VIDA UNIVERSITARIA The+Shoreline%2714+April%2C+2014 | Page 12

who is now the Director of NIT Bhopal. I
have worked under both of them. Profes-
sor Balaveera Reddy was the person whom
I reported to first. If you want to know a
teacher of eminence, Professor BS Samaga
was the man. He was an IC engine special-
ist. Even other department students used to
come and request him to take classes! Even
at the age of 70, he would sit down and take
classes.
There are many more but the list is too long.
Could you tell us about the
SPARSH foundation? [www.
thesparshfoundation.org]
This is one of the outcomes of the students.
SPARSH is an alumni group – but has
nothing to do with your alumni association.
I used to catch use of mobiles in the class.
If somebody’s mobile rang, I’d confiscate it.
I’d find the total price and ask the student
to donate 1/4th of the price to SPARSH
to get the phone back [laughs]. Later I felt
donation should be voluntary. I could not
punish you to help somebody.
Jagadeep Singh Gambhir is the person –
from the 2008 batch, I think – who started
it. I was fully into student activity during
2002-2008. Students could talk to me about
anything, including personal problems. We
used to take them to the beach for a talk.
And we could even help some of them to
come out of their difficulty. So, that group
of students said, “Sir, we want to give some-
thing back to the institute”, and came up
with an idea called SPARSH. It’s a founda-
tion which identifies poor students in the
institute and awards them scholarships. We
source the money through donations. Eve-
rything, including the bank balance, can be
seen on the website. This time I think we
were able to give scholarships to some six
people. We want to support at least 100 stu-
dents a year. Earlier our plan was to create
a corpus fund and then run it, but we did
not get sufficient money to run it, because
all the alumni involved are quite busy
.
Looking Beyond
A lot of effort was put into inking an MoU with Volvo; the money was
from them and the ideas were from the faculty as well as from their
corporate wing.
Volvo will now be actively involved in projects and internships – both
in India and abroad. They are looking to organize expert-lectures called
lecture-demonstrations [LecDems] and workshops. We have requested
them to set up a facility on campus, but that is still in the pipeline. They
will also be giving us their problem-statements so faculty and students
can work together and develop innovative solutions.
This flags off heightened industry interaction - Mercedes-Benz, National
Instruments, Moog India, Dell and Intel have also been involved in talks
with our institute in recent times. We must be opportunistic and respond
faster. Right now, we are working more with small industries. They want
help, and they don’t know whether NITs will listen to their problems.
We are working with small and medium scale industries through CSD in
the form of student projects. But we need higher commitment from our
students. We cannot take up a problem and then two days later have a
student saying, “I am not interested!” That is detrimental both for the
student as well as the image of the institute
.
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The Shoreline