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Dhawan and the Transformation of the Indian Institute of Science
Dhawan took charge as Director of the Institute never be necessary to count heads in the Senate.)
on the last day of 1962 and continued in the
In retrospect, Dhawan' s in itial years seem to
position til131 July 1981. His tenure of more than
have been taken up in consolidation and reorga-
seventeen and a half years was the longest in the
nization of the units already on the campus: for
Institute's history for any director. Over this
example, in 1963, the Power Engineering De-
period Dhawan was able to exert a long-lasting
partment was split into the present Mechanical,
influence on the Institute's intellectual character.
Electrical and High Voltage Engineering Depart-
its programmes in both research and education,
ments. However towards the end of the 1960s,
and its administrative structure. The period was
Dhawan began taking a series of new initiatives
also marked by an extraordinary expansion in the
that transformed the Institute in less than a de-
diversity of the research programmes at the Insti-
cade. In 1968-69 a major campaign to recruit
tute, as a large number of new faculty joined at
new faculty, especially from abroad, was set in
various times and a variety of new centres were
motion. In 1969 the School of Automation was
set lip. Indeed. the Institute as we see it today is
set up with I G Sarma (who came from liT
by and large the outcome of a series of changes
Kanpur) as its first head; the School was inspired
that took place through Dhawan's tenure, at any
by Russian ideas and was an unusual ,academic
given time seeming to be incremental, but adding
unit in the country at the time. In 1970 a com-
up over nearly two decades to a remarkable trans-
puter centre was set up (with an IBM 360). The
formation.
same year the teaching programme was reorga-
When Dhawan took over the Institute it was nized (after overcoming much initial resistance)
into a unit or credit system, giving much greater
relatively small: around 1960 there were only 11
flexibility to the student. Around that time a
departments and 5 sections, the recurring budget
was RS.54lakhs and the non-recurring budget just review committee headed by the well-known
chemist, T R Sheshadri, made a series of recom-
a little more than Rs. 6 lakhs. The Senate of the
Institute could sit around the oval table in the old mendations about the administrative structure of
the Institute as well as its scientific programmes,
COllnci I Chamber on the ground floor of the
Tower. (I attended one of its meetings as an endorsing some of the changes that Dhawan had
already put in place. These included anew system
invitee in the early 1960s.) By the time Dhawan
of promotion so that, instead ofa single professor
\eft there were some 40 Departments and Units in
in each department who was also automatically
the I nstitute, the recurring budget was approach-
its head (or czar, as Dhawan sometimes referred
ing Rs. 10 crores and the non-recurring budget
to them), there were now several professors; and
had gone up by two orders of magnitude; at the
departments were being grouped together into
farewell meeting in July 1981, the Senate filled a
divisions to encourage interdisciplinary work and.
fair part of the Faculty Hall. (By the way, the one
more generally, to breakdown the rather impen-
departing plea he made to the assembled senators
etrable walls that every department at the Insti-
on that occasion was that they should continue the
tradition of deciding by consensus, and not be too tute had erected around itself.
impatient with minority views; he hoped it would
In 1971, for the first time in the twenty years after
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4 v V V V V v RESONANCE I October 2003