolving in Sunderbans (Subodh Kumar Mandal), historical ethnography on ‘owner-custodians’ of Chandannagar (Lina Bose), protests by the Lepcha community against the Teesta Dam (Arpita C. Mukhopadhya), belief systems: River Damodar, Burdwan and Makar Sankranti (Anway Mukhopadhyay) and panel discussion involving IIT HSS and Rekhi Centre faculty members: Prof. Manas K. Mandal, Prof. Saamdu Chetri, Prof. Priyadarshi Patnaik and Prof. Anuradha Choudry, consultant architects such as Anindya Basu and activists like Yeasin Pathan from Pathra – facilitated a better understanding of the challenges and potentials of heritage conservation, management and governance. Prof. Anuradha Choudry elaborated the concept of HERITAGE as ‘Historically Enriched Right Interpretation using Technologically-aided Grassroots Engagements’ providing a comprehensive framework for designing next plans of actions by IIT Kharagpur.
To make the workshop lively and bring out the heritage-livelihoods connect, fishers from Sundarbans were invited to exhibit and narrate stories surrounding artefacts and ornaments designed by using marine fish scales.
Cell culture is integral to biological research. It provides a model to study the standard physiology and biochemistry of cells, the effect of drugs on cells, how cells behave under different culture environments. But the growing of cells on flat plastic surfaces does not accurately model their state inside the body. Hence scientists are increasingly using various three-dimensional (3D) cell culture strategies that allow cells to grow or interact with their surroundings in a way they actually do inside the body.
The prevalent 3D culture systems are mainly scaffolds, hydrogels and 3D printed models. Producing them is time consuming and requires a lot of technical skills. Often there are batch to batch variations. The base materials are also expensive. So, the development of cheap, portable and experimentally flexible 3D models has become necessary. A team of researchers at IIT Kharagpur has provided the answer by utilizing commercially filter paper for mammalian cell culture, which has been rarely reported.
The research group led by Prof. Tapas Kumar Maiti of the Department of Biotechnology, IIT Kharagpur has developed paper-based devices using LaserJet methodology (to defines cell culturable area) followed by (3-Aminopropyl)triethoxysilane (APTES) or glutaraldehyde/PAMAM treatment of the devices. This increases the interaction of the cell or other biological macromolecules (such as proteins/DNA) with the paper matrix. In order to further provide essential biochemical cues required to maintain physiological behavior of cells, they coated the amino-functionalized paper with natural extracellular matrix proteins.
Their results showed that the developed paper devices favoured the adhesion, proliferation, and 3D growth of multiple cell types including normal, transformed, cancerous, and stem cells as compared to the pristine paper matrix. These established 3D cultures on the paper matrixes (“in vitro paper-based tissue models”) could be extended for in vitro applications such as on-paper coculture models, on-paper gene expression analysis (immunocytochemistry/in-cell ELISA), drug screening and cell invasion assays. Further, such 3D culture could also be used to address relevant biological questions pertaining to cell-matrix interaction, cell-cell interaction, matrix confinement effects and so on.
Prof. Maiti said, “Considering the simplicity, cost-effectiveness, and multiplexibility of the paper-based liver models, it is deemed to be ideal for developing cell-based bioassays especially in the resource-limited settings. Moreover, such technological advancement in the field of paper-based cell culture could open up new vistas in the field of biotechnology and engineering and could be used to disseminate the cell culture-related knowledge at the school/college levels.”