A Teachers Day

 Been blessed with great teachers.  A clear but low key”oxygen is a supporter of combustion but not a combustible gas” rings in sometimes even today.  Her name was Susan.  She was as balanced as her equations in chemistry. In College, we had a fair, semi bald headed, with curly hair at the back, teaching physics tell us on October 1st about what Einstein thought of Gandhiji, a physics teachers opinions on someone who held the moral compass. That was Popli…. While I had a bunch wonderful teachers in IISc, here is a special one for Dr Kishore, who would show up at 8 pm on his Rajdooth to see how my experiments were going and ask whether I had dinner.  .. he would take me bike to the machine shop to get the discs ground.  A gentle pat on the back helped me change track from being an aimless wanderer with an engineering degree to someone who fell in love with research, with Tribology, that has stood the test of time and kept me relevant 44 years later.  In IITM it was KAP,  whose concepts  on tensors helped me connect to Peach Koehler formula but more importantly learn who to facilitate others in their pursuits setting aside organisational imperatives.   If KAP reads this he will know. 

During my PhD it was Conrad who hung on to concepts that I had uncovered which Scattergood  nudged me towards, helping me rise from a “oh will i get itmy PhD” to here is a good one.  Kosel in Notre Dame got me to come completely out of my comfort zone, measuring velocity of 100 micron particles rebounding in all directions with a true focus on the fidelity of physics.  

Can a teachers day be complete without writing about Jerry Schell, who knew whether, how and why and where components underwent wear in an aircraft engine and was willing to mentor and teach to anyone who showed up at his doorstep at the end of a 11 hour day.  In those few years I was a pupil again in love with my field, and the engines and coatings and everyone who worked around me. 

I think this continued for life   Finding that Guru in every organization.  There was this Dr Otto Schneiper who knew about every application for thermal sprayed coatings in the industry and tell me about the value story it offered.  

At some point as we get older our ability to soak knowledge like a sponge becomes equal to or less than what we impart.  When we impart do we put blinders on how, or whether we learn?  In my world today i continue to learn from the team, i don’t blank when people talk about repassivation or microstructure based lifing or life limiting locations, or on how to review programs.  But assuming the mantle of a guru should not come in the way of becoming a shishya, a sponge who wants to soak all the knowledge.  

On that note, a Happy Teachers Day.  Happy Pupils day.  Keep your pupil wide open. 

Back to that 1S2 Orbital.

 So here I was back in Chennai.  A place that we went to because the family was there.  My grandparents.  My dad and mom. Aunts and uncles.  In those old neighbourhoods where the trees were older than grandparents. Verdant.  Everywhere.  Spreading their canopy, and enveloping all in the comforting shade.  

A city so enclosed and ensconced that everything seemed a twenty minute commute.  Now in airconditioned Ubers. 

No wonder that those who found comfort in such stable states never left the city.  I know some who escaped to higher orbitals who returned back to their core.  Their 1S2 state in the C atom, Chennai.  Organic to the core.

Where would that place me?  Like many others who seemed to have escaped the inner orbitals to find higher energy states.  Consigned to find that higher activation energy in some other country or some other city?  

 I think i find solace in the metallurgical bond.  Relishing in donating and being surrounded by free electrons.  Like those free electrons i find my belonging everywhere, in the cool or warm and humid canopies of Chennai, in the new rootedness of Cooke Town, in good earth which seems to have goodness transplanted from everywhere across, and in Whitefield surrounded by young and old with pulsating talent.  Or when I visit US where the nostalgia of different phases of life envelope me. 

It is good to be a free electron in that metallurgical world. 

Every now and then tunnel into the core orbitals and come back. 

Pondicherry hues

 A quiet birthday to celebrate the 78th birthday of my mother in law got me to escape the humdrum of life in Bangalore.  A bit of a circuit.  By train to Chennai.  And a cab to Pondy.  It had been a while, those train rides. 

It had been a while to Pondy too  

My Vande Bharat pulled out on time, the guy floored it past KR Puram   The display said 130 kmph and Whitfield was a blur.  The gentleman next to me was well turned out, with a little red dot on his forehead, like gentlemen from Chennai often do.  I nodded to him and went back to my messages till out of boredom we stuck a conversation.  He ran a business.  Believed in simple living. He wanted to know about my career in GE, about airline safety, referring to the recent tragedy of course.  And then things drifted to fate, Gods way, creation, statistical thermodynamics, order and disorder in life and society.  A couple of hours drifted by   A kid in the next row offered us chocolates   Her mom wearing a headscarf turned back and smiled at us   My neighbour rummaged through his laptop bag a pulled out a chocolate   The kid threw a glance at her mom, her mom nodded and said, oh thank you so much.  My heart felt a bit warmer  

I have spent much of my life being my own self, never quite putting on an act, i think.  And surely after nearly four decades of married life a visit to my in laws felt like home.   The road to Pondy from south of Chennai was a ripper   At 100 kmph one was keeping up with traffic   Past verdant roads, wooded hillocks we were soon near Pondy   Into that warm liberal enclave where there was a bit for everyone  

The ashram perhaps sets the tone   Order disorder, chill, loosen up, be yourself it seemed to say   And so the visitors and residents seem to be able to slow down more than a tad to soak it all in.  The promenade amid the rocky  beach   The pastel coloured buildings, quaint little cake shops, restaurants serving continental cuisine with a chilled mug if you want one, all had the unsaid message.  Unwind   

As did Maisone de Perumal, with it’s dual open courtyards, with large pots housing small trees, and gentle piped music with men wearing dhotis and rooms immaculately furnished, and a kettle with a French press for coffee.  A room that was truly nap-worthy and certainly a wonderful brew to wake us up.  And thus flew a day and a half with walks to the beach, the French quarters, morning runs, walks to the temple and of course the ashram  

And that morning for breakfast, Maison whipped out a cake   The ID proof was not just for compliance but to note down those special days  

Those hues of Pondicherry   Still wrapped in it  

Greewashed in Baku

 

There were four center-page articles on COP29 conference held in BAKU in a major newspaper, pouring into the looming global warming crisis, the need for developed countries to spend more  on aid to help developing nations adopt climate change mitigation technologies,  and how we could be entering an era of NCQG - New Collective Quantified Goals.  One of them talked about India's major role in spending as much as 15000 crore rupees - about 0.06% of its GDP on renewable energy!! 

 

That we were about to breach 1.5 degrees Celsius rise (we are at 1.49 degrees C now) post commencement of the industrial age was mentioned in passing.  And 3.1 degrees Celsius temperature rise could be breached if we continue along this trajectory.  Barely a few months ago we talked about 1.5C rise as a defendable goal if only we went on a full court press.  It is unfortunate that we have an underpinning premise is that we have the answers, if only we had the will to deploy them; but the premise is simply not true.  One more reason to state the obvious.  We have been green washed.   This time from Baku.

 

Let us consider Renewable Energy, which decarbonizes the energy sector.  More than a decade ago, Photovoltaics (PV) reached a cost point where the installation costs per rated MW was on par with or less than new thermal power plants.  Wind energy was not far behind.  In India, investments in renewable energy outpaced conventional power for more than a decade, with approximately 70GW being added in thermal and 120 GW in renewable energy.  Renewable Energy accounts for 46% of installed capacity.  Yet in terms of energy generated thermal power is still a whopping 75% of the energy mix.  Renewable energy is seasonal (especially wind) and not 24x7 - Solar.  The ratio of delivered to installed capacity for renewable energy is about 30%.  Transmission losses are 2to 5% per hundred KM - so to put all solar in the deserts of Rajasthan is not practical.  To deliver 100% Renewable energy leveraging on energy storage while increasing capacity to compensate for the intermittency of renewable energy, one needs to triple the current renewable energy footprint.  We will struggle to find the land for that.  And battery-based solutions come at a prohibitively high cost (will quadruple the energy costs) and comes with its own carbon footprint which may take years to erase.   Pumped storage is often talked about.  It needs two reservoirs at different heights in reasonable proximity, with enough watershed to store the 1000s of MW of energy that needs to be stored.  Indias current hydro capacity is 10% of its total footprint and only a small fraction is amenable to pumped storage.  Pumped storage comes with massive ecological costs in terms of deforestation, and impact on aquatic life.  

 

In-spite of a decade of concerted action we are stuck with 75% of energy on tap coming from thermal power.  This conundrum is not unique to India, USA, China, much of Asia, and portions of Europe share this problem.  The exception is those blessed with 24x7 wind (Netherlands and Denmark) or those with massive legacy nuclear energy (France and Ukraine), that have breached the 50% ceiling of non-fossil energy-based power.  There is only one water-tight solution - that is nuclear energy, which is 24x7, minimal carbon footprint except during construction, and comes with a safety risk which is manageable.  Stray radiation from mining for coal or lithium exceeds that from standard nuclear plants.  Small nuclear reactors (SMR)are even more manageable when it comes to disposal of waste.  If the world is serious about climate change developed and developing nations should be forging a partnership in installing nuclear power plants, including SMRs which can be deployed quickly.  And this should have been one of the main talking points.

 

Moving to transportation, EVs that are not directly tied to solar panels rely on grid power which is now 75% thermal across much of the world.  The batteries come with its own manufacturing carbon footprint which is much higher than conventional vehicles.  The energy storage materials have a 3% extraction efficiency, some are mined at the expense of rainforests using primitive methods.  The total emissions footprint of battery manufacturing is estimated to grow to One Giga ton of CO2 per year - it is estimated that for a 100 KW powered EV (like a tesla) it would take 70000 KM of driving to neutralize manufacturing footprint.  Yet there is a case to be made for EVs if the energy used to charge is 100% renewable.   Two wheelers and three wheelers which take a few hours to charge and readily done in daylight could be 100% emissions free, and pollution free, if they are backed by dedicated solar energy.  For a 70KWh hour car it requires 10 KW of PV or at least two thousand square feet of space and eight to twelve hours of time to charge and finding that space is not easy in urban settings. The easiest answer for India is that it makes sense to electrify the two-wheeler segment and that is part of the policy prescription.  For the rest it is a struggle to electrify.  Increasing the percentage of biofuel, especially from waste, is the best mitigative answer unless one switches to nuclear energy instead of thermal power, which is clearly decades away. 

 

If the challenges are that stark, and immediately implementable solutions are that difficult, then the question is how societies can strive to mitigate climate change.  

 

Rooftop Energy.  This could include solar panels on rooftop or sunshades in every home, biowaste to energy in rural areas using small gensets, backed by tax breaks or subsidy from the government.   The goal should be that at least 40% of domestic energy needs in rural and urban areas is met by locally generated renewable energy.  This certainly would pose challenges to grid stability and thermal power plant reliability, but this can be managed.

 

Energy Efficiency:  The lowest hanging fruit has been plucked - much of urban lighting comes from LEDs which consume 10% of the energy of incandescent lamps.  Appliances are more efficient today than a decade ago, even in India.  However construction industry is locked into bricks and concrete even for non-load bearing structures - industrial waste to walls is a significant opportunity which needs to be tapped.

When it comes to thermal power, India is struggling to unlock itself from technologies which are inherently less efficient.  Existing coal fired Rankine cycle engines have 50% higher emissions as compared to combined cycle natural gas fired power plants.  However, India is a nett importer of natural gas.  Coal gasification, and coal to natural gas technologies need to be tapped and deployed with alacrity to reduce emissions from the energy sector.  Such a move would help India migrate from the less efficient Rankine cycle to the more efficient combined cycle which combines Brayton and Rankine cycles.

 

Optimizing India's farming:  Farming from existing irrigated lands or those areas blessed with abundant rainfall needs to be maximized and made scientific to maximize yields.  India has already closed the gap in wheat and is catching up in paddy.   Fifty percent of India's farmlands are not irrigated by rivers.  Large scale dependence on ground water is not sustainable or energy efficient.  India needs to switch to a combination of drip irrigation with millets, horticulture and agro forestry in such areas to maximize rural income reduce energy footprints in agriculture.  In a prevailing democracy such as India, such rules cannot be imposed from top, but there needs to be incentives from the government and markets. About 20% of horticultural produce is lost because of lack of cold storage.  The use of renewable energy (evaporative cooling) can be a game changer and needs to be developed for small farmers.  Finally agro-waste to ethanol needs to be developed so that Biofuels are sourced not just from water guzzling crops like sugar cane but actual agro-waste.  The farmer apart from being part of the food supply chain can become part of the energy supply chain with the right incentives for rooftop / pump head solar, and waste to energy or fuel plants.  By focusing on yields that reduce the area that needs to be farmed along with agroforestry, rural land banks could be coopted into nature-based climate change solutions with transparent policies that directly reward the farmer.  

 

Responsible Consumption:  India is a developing country - poverty is a lived reality.  When poverty exists in combination with caste and class divide, the loss of human dignity is morally unacceptable.  One needs to recognize that urban and rural consumption generates jobs in all sectors.  But there is a case to be made for responsible consumption.  This includes the shift away from larger fuel guzzling cars, frequent upgrades of electronic gadgets which have large manufacturing and transportation carbon footprints, investment in property which carries its own construction related emissions, and flying to destinations where surface transportation was possible to name a few.  About 10% of India's households now have first world lifestyles, and this is driving emissions.

 

It is said that if all of India lived in urban settlements such as New Delhi, then the entire population could be bottled into a small state such as Telengana.  Of course the country needs its farms and factories.  Therefore, while balancing technologies used for production of engineering goods and apparel, or food grains and horticultural products, one needs to ensure that land usage is kept to a minimum.  If we make substantial changes towards that end we may see more if India becoming a forest and contributing to mitigating climate change through nature-based solutions.

 

Until we do all the above Greenwashing will continue.

 

Those lanes of inclusion

 

Our shop is as organic as it gets - has only grains, fruits, vegetables and dairy products. Short eats are locally made and certified as organic,  So for a shaving cream it needs to be an errand in sin to an inorganic shop, unless one uses an App for delivery.  But a part of me still would want to get out, past the leafy road to periurban Bangalore, all a hop away.  Cows on the road, strays near garbage, two wheelers and four wheelers in Brownian motion from gated apartments - I get to my inorganic shop - well stocked with detergents and soaps, along with food grains and junk food from assorted sources,  I would typically find smaller shops that sell peanuts and the like, a medical shop run by a disabled person - it breaks my heart to ask him for anything outside his reach, but he has a smile and he says he needs to make business.  Today the assorted shacks selling fruits and vegetables were closed, and I was determined to give the small timers a shot,  And so I head towards the main road and try and find push carts that had fruits.  They were gone,  I take a left  hit the main road and turn left to Anchepalya - another street in random motion with a mosque, temple, medical shops and shacks selling wares jostlling for space,

Guavas slightly bigger than a baseball caught my eye.  So I pulled over and stopped.  This guy had apples, oranges, guavas and bananas.  While oranges looked far from fresh the rest were good.  Got a Kg of each - I knew this guy would know hindi, spoke to him in Hindi, paid in cash for old times sake, and then my eyes wandered to the temple to his right.  He gave me an extra banana, peeling it saying this would be good.  It was.  The temple like the many small ones in Bangalore had a majestic tree.  It was 2 in the afternoon and it was closed.  On it steps there were kids playing.  Their mom in a burkha kept a watchful eye.  I had my bagful of fruits and a smile - these lanes can give social media a lesson.

In a couple of hundred yards, the road would turn to the right - and become less crowded, with a new temple to my right, a government urdu medium primary school which also hosts elections every time it is held, a Benedectine monastery to my left, it hosted a zen meditation retreat earlier this year.  Another left turn and I would be back to my leafy oasis.  Our new additional household help, a muslim lady went early on October 31st to buy firecrackers for her kids.   

Is it just my neck of the woods?  In Nilgiris where we are running an NGO the labourers, tribals from Masinagudi wanted a week off for Diwali.   The program was kicked off as per their custom with a puja for the implements that give them livelihood, while the staffers irrespective of whether they went to a church or a temple wanted to by firecrackers for the kids at home,

And so unfolds the mosaic of India, seen from a community called Mosaic.  The community is called Malhar Mosaic.  A song may be in order, but rendered by me would be surely unmusical.

This time we say TATA to a great one..

 

Tata old friend

The first time I admired an engineered product from India was in 1977.  Most of Haryana and western UP was submerged in waist deep water.  As students from Stephens we volunteered to distribute food packets to those marooned along with tablets to purify water.  We were bused to points where Tata trucks stood.  We climbed at the back like laborers, perched on the side as it went past flooded roads, pushing a large wave of water ahead.  The drivers were experts , they had points where they would stop where we would get off, wade on water and get into boats that got to marooned villages.  We had the same roti and aloo subji.  But I looked at the truck, built like a rock  and said wow..

The place where I did my undergraduate engineering course was called Tata Institute, founded by Jamshedji Tata - a place where excellence and thought leadership was carried forth as though it was all but natural.    Like Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Indian Institute of Science, Tata Steel and Tata Motors, building national icons seemed just par for the course for the house of Tatas.  My education in engineering was in the early 80s.  A revolution in how educated India would work was quietly underway.  The best from BE Electronics and Electrical were getting absorbed in Tata Burroughs Limited, a company that pioneered a career in software and coding - with engineers stationed in India or overseas coding and making the world run.  Ah it is Cobol some would remark,  But it was a new way to live, thrown into challenges at work, exposed to new cultures and new norms.  Educated Indians took naturally to such challenges.  Many others followed.  I started hearing of new towns like Culpeper and Charlottesville.

It was still the 1980s right?  A third world nation eagerly trying to fit in.  While we applauded ourselves in cutting it, there were others among us dreaming bigger,.  Cut to 2000, and Tata looked as big as one of the  businesses of GE - a $12 billion business.  Wow we said.  While GE was priding itself in having one of the largest R&D centers in the world, A JV with Tata gave great design engineers.  While new MNCs occupied an entire floor TCS was having much larger office spaces.  Advanced computers were sold by Tata Elxsi, our guests stayed in the Taj Westend or Vivanta - hotels that remained peerless in levels of service class and comfort.  

Engineering companies like GE were taking pride in building world class teams in India.  While we  were marveling at what was getting accomplished, Tata gave graduate courses in Audacity.  Tata tea, the benevolent owners of large tea estates bought Teltley.  Tata Steel, which was one of the largest steel mills in the world bought Corus.  While Tata Motors had Land Rover  and Jaguar under its belt.  Its 2000 launch of Indica sounded like a math problem - more car per car.  The ambassadors got replaced by Indica and Indigo.  While they were not a Honda by any stretch, the logged in the miles - the tax driver who took me to the airport after India beat Sri Lanka in the world cup had already clocked 400,000 on his Indigo.  While we had our symposium on how the best technologies could be harnessed for India, we had a Tata Nano test drive - meant to get Indians to get off their unsafe scooters and take their families in a Nano.  Two decades into my career, our daughter makes it to UK.  The Paddington express from Heathrow had TCS written all over it. 

My first and only visit to the house of Tata was to meet a friend and mentor Gopi Katragadda.  A small non descript building in a busy street replete with hawkers, with an Indie accompanying in the lift told me a story of inclusiveness and humility. Yes we know about the trusts and charity that have stemmed from this house.  Of audacity and scale and span coming from the house of Tatas.  Their son made much of this happen has moved on.  

I write this blogged more moved by his passing than any public figure I have known.  

Tata - to our icon. 

Oh Can't we See??

 

Oh Can’t We See?

 

 

Back in the 1970s, still wading through Watergate, Vietnam War, and  past  the civil rights protests, rock and roll came into its own.  With searing music, exploring strands from across the world, and asking searching questions.  Can’t you see was a one hit wonder from a relatively obscure band.  While it seems only a break-up rock song, its guitar work, flutes, and vocals were indeed haunting.  That “Cant you see” being a metaphor for “Cant we see?”  directed at those of us dreaming of a better India,

 

In terms of financial bandwidth, we have moved on.  When P Chidambaram presented his dream budget in 1996-97 for Rs 100,000 crores with the 20% each already allocated to servicing the debt, funding the states, funding defense, and paying salaries for government staff, he had only Rs 20,000 crores to develop the country - about Rs 200 per capita.  With such meagre resources, even a single flyover over one intersection was a luxury.  We seemed forever consigned to third world existence, While poverty was an un-mutable fact, what could be challenged was the swing to the right.  The horrors of the violence that we were witness to in the early 1990s kept us transfixed on what should or should not be the agenda for the country.  Like deer caught in those headlights we have not moved on.

 

India’s economy has certainly grown leaps and bounds,  The interim budgeted this February has a government spend which is 47 times higher than that at 1996  ..  at 47 00,000 crores.   While in 1996, we the consuming middle class were barely 10% of the population. Our influence on national politics was limited.  Who gets voted to power depended on the poor.  But much has changed since then .  With 15 million two wheelers and 4 million cars sold every year, the aspiring classes are at least 500 million strong – less than 40% of the country, but our voice carries, through the influence we wield on social media demanding amenities from the government, and the loyal discourses that we sustain through whatsapp university.  It is to this segment that I ask and  to those in the liberal left and the pro-establishment right – Cant’t we see?

 

If one were to Pareto out the problems that Indians face, it is lack of access to dignified housing for the urban poor – about 100 million Indians live in slums – in small shacks with poor sanitation, schooling and health care.  It is amazing that while Mumbai glitters like Manhattan, with more than Rs 100,000 crores spent on sea links and metros, the poor continue to live in such poor conditions.  The same applies across metros and tier 1 and 2 cities in India.    The problem is also one of a poverty trap that over 50% of those in rural India face, There is a paucity of jobs in India, Support prices of crops have not kept up with inflation for more than a decade.  Infrastructure for storage of agro-produce is non-existent.  Opportunities to augment incomes through distributed renewable energy (solar panels on roof tops and irrigation pumps), solar farms in fallow lands, biofuel and energy from crop waste have been frittered away in favour of Renewable Energy projects favouring a few large industrialists.  And those in rural India have poor access to schools, colleges and education.  In many small villages education is available only to primary and middle school.  Overcoming such barriers is something that the poor cant afford.  If one throws in caste structure into the mix the problem is even worse,  While climate change is an elite problem ripe for discussions, it is a lived crisis for the rural poor,  Climate change and  the normal vagaries of monsoon seem to have colluded to throw up either a cycle of relentless drought or destructive floods,  Large scale government and private intervention is needed to address this issue, to augment Renewable Energy for non-industrial use, and increased reliance on agro based biofuels for transportation.  If technologies for the same are invested such that the value add is at the farmers door step the near permanent poverty in rural areas can be redressed, It is the absence of ideas, policies and investment in this space that results in migration of millions to cities for a better livelihood.

 

While the agenda required for the country is clear, we have an almost Dystopian fight between the right wing and liberals over religion.   If one were to focus on day to life for the millions of the majority and minority, the rights to worship, attire, identity is fairly unfettered.  The banks in India shut down for Good Friday, while in US they do not.  Our stock markets close for Eid and Guru Nanak Jayanthi.  Each religion has its own civil code and rightly so, to be challenged only when individual rights are breached.  What we fight over and take cudgels with and rightly so, is on incidents of violence.  That said the elephant in the room is that at least 30 to 40% of the population is trapped into poverty with limited recourse for a better life.  And another 20% are just one crisis away from a slide back to destitution.   

 

Yet in the kaleidoscope of issues that I see being debated in the press, on TV and social media, it is – mostly focused on religious divide, whose single biggest benefit is to help us voice opinions which are in tune with our identity markers.  I feel like again screaming – “Oh Can’t we see?”  Because real issues are lost in irrelevant echo-chambers.  While the poor really struggle to live in dignity across India.