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Man with a mission

 

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He is the man of the season and everybody is talking about him. He has become so popular that he cannot go to even a remote temple in Tamil Nadu without being recognized and honoured. He has school kids walking up to him and saying, “Super, Sir.”

No, no. We are not talking about a movie star or a rising politician. For once, society seems taken up with an academician/technocrat: Anna University Vice-Chancellor, Dr E Balagurusamy.

Balagurusamy puts all this attention down to his appearing regularly on TV and the fact that the scope of the university has widened with over 250 engineering institutions being affiliated to it.

“The Anna University VC has a larger role to play now. The earlier VCs’ writ and ideas were confined to the Guindy campus. But, I have to now deal with so many diverse and different institutions pulling in different directions. All this has dragged me to the limelight,” he explains.

But there are two more distinctive characteristics that set him apart and make him worthy of all the attention.

No, no. Not that Kalam-like hairstyle or the cool mono-colour shirts.

He has a vision; and has a wonderfully humorous way of giving expression to that vision.

This was exhibited when he spoke at a function recently in Chennai where singer Vani Jairam was presented the ‘Vibrant Indian’ award by an organisation called ‘Developers India’.

Within a few minutes of taking the floor he had the audience in splits. He said his wife had had a good laugh that he was going to be a special guest at a function to honour a singer as he was known as ‘Aurangazeb’ at home (for not being a great lover of music).

Even as the audience roared, he said it was not enough if some people alone became ‘Vibrant Indians’. He wanted “all Indians” to be “vibrant” to take this country forward. He suggested that the organisation could reach out to the students of the university and make them responsible citizens.

This made everyone sit up and listen seriously. He is so possessed with this vision of a better India and better citizens that he could not but mention it at even a function like this.

Balagurusamy seems the right person to voice this concern.

He has a rich educational background: He has an M.E. (Hons) from the University of Roorkee from where he completed his Ph.D “in a record 14 months”. He holds a diploma in technical education from the UK.

He began his career as an assistant lecturer at PSG College of Technology and Polytechnic, Coimbatore, when he was just 21 years old.

He was one of the co-founders of NIIT. He was IT advisor to the Andhra Pradesh government for 11 years from 1980. He was also a consultant to the governments of Punjab and Rajasthan on science and technology. He was a faculty at the Technical Teachers Training Institute in Bhopal.

This IT and management wizard has authored 35 books, most of them best-sellers in India and abroad and prescribed as texts in many universities and colleges. “Nobody can claim to have become a computer scientist without seeing any of my books,” he says as a matter of fact.

(Having a busy schedule, he writes from 9 p.m. to midnight almost everyday. “I mostly watch TV at that time. Once I wrote a whole book watching the serial ‘Sakthi’,” he laughs infectiously. His first book appeared in 1983 and he publishes at least two books a year!)

“In my long career of 35 years I have been teaching, consulting and even worked in an industry like BHEL,” he says. The experience from so many fields seems to have given him a definite vision and plan.

Balagurusamy, a native of Aravakurichi in Tiruchi, says it is not enough if the university simply churns out engineers “who are not good human beings”. “We want to make the students useful citizens, the kind of engineers who want to serve society.”

So, he has introduced compulsory subjects like Principles of Environmental Engineering, Professional Ethics, Total Quality Management and Indian Constitution in the engineering colleges.

He firmly believes that it is the faculty who are the key to bringing about this change. So, he has introduced a faculty improvement programme for even the regional centres.

The next logical step is to change the attitude of the private managements. “They must realise that they have a role to play in improving the quality of education and that they cannot think they can survive by ignoring society for long.”

If their idea is to just make money, “they have the right objective but are in the wrong job,” he says and roars with laughter. They have to take care of the “customers” – who are the students and parents here – to survive or they will get left far behind, he warns matter-of-factly. The public have been seeing him and hearing him send out this warning on TV almost every other day.

The managements must pay the faculty right and treat them right. “It is true that the faculty of these colleges do not enjoy the kind of respect they deserve,” says this one-time teacher.

“We have something like 250 colleges affiliated to the university and not all of them are on the same level of educational competence. There are four lakh students and my role as Vice-Chancellor becomes critical,” he explains.

He says his doors are open to parents/students who come to him with problems. “If you want to serve the public, you have to listen to them. Talk to people, listen to them, gather information, then analyse and use them. This is the only way you can change your way of thinking and attitude,” says Balagurusamy.

He is given to visiting colleges outside Chennai to find out first-hand how they function and the problems that confront them.

All this reminds one of another scientist who has a vision and never tires of talking about it: President A P J Abdul Kalam.

“Yes, Kalam and I think alike. He had read my book on reliability engineering on spacecraft before we met. Then we worked together and are good friends now,” he says. There is an arresting picture on his table where he is seen standing with the President, along with his wife.

Though Balagurusamy gets recognised wherever he goes now, “I like it when people say they have read my books,” he says. Once a couple of youngsters confronted him in public and said, “Super, Sir.” He laughingly asked them what was super, they said, “Your book on ‘C’.”

“I try to make my books very simple. I would deal with the same concept but present it in a different style so that even rural people can understand it. But since I do not teach anymore, I find it difficult to test my ideas on students for clarity and accuracy. Which is why I miss teaching.”

But by changing the attitude of the managements, the faculty and the students he wants to leave a lasting impression as Vice-Chancellor of Anna University. “I want to make sure Anna University is No. 1 in quality education and a model university. My only aim is that our students should stand first.”

This “58 years young” Vice-Chancellor does not intend wasting even a minute of the two years of service that is left.