Ripple Effect

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Ripple Effect

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What is NCBS today used to basically be a plot of shrubs, a wasteland in the eyes of some. Those shrubs were the 20-acre patch for which TIFR and the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) signed the lease deed in February 1991. Today, the carefully landscaped space is home to an entirely different ecosystem. Institution building also means recognition of the fact that the institution will have an impact on its surroundings and connected people, in both a literal as well as figurative sense.
 The Ripple Effects theme is about the impact of the formation of NCBS on the Molecular Biology Unit in the early 1990s, the changing ecosystem in the UAS campus, the individual stresses of institution building, and the shaping of ideologies at other newer institutions. Reducing friction between students of different campuses, prioritising different kinds of research, understanding the perceived isolation of the TIFR/NCBS model – these stories are all glimpses of what happens when trying to build a quiet space to do research in a corner of another university.

For all practical purposes, it was wasteland in the early 1990s when the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team got down to work at the 20-acre plot of land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. For all practical purposes, it was an idyllic country resort when Sanjay Sane joined the NCBS faculty in 2007, far from the bustling metropolis just south of the campus. Buildings with interlinked courtyards overlooked a large path of green that played host to migrating birds. From a distance, it looked like sculpted granite that had risen up in a densely wooded forest.
 Sane had just moved from the United States to India, and had already known about TIFR and NCBS – he’d been a junior fellow in the mid 1990s before he left for a PhD at UC Berkeley. That was where Sane published a landmark paper in 1999 with his advisor, Mike Dickinson, on the aerodynamics of insect flight (more on that in the Research – Shifts Theme Gallery). Here, he had to start over. He was all set to import Manduca sexta, the moth he had familiarity with. But Sane also wanted to do things slightly differently from his previous research work. He wanted to look at insects both inside and outside the lab. It was August. The post monsoon migration had just begun. Sane got a nice temporary office with a large window. As he stared out, he saw streams of butterflies flying across the NCBS lawn. Listen to his interview excerpt for how the NCBS setting forced him to reinvent how he did research. 6-Effect-Toll-A1
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 Sane’s ecosystem may well not have existed. Even at the very end, after an agreement seemed to be in place between UAS and TIFR, Bangalore newspapers raised questions and suggested that UAS was giving land away to the Tatas. It seemed like the proposal might fall through. H Sharat Chandra, director of the Centre for Human Genetics and Emeritus Professor, Indian Institute of Science, was instrumental in the early land negotiations and recalls this incident. And when Chandra tried to inform the Karnataka Chief Minister of the issues before the start of a Legislative Assembly meeting, he got a response that seemed mildly reassuring. “Professor, you do science, leave politics to me,” the Chief Minister told Chandra.
 The land troubles did not end there. Even after the granite came up on the UAS campus, it set off a ripple of effects, touching the lives of individuals and institutions: The slideshow below has meeting minutes from 1997, showing, for instance, how the institute had to settle with squatters who had built homes on land allocated to NCBS.
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 The external impact of NCBS is evident. It has built a reputation for being an efficient, productive place to study and do research. Outsiders consistently marvel at the perceived lack of red tape at the institution. In his interview clip, L Shashidhara, a faculty member at IISER, looks back at the history of NCBS and claims that how biology research is done in India is now largely influenced by the NCBS/TIFR model. 6-Effect_Toll-A2
 Speaking of the TIFR model, the molecular biology unit at TIFR had an uncertain future around the time that the NCBS plans were being finalized. Shobhona Sharma, a faculty member at TIFR, preferred to stay in Bombay, but there was also much concern on what will happen to the biology group there. Listen to her interview excerpt and see the discussions at the 1997 TIFR review in the audio slideshow below. 6-Effect-Toll-A0
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 Institution building also has effects on the individuals involved in the process. In his interview clip, Krishanu Ray, current faculty member and former student at TIFR, narrates the global impact of the olfaction research at TIFR in the 1970s and 1980s. Ray ponders why it didn’t go further. 6-Effect-Toll-A3
 Listen to Satyajit Mayor’s view on the effect of institution building on his own scientific career. 6-Effect-Toll-A4 And to Kaleem Siddiqi’s perspective on the cost of the move for his family from the centre of Bombay to the edge of Bangalore. 6-Effect-Toll-A5 And finally, see the conversation between McMillan Publishers and Obaid Siddiqi in the 1960s, when Siddiqi worked on a book manuscript, “Introduction to Molecular Genetics”.
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 For more, head to the Gallery.

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 It seemed a little unfair. They were all about the same age, college and post graduate students studying at adjacent educational institutions. One group at the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS), a sprawling open campus of more than a 1000 acres, with a handful of security guards. And the other, a small set of graduate students at NCBS, set on a 20 acre fortress on UAS land, with two to three guards at every gate. This is how the UAS students saw it, says PP Ranjith in his featured audio clip, remembering a time in the late 1990s.
 NCBS had a bigger security force partly because of its isolation and to prevent any untoward incidents. But perhaps the biggest distinction as perceived by the UAS students was one of privilege. If you were an NCBS student, you could reach the main UAS gate, ask for a vehicle and soon, you’d have an NCBS escort vehicle ferrying you through the UAS campus to NCBS. There were shuttle buses for NCBS students. But UAS students would not be able to join the shuttles to get across their campus. Predictably, it “created a rift between the two institutes”, says PP Ranjith. Listen to the rest of his interview clip, where he recalls the friction between the students and how they practiced a little cricket diplomacy. 6-Isolation-A5
 Perhaps the cheapest metaphor to describe this perception of elitism is to look at the featured photo above of the newly constructed NCBS in 1998. Over the years, people have described the perceived isolation of NCBS campus in many ways. “Bubble” is one. “So close to India,” is another. Isolation can be a much vaunted feature in research. The culture at TIFR and NCBS has always been a little different from other institutes in India, and in his audio clip, P Balaram, a retired professor and former director of IISc, shares his views on this “isolated system”. 6-Isolation-A1
 Indeed, TIFR and its national centres have even been largely immune to the vagaries of the political and economic climate they live in, from the 1975 Emergency to the 1991 debt crisis. Much of this could be attributed to the shelter offered by being under the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) umbrella. In her interview, Shobhona Sharma, a former student and current faculty member at TIFR, recalls the relative immunity of the atmosphere when she was a student at the Institute in the late 1970s. 6-Isolation-A4 It was also a time when the unit was growing and accommodating different kinds of research. The slideshow picks out a set of correspondences in the 1970s illustrating some structuring of scientific priorities at the molecular biology unit at TIFR.
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 A secluded research environment is both a measure of the success of NCBS and something for it to be wary of in the future. Listen to Satyajit Rath, a faculty member at the National Institute of Immunology (NII), reflecting on the effect of the NCBS/TIFR model in Indian science. 6-Isolation-A2 NCBS has always reached out to an international scientific community, reflecting perhaps the methods of Bhabha at TIFR in the 1950s. In a manner, scientists outside the NCBS complex have remarked how NCBS appeared to be international to a fault, to a point of not looking inward and making connections with the rest of the community within India. Having collaborators outside India is hardly a bad thing and K VijayRaghavan contests any critique of the international outlook. 6-Isolation-A3
 This yearning to link with the society it lived in was felt even back in 2003. See the slideshow with a four page report in 2003 from NCBS to an external review committee, just after its 10-year anniversary. It includes a list of points that the Centre felt it should attend to within the year at the time, including a way to connect to society, where “Bangalore should see us as an essential part of itself.” The Science & Society programme at NCBS is one such movement. Today, NCBS is also host to a remarkable series of talks on myriad topics that are unrelated to its own research, with topics ranging from Ayudha Puja to public health policy in India. These programmes stand as a few reflections of that yearning (See the Intersections – Outside World Theme for more).
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Effects and Toll, Interaction/Isolation

Ripple Effect

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