A New Campus for Education and Research at IISc

The Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, has recently decided on Chitradurga, approximately 200 Km from Bangalore, for its new 1,000 acre Campus. IISc and its planners are to be congratulated for finalizing a new campus well beyond the reach of the Bangalore metropolitan region.

As the general reader may not know, IISc is the leading centre for academics and research in India. (Disclosure: I am an alumnus of IISc, and hence very interested in its growth over the next 20-30 years). IISc is also celebrating 2009 as its Centenary Year. So it has a vision for where it wants to be in the next centenary of its existence.

The selection of Chitradurga for IISc's second campus presents several potential benefits. First, it opens up an entirely new region of Karnataka and India to the potential long-term economic benefits that accrue from a centre of educational and research excellence, as the establishment of IISc in Bangalore in 1909 has already proven in the case of Bangalore itself. Bangalore's growth as the IT and BT Capital of India, as well as its strong historical role as the base for the Indian Defence and Space research establishment, is largely due to the lasting contributions IISc has made in nurturing the foundations of Science and Engineering research in India.

Further, it gives the IISc planners an opportunity to start with a clean slate for the next 30 years and they should truly think of a "Science Village", an entirely new eco-system which will be based broadly on the concept of "college parks" or "university towns" in the US and UK. It could open up new areas of research at its new campus.

I am purposefully downplaying "Science City" and emphasizing "Science Village" because of the cozy atmosphere that a village connotes. A city like Bangalore is too unmanageable and is already saturated. The residential village is my ideal for an academic and research ambience.

In fact, this "Science Village" should have its own CEO/Mayor and have a small elected local Government (Panchayat, why not?) to meet the needs of the Science Village. Obviously, the Director or another high official of IISc would be the de facto CEO or the designated Mayor or one could even be elected. I am okay with that since the rest of the governing local body would most certainly be elected.

Incidentally, Harvard has this quaint tradition in the town of Cambridge (Mass) and it creates a powerful connection with the local community. So does Stanford, for the "city of Stanford" which is actually the 8,800 hectare campus of Stanford, bordering Palo Alto.

Most major university town in the US started this way and even today they continue to retain this village ambience. Examples are Palo Alto, Cambridge (Mass), Research Triangle Park, College Park ( Maryland) etc. Of course, Oxford and Cambridge in UK are the precursors of all of these college towns.

As far as possible, the new IISc Campus should be entirely residential. Even if a residential campus is unable to accommodate all students and Faculty as it grows, the Science Village should be able to do so as the local economy will actually driven by the location of the academic campus.

For me, the closest Indian equivalent would be Pilani (for BITS) or IIT Kharagpur, or even Manipal. So we have plenty of precedents, though we don't need necessarily one in the case of IISc. IISc should lead in setting precedents, not follow!!

So, in my humble opinion, it is essential that any potentially important research school like IISc be located well outside the influence zone of a large metropolis as it unnecessarily overloads the infrastructure of the metropolis, distracts students, faculty and researchers from a monastic life of scholarship, and prevents us from creating other new zones of influence. Frankly, I am sick of Bangalore being over-pampered in this area!! Chitradurga, 200 kilometres away from Bangalore, is the right place to start afresh.

Hence, Chitradurga is an excellent choice. The verdant green, low rolling hills, with large rocky outcrops, the clean air and miles of windmill farms on the hilltops present an awe-inspiring visage. I have recently passed that way on a car trip to Goa and the memory of those verdant rolling hills is quite vivid.

I think water should not be a problem though it is very obvioulsy part of a dry region. In fact, this should be treated as an opportunity for our scientists and engineers to come up with unique solutions. Chitradurga is by no means a desert; it just happens to have a shortage of water. That cannot be a show-stopper. Can we do large-scale rain-water harvesting or something else? The benefits to the surrounding communities will be long-lasting and we would have established IISc as a good neighbourhood citizen!! Israel is largely desert. Can we find out what Technion (some rate is as high as MIT) has done there? There is opportunity here for our budding researchers!!

The fact that Chitradurga already has acres of windmill farms implies that the wind blows strongly through the low hills, probably for large parts of the year. The IISc Campus should leverage this and experiment with wind energy for meeting its energy needs. What a great ecological statement this would be!! As a leader, IISc should lead in every which way, in thought and in deed!!

Obviously, we will have to find ways to motivate designated Faculty to move out to Chitradurga. If Indians can follow the monastic life in remote US campuses, why can't they do so in India? There are many ways to do address this issue and this should be the subject matter of another thread on the Blog.

Once again, congratulations to those who chose Chitradurga over the usual suspects, Bangalore or Mysore.

Shashank