topics: |  history | kanpur | iit | india | science

A history we are slowly forgetting

This is a story of a commitment, from a faraway nation, to the humming engine that we now call IIT Kanpur.

Most people associated with IITK get to hear about the KIAP program as a hazy event in some distant past, involving some kind of a collaboration with US universities, but the extent and depth of that collaboration is not widely known.

Beyond its relevance to the history of IIT Kanpur, what is fascinating about this story is how a group of committed, intelligent people, who set out to make a difference, innovated the mechanisms which would best help the target institution, planning the process with considerable care and deliberation. this interaction also formed a history for other such attempts at American assistance for univerisities elsewhere.

Leadership : A relationship of mutual respect

It is also a tale of an enlightened leadership that IIT Kanpur found in its earliest years - a leadership that encouraged individual freedom and encouraged growth. This spirit still animates IIT Kanpur culture, despite ominous rumbles of a ban on mass e-mailing and Hindutva on camus and other modern malaises.

Kelkar understood the need for a a psychological climate which would induce individuals to grow and intellectual space in which growth could occur. These conditions could not be attained under the rigid, hierarchical structure of the traditional Indian university system.

In particular, the KIAP team found the first director, P.K. Kelkar, remarkably open in his thinking, and ready to make a break with the narrow traditions that had animated the Indian universities.

In November 1961, Dahl was part of an USAID committee that visited India to finalize the terms of the research contract that would be signed with the nine institutions. This would be their first visit to IIT Kanpur. Kelkar had been appointed little more than a year back, and classes had started in August 1960.

First meeting with Kelkar

The committee held a number of meetings in Delhi before coming to
Kanpur. Dahl writes of their first interaction with Kelkar:

	However, not until the committee went to Kanpur and met the Director,
	Dr. P. K. Kelkar, did they find an educator who both understood and
	shared their views. Dr. Kelkar had devoted much study and thought to
	the question of how science and technology might contribute
	vigorously to the growth of India.  He had concluded that an
	essential element was the development of universities in which there
	would be a total involvement of students and faculty in intellectual
	and scholastic pursuits relevant to the national goals and
	aspirations of India.

By all accounts, Kelkar was amazingly broad-minded for his day.  Extremely
well-read, he was open to ideas - willing to listen and respond to
suggestions.

In recent times, the administration at IIT Kanpur has been increasingly
focused on the Ministry and less on people at Kanpur.  There is less of a
willingness to listen.  This has not been serving the institute well.

Now that IIT Kanpur is often called upon to "mentor" some other
institution, it is even more important that we at least become aware of
this history, and allow its lessons to seep in as we ponder our steps
- hopefully, with the sincerity and dedication shown by this group.

About the nature of commitment of this group of people, we can read in this
discussion by Dahl, as to why most colleagues at MIT would hestitate
to get involved in such a project:

	the danger of "getting behind" in fast moving research fields,
	promotion and tenure questions which hinged largely on research
	output , health and schooling requirements of children and, finally,
	the need for the [w]ife, certainly, and the children, to share a
	faculty member's enthusiasm for a family experience in an unheard of,
	provincial city in far-away India.

Despite this, a more than a hundred U.S. professors, from the very leading
universities, took time off to spend at least a year.  They simply sought
to "make a difference".

Clearly, such a motivation would result in a high level of commitment for
the group of people who eventually visited IIT Kanpur and contributed to
the early policies and culture.

Interaction through KIAP

A sampling of some of the scholars who came to Kanpur:

* Harry Huskey, computer pioneer from Cal Tech who helped set up the
	IITK Computer Center and organized a major conference

* theoretical physicist Maria Goeppert Mayer, who had won the Nobel
	prize just a few years back for her work on the structure of the
	nucleus

* MIT corrosion metallurgist Herbert H. Uhlig, who also organized an
	international conference

* historian Peter W. Fay from Caltech.  His friendship with Prem and
	Lakshmi Sehgal at Kanpur inspired him to write The Forgotten War,
	a book on the Azad Hind Force

* sociologist Richard A. Schermerhorn, whose remark on maintaining standards at
	the institute remains relevant - possibly even more so - today:
 		"If eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, it is no less the
 		price of institutional advance.  Only by this kind of
 		vigilance will the future of IIT/Kanpur fulfill the dreams
 		of its founders."

* transportation pioneer Jack Snell, whose enthusiasm convinced
	the Civil Engineering department to start a transportation program.

and many others, including Nornman Dahl himself, a leading researcher in
Solid Mechanics from MIT.  Many faculty members were from Humanities,
an area which was definitely emphasized in the KIAP interaction.

Along with these noted scholars came a host of research staff,
administrators, technicians and others who set up the cryogenics lab, the
glass-blowing facility, graphics center, the library (which for many years,
got every book that Purdue Universiity library was ordering) and even
helped create the systems for student records etc.  The KIAP program also
arranged funds (from US held rupee accounts) to pay for the travel of
faculty members recruited in the US, and for several million dollars worth
of equipment for the workshop and for research in EE, metallurgy and other
areas.

One point surprises me.  The list of visitors from the US included at least
four professors of History.  There is also mention of people having served
at IIT/K in the "history" area.  Yet, history as a discipline never found a
foot-hold at IIT Kanpur.  Despite several committees having recommended a
need for a history group within HSS, this has not happened.

History of US involvement in the IITs

The move to create world-class institutes for technical education had
started with visionaries like Ardeshir Dalal, who was part of the Viceroy's
Council for Planning, well before independence.  A committee headed by the
controversial politician N.R. Sarkar was formed to look into it, but its
decision was a foregone conclusion.  Despite the committee never giving a
final report, IIT Kharagpur was launched based on interim discussions.
Classes started on 1300 acres of land made available by the West Bengal
state in Aug 1951.

When it came to implementing the other IITs, the idea of taking help from
technologically advanced nations was mooted by Humayun Kabir, the Bengali
intellectual who was a minister of scientific research, and strongly
supported by Nehru.  Different governments were convinced of the need to
collaborate with one institution.  Each of these collaborations took its
own model based on the imperatives of the two parties.

The US involvement in Kanpur was possibly the deepest, lasting ten years
and involving groups of eight to ten visitors who stayed in campus for one
year or longer and participated in teaching and other daily decision-making
processes.  The faculty came from elite institutions - MIT, Caltech,
Berkeley, Michigan, Case, Princeton, Ohio State, Purdue, and Carnegie
Mellon, and the visits went on from 1962, when Norman Dahl arrived from MIT
as the first "program leader" till 1972, when JG Fox returned to CMU.

And yet throughout this intense collaboration, IIT was managed completely
by a full-time Indian staff.  The advisory group were strictly that -
advisors.

Administration remained with IIT Kanpur

The introduction to this document (probably written by Dahl) makes a very
important observatgion:

	Two of the several elements that distinguish KIAP from other
	institutional programs are:

		 I.. That the U. S.  field staff constituted a separate
		     administrative and operational entity in which Staff
		     Members were directly responsible to the Program Leader
		     for the provision of advisory or consulting service
		     desired by the IIT/K;

		II.  That from the beginning, the Indians exercised full
		     responsibility for the administration of IIT/Kanpur.

	Hence, IIT/Kanpur was always free to modify or reject advice in a way
	that it could not have done if the KIAP staff had been built into the
	operation of the Institute.  This meant, in turn, that from the
	beginning, the IIT/K had to develop its own teaching staff for all
	the courses that it offered without being able to rely on visiting
	professors to fill in the gaps.

	The set-up also served as a damper to latent desires that any
	U. S. Staff might have had to deliver themselves of the "we-make-it,
	you-take-it" kind of intellectual imperialism that inhibits
	collaboration, or even worse, fosters dependence.

Parting of ways : 1972

The KIAP program ended in 1972, by which time, as per the assessment here,

	[the program] has been a success in that IIT/Kanpur has become an
	outstanding technological institute in India.

However, India-US relations worsened under Kissinger and Nixon, and
things came to a head in 1971 during the Bangladesh war when the US sent
the USS Enterprise into the Bay of Bengal in a threat posture.
Subsequently Nixon cut all aid funding to India.

This book was planned as a one-week symposium celebrating the intense
collaboration, but in the changed scenario, that symposium never happened.
However, these essays written for that meeting were finally published as a
"final report" of the KIAP to the USAID funding agency.

KIAP steering committee members meets Nehru, discusses IIT/Kanpur,
November, 1961 [at Nehru's office in Parliament Building, New Delhi]
Facing the camera, L to R: E. A. Pearson (Berkeley); S. Brooks, EDC;
R. S. Green, Ohio State; N. C. Dahl, MIT; A. H. Benade, Case;
G.. K. Chandiramani, Joint Educational Advisor.

[Dahl and Green have written sections in this book]

Sometime in the late 1950's the Government of India and the United States
Government agreed in principle on a program in which the U.S. would aid in
the development of the Indian Institute of Technology to be established in
Kanpur.  The GOI welcomed this assistance, not only because it was short of
the foreign exchange needed for equipping such an institution but also
because it was genuinely interested in bringing to India and adapting to its
needs the patterns and practices which had made U.S. engineering education so
productive and dynamic during the post-war years.

This arrangement was part of a strategy of the GOI to introduce the best
elements of the technical education of different countries, and similar
agreements for assistance had been reached with two other countries - the
Soviet Union which began assistance to the IIT/Bombay in 1958, and West
Germany which began assistance to the IIT/Madras in 1959.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (then the U.S. Technical
Cooperation Mission to India) engaged a team of six engineering educators,
chosen by the American Society for Engineering Education, to visit India for
discussions with Indian educators and officials and prepare a report to AID
which would recommend how U.S. engineering education might be incorporated
into the IIT/K.

[The ASEE visit was substantial, and resulted in a four-volume report.

Meanwhile, a Director was appointed to organize a provisional staff and
faculty and to begin operations, and the IIT/K began classes in 1960 in
temporary quarters in the Harcourt Butler Technological Institute in
Kanpur.

The curriculum and methods of instruction with which the institute began
operations were not influenced by the ASEE study team or its report.
However, the newly appointed Director was very interested in and
knowledgeable about engineering and scientific education throughout the
world, having read widely and travelled extensively, and the curriculum
reflected many of the current practices in the U.S., particularly in an
emphasis on the engineering sciences.

View from the US : Indian engineering education was much like the US

[The USAID asked MIT to take] responsibility for the program , and a
three-man faculty committee at MIT investigated the matter.  On the basis
of information available to them in the U.S. the committee gained the
impression that undergraduate engineering education in India was very
similar to that in the U.S. - one committee member said after reading the
catalogues of a number of Indian engineering colleges, "They pray to the
same gods we do!".

The committee questioned whether India would gain much from establishing an
institute along the lines outlined in the ASEE report; perhaps, India might
do better [to establish] a completely graduate engineering institution.

The committee felt they should visit India and talk to stakeholders.
Support was obtained from the Ford Foundation and they visited India in
January 1961.

[Kelkar had registered IIT Kanpur in Dec 1959, and classes had started in
July 1960, working out of the HBTI campus.]

Visit to the US

The comittee came to Kanpur after meetings in Delhi etc.

The undergraduate engineering education described in the catalogues they
did not find on the ground; the form was there but the substance and
practice were absent.

What they saw as they travelled about India prior to going to Kanpur
convinced them that there was need for a modern, scientifically oriented
engineering institute, with an undergraduate component which could set
achievable standards for entrance into a graduate program and thereby
influence undergraduate education throughout India . p.4

Meeting with Kelkar

However, not until the committee went to Kanpur and met the Director,
Dr. P. K. Kelkar, did they find an educator who both understood and shared
their views. Dr. Kelkar had devoted much study and thought to the question of
how science and technology might contribute vigorously to the growth of
India.  He had concluded that an essential element was the development of
universities in which there would be a total involvement of students and
faculty in intellectual and scholastic pursuits relevant to the national
goals and aspirations of India.

He understood that in order to create such an environment there would have to
be a psychological climate which would induce individuals to grow and
intellectual space in which growth could occur. These conditions could not be
attained under the rigid, hierarchical structure of the traditional Indian
university system and, therefore, in building the IIT/K Dr. Kelkar planned to
make substantial departures from established practices. His studies of
education had convinced him that many of the intellectual and psychological
conditions he sought for IIT/K were present in U.S. technical education and
thus he welcomed U.S. collaboration.

Dr. Kelkar's perception and enthusiasm were contagious and the committee left
Kanpur convinced that an institution of significant importance to India might
be created at Kanpur under the leadership of Dr. Kelkar. Further, they knew
that Dr. Kelkar shared their view that the chances of such an institution
coming into being would be considerably enhanced if there could be developed
a U.S. assistance program which was genuinely collaborative in nature,
clearly first-rate in quality and sufficient in quantity.


	Norman Dahl with P K Kelkar, ca. 1964, at HBTI temporary offices.
	(The bicycle has been a steady feature of life at iit kanpur.)

Mechanisms for collaboration : The consortium model

When the committee discussed the specific means through which MIT would carry
out the responsibilities for mounting such a collaborative program, it
became evident that it would be impossible to secure from the MIT faculty the
range of expertise and the number of resident U.S. faculty likely to be
required in Kanpur over the life of the Program. ....  [the family would
need] to share the faculty member's enthusiasm for an unheard of provincial
city in far-away India....

Positive factors would be the desire to be of assistance to India , the
professional satisfaction in developing new education and research programs
in India , and the adventure of living in a totally different environment .
It was these which the committee felt would motivate the few who would be
attracted to Kanpur.

The committee in its report, suggested that MIT would not undertake sole
responsibility for the AID support for IIT/K , but that it was willing to
attempt to organize a consortium to do the job if requested to do so by AID.

Meeting at MIT : Genesis of the Consortium

Although AID had some mis givings about the operational effectiveness of a
consortium of universities , it agreed that the proposal was worth serious
exploration.  In May 1961, in response to invitations from the President of
MIT, representatives of the following universities met at Cambridge :
California Institute of Technology , Carnegie-Mellon University (then
Carnegie Institute of Technology), Case Western Reserve University (then Case
Institute of Technology), Princeton University, The Ohio State University,
Purdue University, and the University of California.

All of these institutions had strong engineering and science education and
research programs. Furthermore, as a guard against parochialism in the
assistance to IIT/K, there were represented both universities and institutes
of technology, both public and private and both small and large institutions,
with geographic distribution across the U.S. Representatives of AID were
observers at the meeting.  Also present at this meeting were representatives
of Education Development Center since one aspect under discussion was the
proposal that the basic contract with AID not be held by any one of the
universities but, rather, by an outside institution which would represent the
consortium in all formal dealings with AID and, in turn, contract with the
consortium universities for services in support of the development of the
IIT/K.

[At] the meeting it was agreed that there existed at IIT/K a remarkable
opportunity for U.S.  universities to participate in a development in Indian
education which could be significant for Indian university education as a
whole as well as for technical education. It also was agreed that the proper
way to carry out the project would be through a consortium with an
institution such as EEC providing the legal and administrative framework
within which the universities could pool their resources for the purpose of
carrying out the assistance to Kanpur. It was anticipated that the Program
would be a long one, perhaps ten years. During the meeting, there was evolved
a plan of action which subsequently was agreed to by all the institutions
represented at the meeting, plus The University of Michigan.

[Kelkar and Indian Ministry of Education Secretary Chandiramani visit MIT in
August 1961.  Dahl, who is by now the first Program Leader designate for
going to Kanpur, accompanies them to visit the consortium universities.]  The
name "Kanpur Indo-American Program (KIAP)" is suggested by Chandiramani.

Faculty and administrators at the Consortium Universities [came] to realize
that Dr. Kelkar understood and appreciated the dynamic nature of American
engineering and scientific education , that he was sympathetic to American
educational practices aimed at placing increasing responsibility on students
for their own learning, and that he aimed at creating at the IIT/K an
environment which was intellectually open for both students and faculty, an
environment found in few institutions in India.  They also found that
Mr. Chandiramani fully supported the idea of the consortium collaboration and
that he was prepared to exert his influence within the GOI to give the IIT/K
the administrative s pace it would need in order to make departures from
current Indian educational practice in such matters as curriculum structure ,
use of textbooks , hours of class room instruction , and faculty selection
committee procedures to allow selection of qualified Indians residing outside
of India.

(This is from the recollections of Prof. A.K. Biswas, who joined IITK metallurgy
in 1963 after his phd from MIT.)

	When I joined IITK, the 1962-63 academic year had just been over. I
	reported to Prof. P.K. Kelkar (the then Director) in the HBTI campus,
	where all the offices and laboratories of our institution were
	located. Dr. Navin Chandra’s bungalow, situated near the Agricultural
	Gardens was being used as the temporary guest house of IITK, and I
	spent couple of nights there. Late Mahmood Khan was managing the
	guest house and serving the Indian and foreign guests with great
	gusto. Prof. Kelkar suggested to me that since IIT/K had started
	shifting its activities to the Kalyanpur campus, I should also move
	therein, instead of looking for a rented house in the city.

	Let us now shift our attention backwards in the time-scale to the
	1959-1960 period. The U.P. Government had acquired for IITK 1047.86
	acres of agricultural lands in the villages of Purwa Nankari,
	Barasirohi and Naramau Bangor, starting from 13th July 1959. The
	villagers led by a Congress leader, submitted their written protest
	to Pandit Nehru who asked the leader, “Maniramji, don’t you want
	prosperity of Kanpur?” The leader replied, “Yes, but not at the cost
	of the poor villagers”. The compensation for their land, equal to
	forty times the land revenue, was considered to be much less than the
	market price of their land.

	Mentioning this episode, the leader’s son Shri Vishnu Deo Sharma
	asked one IIT/K audience during the 1980’s, whether the institute had
	done anything for the neighbouring villages.

	Nothing has been done till 2009.

What Prof. Biswas says remains true and is a systemic shame for everyone
at IITK.  IIT Kanpur was set up on land obtained from poor farmers who were
disenfranchised of their hereditary village and farmlands without adequate
compensation.  Such a situation would not be possible today, when eminent
domain acquisition of land is decried as a colonial leftover.

Ivory tower criticism

While a good number of the erstwile villagerrs were hired as staff into the
IIT system - at one point IIT had 1700 staff and 250 faculty - nonetheless
the fact remains that the dream of Nehru - that IITK would lead to the
development of Kanpur as a whole, has certainly not materialized.  There is
hardly any interaction between the institute and its environments.  The
research pursued here addresses global (or some say, western) issues, and
remains divorced from the reality of India.

This criticism has been voiced most powerfully by the eminent academician
PC Kapur, who served in Metallurgy for 27 years:

   The unpalatable fact is that the institute failed, and failed
   demonstrably, in the maintenance of physical assets, the inculcation of
   excellence in faculty as a norm rather than an exception, the preservation
   of high standards in the PG programme and in research, especially in
   experimental research, that is readily visible in refereed journals of
   repute, patents, marketable technologies. ...

   In the final analysis, there was a fundamental flaw in the vision
   underlying IITK, namely, an ivory tower, resplendent in its splendid
   isolation, which was to shine like a beacon of scholarly pursuit and
   knowledge.  In reality, it turned out to be an alien entity implanted in
   the middle of what was, even by Indian standards, a particularly backward
   and reactionary context with which it was organically linked in numerous
   ways.  (Quoted in E.C. Subbarao's history of IITK,
		Eye for Excellence, 2008)

In fact, reading this text, we find that in many ways the early KIAP people
- and possibly the early Indian faculty - were more sensitive to problems
of "national significance".  Today this seems to be a pejorative word
almost.

A rare photograph

Photo of what will become the "IIT gate", 1963.  GT road at right, meter
gauge railroad to Kanauj at left.

Consortium Mechanism

The Kanpur Indo-American Program (1962-1972) has been a group effort in
which a Consortium of U.S. educational institutions assisted in the
development of the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, India.  The
members of the Consortium are

	* California Institute of Technology,
	* Carnegie-Mellon University,
	* Case Western Reserve University
	* Education Development Center, [www.edc.org]
	* Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
	* The Ohio State University,
	* Princeton University,
	* Purdue University,
	* University of California, (Berkeley) and
	* The University of Michigan.

The United States supported the Program through the Agency for International
Development (AID) by means of a contract with EDC and supplementary
agreements that EDC made with the nine other members of the Consortium.

EDC administered the Program under the policy direction of a Steering
Committee to which the President of each institution had appointed a
representative.

IIT Kanpur

By 1972, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT/Kanpur) had beome a leading
center in India for the education of engineers and scientists, both
undergraduate and graduate, and for research in engineering and science.

Kanpur is a growing industrial city with a population of more than a million,
located about 300 miles from New Delhi on the South Bank of the River Ganges.

For ten years, the Program (KIAP), which is the subject of this report, was
in operation at IIT/Kanpur and, in the course of those ten years, has played
significant and changing roles in the dynamics of the growth of IIT/ Kanpur.

Text prepared for a symposium

As originally conceived early in 1971, the basic text for this Final Report
was to have been based on the proceedings of a [week-long] Indo-American
Symposium about IIT/Kanpur and KIAP that was to have been held at the
Institute in March, 1972.

[but with the sudden deterioration of Indo-American relations early in 1972
(post-bangladesh war), the symbposium was abandoned.]

The five chapters that had been written by the American participants in
KIAP are included in this report, along with some appendices listing the
members and major equipment and

from Norman Dahl obituary, Block Island Times

posted by Arvind at http://csg.csail.mit.edu/Dahl/blockislandtext.txt

Mr. Dahl led an MIT team to India and subsequently served two years,
1962-64, as leader of the Kanpur Indo-American Programme, a consortium of
nine American Universities that helped organize the Institute of Technology
in Kanpur. Mr. Dahl and his family and colleagues "were the first Americans
living in the city who were not missionaries," Mrs. Dahl said.

She recalled the scene when a computer donated by IBM was carried by bullock
cart from an airfield to the campus, and she recalled the family recorder
concerts that gave them entree to Indian homes and musical evenings. Mr. Dahl
received an honorary degree from the institute in 1967.

The well-known Harvard economist and author John Kenneth Galbraith was
ambassador to India at the time and became a friend of the Dahls. Last week
he wrote a tribute to Mr. Dahl’s work for the Boston Globe. "The most
spectacular achievement" of his team was its "contribution to the computer
revolution in India," Galbraith wrote. He paid tribute to Mr. Dahl’s "talent
and energy… He was a powerful servant of American international policy and
practical effort and, in short, a serving citizen of not one but several
countries in his time."

from Arvind's narrative about Dahl

[Arvind joined Kanpur well after Dahl had left; he met Norman Dahl and
Dorothy only after he joined MIT in 1979.]

The biggest challenge in forming any high quality academic institution is in
hiring faculty. The Indian Universities in 1960 were full of politics and
sycophancy. In Uttar Pradesh, the state where Kanpur is located, it would
have been inconceivable to make an academic appointment at that time without
the approval of Mr. C.B. Gupta, the wily Chief Minister of the state. To
pre-empt any political interference,

Dr Kelkar and Dr Dahl visited the Chief Minister, and told him that IIT had
to appoint hundreds of professors, and if he would be so kind as to nominate
his representative on the selection committee. It was desirable that the
appointee have a higher degree in education. Mr Gupta found somebody with a
master's degree and sent him to attend these selection committee
meetings. When this gentleman reported back to the Chief Minister after
several selection committee meetings that each and every appointment was
being made in a non partisan, highly professional manner, the Chief Minister
did not interfere even once.

The selection process resulted in the arrival of professors from all over
India, many who had been educated overseas. But there was not one from Uttar
Pradesh in the first one hundred or so appointees! If you know India, you
will realize immediately that Norman must have been a political genius to get
away with this. Instead of drawing the wrath of the Chief Minister, Norman
received an invitation to visit him in Nainital, the Hill Station where the
state government offices used to move to in the summer time!

Prof. V. Rajaraman on the interactions with Dahl

"Prof. Dahl was at IIT/K when I joined as a young assistant professor at
IIT/K. ...

"I primarily remember that he was very patient and was very persuasive.

"His long conversations with Prof. Kelkar and the leadership at IITK led to
a number of new innovations in Indian Technical education which are now
widely emulated by all IITs. These innovations were:

   * Common core curriculum
   * Introduction of sizable Humanities component in Engineering Education
   * Semester system
   * Letter grading
   * Insistence on the most experienced faculty teaching core curriculum courses.

[most of these ideas were eventually adopted across the IIT system.  Thus,
the Kanpur model has a more pervasive influence across the system.]