Business India, November 30-December 13, 1998
Closer to real life
Fuzzy-logic-based consumer goods may not be worth their premium prices, but in complex systems, and where safety is involved, fuzzy logic scores high.
Shivanand Kanavi
What's the first thing that comes to mind when you think of a machine? That it is mechanical. Which means that it does exactly what it is instructed to do at the press of a button or turn of a knob. The machine sees everything in terms of discrete numbers with no choices in between. That means that you, the user, have a limited choice - you cannot get the benefit of the in-between values, be they temperature for an air-conditioner or intermediate distances for an auto focus camera.
That is changing, thanks to what is called fuzzy logic. This logic, used to programme newer, more sophisticated machines, works differently. Unlike conventional machines, which act on simple yes-no instructions, fuzzy logic machines can operate in more complex conditions. In that sense they behave more like humans, whose thought processes are complex.
Let us take the example of a family deciding to shift house. Many considerations are weighed before a decision is taken. For example, the new house is bigger, but is further from the husband's office, though it is closer to the wife's dispensary and daughter's school. The cost per square foot of the built-up area is higher, but the location is cleaner and quieter. And so on.
In short, the new house has a number of pluses and minuses. The family's decision will ultimately be either yes or no, but it will have been arrived at as a result of a complex process in which the factors involved are given varying degrees of importance or weights. That is what statisticians would call a weighted average. To put it simply, that is how fuzzy logic-based machines work.
Fuzzy logic has found numerous applications in the control systems of complex machinery. In the 1990s Japanese and Korean companies have launched a large number of consumer goods with fuzzy controls. For example, a fuzzy-logic washing machine uses sensors to measure the size of the wash load and the turbidity in the wash water (which will indicate the amount of dirt in the wash). A few fuzzy rules then turn these signals into patterns of water agitation for different lengths of time and different amounts of detergent to be released by the dispenser. Accurate and inexpensive sensors became widely available in the late 1980s, as did fuzzy chips, and thus consumer goods with fuzzy controls became a reality (see table).
The shopper's guide to fuzzy logic
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Product Manufacturers The fuzzy advantage
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Air-conditioner Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Sharp, Matsushita (Videocon) Consumes less power
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Auto engine Nissan/NOK Controls fuel injection
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Camcorder Matsushita Cancels hand-held Jitter and adjusts auto focus
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Photocopier Canon Adjusts drum voltage based on picture density, temperature, and humidity
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Dishwasher Matsushita Adjusts cleaning cycle and rinse and wash Strategies
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Refrigerator Sharp, Daewoo(India) Sets defrosting and cooling times based on usage
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Rice cooker Matsushita, Sanyo Sets cooking time according to amounts of rice and water
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Television Sanyo(BPL), LG, Samsung, Sony Adjusts screen and texture for each frame
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Video Camera Canon, Sanyo Adjusts auto-focus and lighting
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Washing machine Daewoo(India), Matsushita(Videocon), Sanyo(BPL), LG, Hitachi, Samsung Adjusts washing according to dirt level, fabric type, load, and water level.
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Some of these products have reached the Indian market recently. For example, Videocon and BPL have introduced fuzzy-logic washing machines based on Matsushita and Sanyo technology. Daewoo has introduced its own fuzzy washing machines and refrigerators. Videocon has a fuzzy air-conditioner, BPL a colour TV, and so on. All these machines are priced 10-20 percent higher than the non-fuzzy models. The companies claim that the payoff is in ease of use and better performance. But will a fuzzy washing machine save Rs.3,000 worth of power and detergent in its design life of, say, 5-7 years? Not very likely. Besides, if something happens to the fuzzy circuitry, the repair charges are steep as the companies keep the design proprietary.
Doubtful value for money
Today fuzzy control systems have further evolved into even more advanced adaptive fuzzy. These systems change their fuzzy rules as the environment changes or as the machine undergoes wear and tear. Now we have refrigerators with adaptive fuzzy logic which change their compressor cycles on the basis of how the consumer uses the fridge. Is the door opened very often in the morning and evening and not during the rest of the day and most of the night (as a working couple with no children might do)? In a house with many children, the door might be opened often, except when they are in school or sleeping. The pattern might change again during the summer and winter vacations, and so on. The adaptive fuzzy chip learns the pattern of usage, records it in an internal clock, and triggers off the compressor accordingly. Consumer goods with adaptive fuzzy logic control are even more expensive and doubtful value for money.
“Fuzzy is wrong, wrong, and pernicious"
“So for as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain. And so far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
– Albert Einstein (Geometrie und Erfahrung)
Fuzzy logic and its application suffered from official neglect and even ridicule in the US. A distinguished electrical engineer once said, Fuzzy theory is wrong, wrong, and pernicious. Fuzzy logic is the cocaine of science.”
Another traditionalist added: "Fuzzification is a kind of scientific permissiveness. It tends to result in socially appealing slogans unaccompanied by hard scientific work." Such strong opinions were a product of intolerance and fundamentalism that no doubt exist in many influential members of the scientific establishment. It was also provoked by the fact that initial advocates of fuzzy thinking gave only "hand-waving arguments" and no "hard science". Today the conservatives have had to eat crow. IEEE, the most prestigious body of electrical engineers worldwide, has a separate journal for research in fuzzy logic. Many Japanese and Korean companies have also turned these ideas into commercial success.
Lotfi Zadeh, an Iranian born in Azerbaijan, developed fuzzy logic while teaching electrical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, in the mid- 1960s. He used his prestige as a brilliant systems engineer to encourage people to work in fuzzy logic, but he faced constant ridicule. Today, he has been vindicated after a hard struggle. However hard nuts among the traditionalists have tried rationalise the fuzzy logic phenomenon by calling it some sort of Oriental mysticism (and hence Asian companies were the pioneers). However, today fuzzy is part of the arsenal of any expert in artificial intelligence.
Interestingly there was a school of Jain logicians in ancient India who had developed a six-valued logic called shyadvad, instead of the Aristotelian yes-no type of binary logic.
However, adaptive fuzzy logic is a must in more complex systems like a steel rolling mill, an aircraft, or a high-speed train. For example, if the control system of a helicopter can adjust itself to wear and tear, and changes in the outside temperature and dusty conditions, it can fly safely even in severe conditions. The absence of such adaptive controls led to failure of the commando operation launched by Jimmy Carter during the hostage crisis in Iran. Many of the US choppers crashed in the hot and dusty deserts of Iran before they could get anywhere near the hostages!
Today, adaptive fuzzy logic is being used in a large number of non-mechanical applications as well, such as evaluating takeover targets, modelling econometric changes, simulating test marketing, project management, and so on.
Fuzzy logic tries to accommodate the greyness of life as against the black and white of Aristotelian logic and is thus an advance of theory. Control systems or simulation programmes based on it are a step closer to the complexities of real life and play an important role where the cost of a mistake can be frightful. However, applications where the controls are not critical, as in a washing machine or air-conditioner or fridge, are of doubtful value to the consumer.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Himalayan Bio-resources
Business India, June 12-25, 2000
Bouquet of technology blossoms
Can plant biotechnology yield better tea, high value flowers, aromatic plants rich in essential oils and new drug molecules from rare Himalayan plants? Yes, proves the Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology (IHGT) at Palampur
Shivanand Kanavi
Englishmen who fancied the hills of Himachal, which reminded them of Scotland, found refuge from the hot Indo-Gangetic plains in cooler climes of Shimla, Dalhousie, Mcleodgunj, Forsythgunj, Barot, and other places. They also brought in tea cultivation to the region. Tea from Kangra Valley was at one time bought at a premium. However, the neglect of the tea gardens by local owners after Independence led to the fall of Kangra tea. Most tea gardens became weed gardens and production touched the nadir of less than 6 lakh kg a year. Today Kangra tea has bounced back the production has gone up in less than 10 years to 1.6 million kg, with the same acreage under cultivation.
The credit goes to a band of scientists at the youngest and one of the smallest CSIR laboratories – IHBT Palampur. They painstakingly educated the growers in the area and introduced proper practices in weeding, pruning, and plucking, and the correct use of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilisers. On the other hand, as concern has grown in export markets about pesticide residues in tea, IHBT has set up an advanced analytical lab for the same.
As growers face labour shortage during several months of the busy plucking season of March-October, the institute has also developed machines, in collaboration with Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute, Durgapur, for mechanised tea plucking thereby improving productivity 10-20 times. “The machines have found favour with several planters and some companies have bought the design from CSIR and manufacture the same,” says S.D. Ravindranath, head of the tea division at IHBT.
It may not sound very hi-tech, but nevertheless it boosts the local economy. Meanwhile plant biotechnologists at Palampur are also doing cutting-edge work in tea, to genetically alter it. Their aim is to produce a variety, which will sprout in cold climates as well. Since tea goes “dormant” in this region for almost five months a year, additional sprouting for even a month or two more, would be a major boon for the industry.
Himachal provides the ideal agroclimatic conditions for floriculture. “What we did when we took up floriculture as a major thrust area, was to first study the market, to see which
Variety of flowers fetch the maximum value in Delhi market and in which season,” says D. Mukherjee, who heads the floriculture division. As a result, IHBT developed several new varieties of flowers which are commercially attractive to growers. They are also working on producing tulips, gladioli, bird of paradise, lilliums, and others, which will flower off-season, or on a particular day, like Valentine’s Day, Christmas, etc. Today, the floriculture industry in India pays through its nose to buy good planting material from European sources. This makes the work undertaken by Mukherjee and his team all the more important.
Research done at Palampur on plant viruses has led to the recognition of this lab as a major center for plant virus research. This work is particularly important to help floriculturists when their crops are attacked by dreaded viruses.
Another thrust area for the lab, which is having significant impact on the regional economy, is essential oils from aromatic plants, a passion of Paramvirsingh Ahuja, director of the lab. Work in this area has resulted in the release of a Damask Rose (Rosa damascena), a variety rich in rose oil. Oil from this flower can fetch up to Rs.3 lakh per kilo in today’s market. According to Ahuja, the aroma of cash flow is bringing many farmers from not only Himachal but even Punjab, who are tired of growing wheat and basmati rice, with diminishing returns, and who are ready to take new risks.
India is one of the largest producers of essential oils in the world. IHBT, however, is concentrating on two things in this area. One: producing inexpensive designs distilling equipment, so that farmers can themselves put up oil extraction plants. (The natural products group led by V.K. Kaul has already developed and transferred the design of distillation plants to some fabricators. The farmers can now realise higher value, instead of selling bulk material to middlemen.) Two: to develop the technology to farm high-value aromatic plants like lavender, geraniums, etc.
However, what makes this lab a truly Himalayan Bioresource Technology Lab is its focus on the need to identify, preserve, and harness the vast biodiversity of the Himalayas. These mountains, which protect the plains of India form the harsh, cold winds from Tibet, are also recognised the world over as repositories of several important medicinal plants. For example, important anti-cancer drugs are extracted from Himalayan plants like Taxus Picrorhiza kurroa, a plant known for hepato-protective activity, and hypericum, whose anti-AIDS activity has been reported.
These plants are rare to find, difficult to grow, and are facing extinction due to unscrupulous exporters and uncaring pharmaceutical companies. The lab is quietly working on locating areas of concentration of such plants along with the Department of Space and Department of Biotechnology, so that satellite imagery can be used to locate a medicinal plant high up on the mountains. The lab is also developing the technology to “domesticate” such plants so that they can be grown in large quantities in controlled conditions.
“What’s new about this, after all, tissue culture is the answer,” one might ask. But life is not that simple. Many important medicinal plants grow in very severe conditions. In fact, there is a theory that severe conditions induce plants to produce the all-important alkaloids and metaboloids that yield drug molecules. In that case how can we grow them in less severe climates in labs and hothouses and still harvest the same amount of phytochemicals? “It took mankind about 10,000 years to domesticate wild rice and wheat, so we cannot hope to domesticate wild medicinal plants without intensive research and using modern biotechnology,” says Ahuja.
Aware of the wealth hidden in the Himalayas, the lab has a special biodiversity group made up of scientists like Brij Lal and S.K Vats, who wander in remote areas high up in the mountains, which are difficult to access, in search of the rare medicinal plants. Naturally you need to be a good mountain trekker and a naturalist of the 19th century mould – a rare combination indeed. In fact, Brij Lal belongs to a rare breed called ethnobotanists, who specialise not only in being good botanists and taxonomists but who also learn dialects of the tribals, befriend them in remote areas, and tap into their knowledge base of folk medicine. Ethnobotanists collect the plants used by tribals and nomads for medicinal purposes, identify them in modern botanical terms, preserve the plant material in herbaria, and so on. Today CSIR is involved in a major hush-hush programme of tapping India’s vast knowledge base of Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha, and tribal medicine in search of new wonder drugs. IHBT has a key role to play in this due to its knowledge of the Himalayas.
A search by IHBT in the Lahaul-Spiti valley for plants which are able to withstand the cold desert conditions has led to detection and isolation of the gene which makes a plant resistant to cold. According to Manju Sharma, secretary Department of Biotechnology, an international patent has been filed on this discovery.
Clearly, this lean and young lab, perched at the foot of the Dhavaldhar Himalayas, is showing how to use technology, high or low, to greater economic good of the region.
Bouquet of technology blossoms
Can plant biotechnology yield better tea, high value flowers, aromatic plants rich in essential oils and new drug molecules from rare Himalayan plants? Yes, proves the Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology (IHGT) at Palampur
Shivanand Kanavi
Englishmen who fancied the hills of Himachal, which reminded them of Scotland, found refuge from the hot Indo-Gangetic plains in cooler climes of Shimla, Dalhousie, Mcleodgunj, Forsythgunj, Barot, and other places. They also brought in tea cultivation to the region. Tea from Kangra Valley was at one time bought at a premium. However, the neglect of the tea gardens by local owners after Independence led to the fall of Kangra tea. Most tea gardens became weed gardens and production touched the nadir of less than 6 lakh kg a year. Today Kangra tea has bounced back the production has gone up in less than 10 years to 1.6 million kg, with the same acreage under cultivation.
The credit goes to a band of scientists at the youngest and one of the smallest CSIR laboratories – IHBT Palampur. They painstakingly educated the growers in the area and introduced proper practices in weeding, pruning, and plucking, and the correct use of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilisers. On the other hand, as concern has grown in export markets about pesticide residues in tea, IHBT has set up an advanced analytical lab for the same.
As growers face labour shortage during several months of the busy plucking season of March-October, the institute has also developed machines, in collaboration with Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute, Durgapur, for mechanised tea plucking thereby improving productivity 10-20 times. “The machines have found favour with several planters and some companies have bought the design from CSIR and manufacture the same,” says S.D. Ravindranath, head of the tea division at IHBT.
It may not sound very hi-tech, but nevertheless it boosts the local economy. Meanwhile plant biotechnologists at Palampur are also doing cutting-edge work in tea, to genetically alter it. Their aim is to produce a variety, which will sprout in cold climates as well. Since tea goes “dormant” in this region for almost five months a year, additional sprouting for even a month or two more, would be a major boon for the industry.
Himachal provides the ideal agroclimatic conditions for floriculture. “What we did when we took up floriculture as a major thrust area, was to first study the market, to see which
Variety of flowers fetch the maximum value in Delhi market and in which season,” says D. Mukherjee, who heads the floriculture division. As a result, IHBT developed several new varieties of flowers which are commercially attractive to growers. They are also working on producing tulips, gladioli, bird of paradise, lilliums, and others, which will flower off-season, or on a particular day, like Valentine’s Day, Christmas, etc. Today, the floriculture industry in India pays through its nose to buy good planting material from European sources. This makes the work undertaken by Mukherjee and his team all the more important.
Research done at Palampur on plant viruses has led to the recognition of this lab as a major center for plant virus research. This work is particularly important to help floriculturists when their crops are attacked by dreaded viruses.
Another thrust area for the lab, which is having significant impact on the regional economy, is essential oils from aromatic plants, a passion of Paramvirsingh Ahuja, director of the lab. Work in this area has resulted in the release of a Damask Rose (Rosa damascena), a variety rich in rose oil. Oil from this flower can fetch up to Rs.3 lakh per kilo in today’s market. According to Ahuja, the aroma of cash flow is bringing many farmers from not only Himachal but even Punjab, who are tired of growing wheat and basmati rice, with diminishing returns, and who are ready to take new risks.
India is one of the largest producers of essential oils in the world. IHBT, however, is concentrating on two things in this area. One: producing inexpensive designs distilling equipment, so that farmers can themselves put up oil extraction plants. (The natural products group led by V.K. Kaul has already developed and transferred the design of distillation plants to some fabricators. The farmers can now realise higher value, instead of selling bulk material to middlemen.) Two: to develop the technology to farm high-value aromatic plants like lavender, geraniums, etc.
However, what makes this lab a truly Himalayan Bioresource Technology Lab is its focus on the need to identify, preserve, and harness the vast biodiversity of the Himalayas. These mountains, which protect the plains of India form the harsh, cold winds from Tibet, are also recognised the world over as repositories of several important medicinal plants. For example, important anti-cancer drugs are extracted from Himalayan plants like Taxus Picrorhiza kurroa, a plant known for hepato-protective activity, and hypericum, whose anti-AIDS activity has been reported.
These plants are rare to find, difficult to grow, and are facing extinction due to unscrupulous exporters and uncaring pharmaceutical companies. The lab is quietly working on locating areas of concentration of such plants along with the Department of Space and Department of Biotechnology, so that satellite imagery can be used to locate a medicinal plant high up on the mountains. The lab is also developing the technology to “domesticate” such plants so that they can be grown in large quantities in controlled conditions.
“What’s new about this, after all, tissue culture is the answer,” one might ask. But life is not that simple. Many important medicinal plants grow in very severe conditions. In fact, there is a theory that severe conditions induce plants to produce the all-important alkaloids and metaboloids that yield drug molecules. In that case how can we grow them in less severe climates in labs and hothouses and still harvest the same amount of phytochemicals? “It took mankind about 10,000 years to domesticate wild rice and wheat, so we cannot hope to domesticate wild medicinal plants without intensive research and using modern biotechnology,” says Ahuja.
Aware of the wealth hidden in the Himalayas, the lab has a special biodiversity group made up of scientists like Brij Lal and S.K Vats, who wander in remote areas high up in the mountains, which are difficult to access, in search of the rare medicinal plants. Naturally you need to be a good mountain trekker and a naturalist of the 19th century mould – a rare combination indeed. In fact, Brij Lal belongs to a rare breed called ethnobotanists, who specialise not only in being good botanists and taxonomists but who also learn dialects of the tribals, befriend them in remote areas, and tap into their knowledge base of folk medicine. Ethnobotanists collect the plants used by tribals and nomads for medicinal purposes, identify them in modern botanical terms, preserve the plant material in herbaria, and so on. Today CSIR is involved in a major hush-hush programme of tapping India’s vast knowledge base of Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha, and tribal medicine in search of new wonder drugs. IHBT has a key role to play in this due to its knowledge of the Himalayas.
A search by IHBT in the Lahaul-Spiti valley for plants which are able to withstand the cold desert conditions has led to detection and isolation of the gene which makes a plant resistant to cold. According to Manju Sharma, secretary Department of Biotechnology, an international patent has been filed on this discovery.
Clearly, this lean and young lab, perched at the foot of the Dhavaldhar Himalayas, is showing how to use technology, high or low, to greater economic good of the region.
Trekking in Annapurna Himalayas, Nepal
Business India, May 17-30, 1999
Annapurna, an extreme close up
Nepal provides unparalleled trekking opportunities in the Annapurna range of the Himalayas for even rookie trekkers
Shivanand Kanavi
If one wants to be in the serene presence of magnificent snowcapped peaks of the Himalayas without being hardcore climbers and trekkers then the best area is around the Annapurna range in north central Nepal bordering Tibet. The range includes such giants as Annapurna I - 8,091 metres, Machhapuchre (Fish Tail) 6,993 m, Niligiri-7,061 m, Dhavalgiri -8,167 m, Tukuche-6,920m, Tilicho - 7,134 m and so on. The most endearing aspect of trekking in the Annapurna region is the handshaking distance from the awe-inspiring peaks.
The trekking routes in the area originate from Pokhara, a major city in Nepal. The city itself is located in a valley (altitude 833 m) and is blessed with the beautiful Phewa lake. Here you will have the unique opportunity of boating in the Phewa tal surrounded by green hills like Sarangkot (1,600 m) while actually gazing at the Annapurna and Machhapuchre peaks, nearly 8,000 metres up in the sky. There are many options for a trekker in this region depending on his physical capabilities and the time he can spend, starting with a two-day trek to week long treks and even two and three week long treks.
Annapurna sanctuary
If you have a week at your disposal then there are two options. One is to start from Pokhara, go to Ghorepani (2,700 m) and come back. The other is to reach Jomsom (2,700 m) and fly back or fly to Jomsom and trek back to Pokhara. The Pokhara-Ghorepani-Pokhara trek is known as the Annapurna sanctuary trek. This trek takes you into thickly-forested areas from the tropical to the rhododendron forests. The brightly-coloured pink and red rhododendrons are the national flowers of Nepal and blossom in April, brightening up the whole forest. As you near Ghorepani one then rises into coniferous forests as well. Needless to say, one gets darshan of the Annapurna range intermittently as a lot of paths are in the valleys. One is also constantly surrounded by not only flora but also mountain springs and waterfalls. 01 course since there are many steep climbs and downhills on this route you better have strong knees. You feel the pinch especially when coming downhill. It is definitely advisable to take a guide-cum-porter.
On day one you reach Sarangkot, stay there, get up early and see the glorious sunrise on Annapurna and then walk down to Navapool on the Jomsom-Baglung highway. From Navapool cross over to Birethanthi which is at the confluence of the rushing waters of Modi and Bhurungdi. One can continue from Birethanthi along Bhurungdi river and can end day two at Ramghar. Since most of this trek is in the valleys, it gets dark pretty fast and a sweaty afternoon turns pretty quickly into a freezing evening even in May. By 7:00 pm one might actually end up sitting around the boiler in an inn to get warmed up. Due to the presence of thick forests in the area one frequently encounters sudden rains and hailstorms in the afternoons.
On the third day one rises up from the river valley and climbs the step steps of Tikhedunga and stop at Ulleri (2,073 m). The climb involves a rise of more than 5,000 feet in one day by climbing over 3,000 steps. The glorious views of the valley compensate for the huffing and puffing. But huff and puff shamelessly so that the body gets as much oxygen as possible and as quickly as possible. The fourth day you climb up from Ulleri to Ghorepani (2,700 m). Stay at Ghorepani and next day morning rush to Poon Hill nearby, which is another 500 feet up. The panoramic view of the whole Annapuma range from Poon Hill is unbelievable. On the fifth day start climbing down from Ghorepani and reach Tadapani. The path goes through thick forest and when you reach Tadapani in the evening, with every limb aching, there is a glorious view of the Machhapuchre waiting for you at about 7:30 pm. When the valley is dark, the peak is lit up with the unearthly golden yellow rays of sunset. It will be one of those sights in your life which cannot be written about, nor captured in film, but which remain imprinted in your mind.
On sixth day you start from Tadapani and reach Ghandrung (1,951 m), a lovely village full of gurungs. On day seven travel down from Ghandrung via Shoule Bazaar to Birethanthi and Navapool. At Navapool one reaches the Pokhara-Baglung highway, and one can provide the luxury of a one-and-a-half hour bus ride back to Pokhara to one's aching limbs.
Dhavalgiri, shaligrams and…..
The other option, if you have only a week to ten days is to fly from Pokhara to Jomsom and trek back to Pokhara, which is known as the Annapurna circuit. Jomsom (2,700 m) is the headquarters of Mustang district bordering Tibet. The place is also the nearest airport to thefamous Muktinath peak (3,800 m) which is a major pilgrim centre mentioned even in the Mahabharat. The pious rich who want to visit the Vishnu temple at Muktinath can also charter a helicopter from Jomsom perform their puja and get back to Jomsom the same day. By trekking it takes three days, mainly due to acclimatisation required at the high altitude.
Jomsom town lies in the valley of Kali Gandaki, a river apparently older than the Himalayas. The mountain flight from Pokhara takes only 20 minutes but gives you memorable views of the Himalayas and even the brightly-coloured rhododendron forests. When you reach Jomsom, the towering peaks of Nilgiri and Tilicho watch over you at all times in the clear mountain air. The closeness of the mountains can be guessed from the fact that a snow avalanche on the Nilgiri North peak could easily be heard from Jomsom town. Once you reach Jomsom spend a day in the town to acclimatise yourself. There is a well documented eco-museum where one can spend at least an hour or two fruitfully. The museum depicts various aspects of history, geology, botany, culture and legends of Mustang district.
Scattered pearls of wisdom
How to get there by Air: Fly to Kathmandu and then take a local flight from Kathmandu to Pokhara. For the last leg take a mountain flight from Pokhara to Jomsom.
By Rail and Road: Reach Gorakhpur by rail from where the Nepal border at Sunauli is three hous away. Cross the border and get a bus or a taxi to Pokhara. (5-10 hours depending on the mode of transport). One can drive an Indian registered vehicle into Nepal; however the authorities at the border take away the Indian number plate and provide you with a temporary Nepali number plate.
Travel documents: Indians do not need a passport or visa and Indian currency is widely accepted all over Nepal.
Special Tips: If you are going to cross the border by road then be prepared for harassment form Indian customs and police when you are returning. You can be saved a lot of embarrassment it you register mobile phone, cameras and any other electronic goods that you are taking into Nepal with the Indian customs post at the border right when you are entering.
Accommodation & food: There are a large number of inns that provide decent accommodation in every village around Annapurna. The rooms cost anywhere from Rs20 Nepali (Rs100=Rs160 Nepali) to Rs300 N. The inns more than make up for it in their food bills, which can run up to Rs500 N per person per day. A coke which costs Rs15 N at Pokhara can cost Rs 60 N at Jomsom or Ghorepani as it has to be hauled up on mule back. It is best to stick to dal - bhat, Nepal’s national dish and Tibetan bread with honey or eggs. In fact, it is always safe to stick to the local dish, since the cooks know it best! People who have eaten masala dosa in Delhi and parotha or puri-bhaji in Tiruvananthapuram would swear by this wisdom.
Drink: Try hot lemon juice and even tato pani (hot water) after a tiring day or even in the early morning. If you are a tea drinker from India ask for Nepali chay. It is inexpensive and exquisitely brewed with tea, ginger and cinnamon. If you want to try local alcoholic drinks, go for home-made millet brews like chhang or rakshi. In villages like Marpha an Tukuche, there are local distilleries that manufacture brandies from locally- grown apricots, apples and oranges.
Guides and porters: If you are past your twenties and are used to a sedentary lifestyle then it is better to hire a guide-cum–porter at Pokhara. They charge anywhere from Rs.400 N to Rs.1,000 N a day.
Equipment: Nothing, except a camera or a camcorder to record at least a tiny bit of the natural splendour. Because of the abundance of inns for trekkers at every village on all the trekking routes, one does not need tents or even a sleeping bag unless one is going to Tilicho lake.
Interestingly at Kagbeni near Jomsom on the way to Muktinath, one can still find 100 million-year-old fossils of marine animals. These fossils are major evidence for the theory of continental drift, according to which, 65 million years ago there was a sea where the Himalayas stand today and the Indian tectonic plate came and hit the Tibetan plate leading to the formation of the Himalayas. A common fossil one finds in ammonite rocks is that of a conch. These fossilised conches are revered by devout Hindus as symbols of Vishnu and are called shaligram. If you are not lucky enough to find a shaligram on the Kali Gandaki riverbed then you could always buy one from the numerous Tibetan souvenir traders that you will find on the trek.
On the Jomsom-pokhara trek, start from Jomsom after spending a day at Jomsom. Reach Tukuche (2,591m) by evening after passing through Marpha. On day two, go from Tukuche via Kalopani to Ghasa (2,031m). The second day provides you with unparalleled panoramic views of Dhavalgiri and Tukuche peaks from the Kali Gandaki riverbed. While trekking in the Kali Gandaki valley, a strong wind starts everyday at about 11:00 am till about 3 pm which carries a lot of dust. So make sure that you start as early as possible.
On day three start from Ghasa and reach Tatopani (1,189 m). This stretch passes through the world's deepest river valley which is over 7,000 feet deep. Tatopani means hot water and the name is derived from the hot water springs there, where one can wash away the tiredness from one's limbs. Tatopani also provides the best food in the entire route. On day four, start from Tatopani and reach Ghaleshor. If the first three days were more or less on level ground at about 10,000-8,000 feet along the Kali Gandaki river valley, the fourth day involves steep climbs up and down and the temperature also climbing as you come down to about 3,000 feet from 8,000 feet. The next day it takes a two-hour trek from Ghaleshor to Beni from where one can get a bus ride to Pokhara. The bus takes about four-and-a-half hours to reach Pokhara and goes through several steep ups and downs. A day's rest in Pokhara and boating on Phewa lake can top your trek.
For the more ambitious trekkers there is a 14-day trek from Pokhara to the Annapurna base camp (4,500 m) and back. There is a 28-day trek around Annapurna from Besishahar to Pokhara via Manang, Thorungla pass (5,416 m), Muktinath, Jomsom and back to Pokhara via Ghorepani or via Beni. If you have only seven days but want to do high altitude trekking then one can also fly from Pokhara to Hungde near Manang and trek to Tilicho lake and back. Tilicho is a glaciated lake at about 15,500 feet and is one of the highest lakes in the world.
In short the Annapurna range is a goldmine for trekkers and can cater to all varieties from city slickers who want to stretch their limbs a bit, to hard core trekkers. What attracts literally lakhs from around the world every year to this region is of course the glorious views of the mountains and the friendly people. In fact one is yet to hear of a robbery or any sort of crime against trekkers in this area. So what are you waiting for, pack your rucksack, take a few thousand rupees and get ready to be overwhelmed by the Himalayas!
Annapurna, an extreme close up
Nepal provides unparalleled trekking opportunities in the Annapurna range of the Himalayas for even rookie trekkers
Shivanand Kanavi
If one wants to be in the serene presence of magnificent snowcapped peaks of the Himalayas without being hardcore climbers and trekkers then the best area is around the Annapurna range in north central Nepal bordering Tibet. The range includes such giants as Annapurna I - 8,091 metres, Machhapuchre (Fish Tail) 6,993 m, Niligiri-7,061 m, Dhavalgiri -8,167 m, Tukuche-6,920m, Tilicho - 7,134 m and so on. The most endearing aspect of trekking in the Annapurna region is the handshaking distance from the awe-inspiring peaks.
The trekking routes in the area originate from Pokhara, a major city in Nepal. The city itself is located in a valley (altitude 833 m) and is blessed with the beautiful Phewa lake. Here you will have the unique opportunity of boating in the Phewa tal surrounded by green hills like Sarangkot (1,600 m) while actually gazing at the Annapurna and Machhapuchre peaks, nearly 8,000 metres up in the sky. There are many options for a trekker in this region depending on his physical capabilities and the time he can spend, starting with a two-day trek to week long treks and even two and three week long treks.
Annapurna sanctuary
If you have a week at your disposal then there are two options. One is to start from Pokhara, go to Ghorepani (2,700 m) and come back. The other is to reach Jomsom (2,700 m) and fly back or fly to Jomsom and trek back to Pokhara. The Pokhara-Ghorepani-Pokhara trek is known as the Annapurna sanctuary trek. This trek takes you into thickly-forested areas from the tropical to the rhododendron forests. The brightly-coloured pink and red rhododendrons are the national flowers of Nepal and blossom in April, brightening up the whole forest. As you near Ghorepani one then rises into coniferous forests as well. Needless to say, one gets darshan of the Annapurna range intermittently as a lot of paths are in the valleys. One is also constantly surrounded by not only flora but also mountain springs and waterfalls. 01 course since there are many steep climbs and downhills on this route you better have strong knees. You feel the pinch especially when coming downhill. It is definitely advisable to take a guide-cum-porter.
On day one you reach Sarangkot, stay there, get up early and see the glorious sunrise on Annapurna and then walk down to Navapool on the Jomsom-Baglung highway. From Navapool cross over to Birethanthi which is at the confluence of the rushing waters of Modi and Bhurungdi. One can continue from Birethanthi along Bhurungdi river and can end day two at Ramghar. Since most of this trek is in the valleys, it gets dark pretty fast and a sweaty afternoon turns pretty quickly into a freezing evening even in May. By 7:00 pm one might actually end up sitting around the boiler in an inn to get warmed up. Due to the presence of thick forests in the area one frequently encounters sudden rains and hailstorms in the afternoons.
On the third day one rises up from the river valley and climbs the step steps of Tikhedunga and stop at Ulleri (2,073 m). The climb involves a rise of more than 5,000 feet in one day by climbing over 3,000 steps. The glorious views of the valley compensate for the huffing and puffing. But huff and puff shamelessly so that the body gets as much oxygen as possible and as quickly as possible. The fourth day you climb up from Ulleri to Ghorepani (2,700 m). Stay at Ghorepani and next day morning rush to Poon Hill nearby, which is another 500 feet up. The panoramic view of the whole Annapuma range from Poon Hill is unbelievable. On the fifth day start climbing down from Ghorepani and reach Tadapani. The path goes through thick forest and when you reach Tadapani in the evening, with every limb aching, there is a glorious view of the Machhapuchre waiting for you at about 7:30 pm. When the valley is dark, the peak is lit up with the unearthly golden yellow rays of sunset. It will be one of those sights in your life which cannot be written about, nor captured in film, but which remain imprinted in your mind.
On sixth day you start from Tadapani and reach Ghandrung (1,951 m), a lovely village full of gurungs. On day seven travel down from Ghandrung via Shoule Bazaar to Birethanthi and Navapool. At Navapool one reaches the Pokhara-Baglung highway, and one can provide the luxury of a one-and-a-half hour bus ride back to Pokhara to one's aching limbs.
Dhavalgiri, shaligrams and…..
The other option, if you have only a week to ten days is to fly from Pokhara to Jomsom and trek back to Pokhara, which is known as the Annapurna circuit. Jomsom (2,700 m) is the headquarters of Mustang district bordering Tibet. The place is also the nearest airport to thefamous Muktinath peak (3,800 m) which is a major pilgrim centre mentioned even in the Mahabharat. The pious rich who want to visit the Vishnu temple at Muktinath can also charter a helicopter from Jomsom perform their puja and get back to Jomsom the same day. By trekking it takes three days, mainly due to acclimatisation required at the high altitude.
Jomsom town lies in the valley of Kali Gandaki, a river apparently older than the Himalayas. The mountain flight from Pokhara takes only 20 minutes but gives you memorable views of the Himalayas and even the brightly-coloured rhododendron forests. When you reach Jomsom, the towering peaks of Nilgiri and Tilicho watch over you at all times in the clear mountain air. The closeness of the mountains can be guessed from the fact that a snow avalanche on the Nilgiri North peak could easily be heard from Jomsom town. Once you reach Jomsom spend a day in the town to acclimatise yourself. There is a well documented eco-museum where one can spend at least an hour or two fruitfully. The museum depicts various aspects of history, geology, botany, culture and legends of Mustang district.
Scattered pearls of wisdom
How to get there by Air: Fly to Kathmandu and then take a local flight from Kathmandu to Pokhara. For the last leg take a mountain flight from Pokhara to Jomsom.
By Rail and Road: Reach Gorakhpur by rail from where the Nepal border at Sunauli is three hous away. Cross the border and get a bus or a taxi to Pokhara. (5-10 hours depending on the mode of transport). One can drive an Indian registered vehicle into Nepal; however the authorities at the border take away the Indian number plate and provide you with a temporary Nepali number plate.
Travel documents: Indians do not need a passport or visa and Indian currency is widely accepted all over Nepal.
Special Tips: If you are going to cross the border by road then be prepared for harassment form Indian customs and police when you are returning. You can be saved a lot of embarrassment it you register mobile phone, cameras and any other electronic goods that you are taking into Nepal with the Indian customs post at the border right when you are entering.
Accommodation & food: There are a large number of inns that provide decent accommodation in every village around Annapurna. The rooms cost anywhere from Rs20 Nepali (Rs100=Rs160 Nepali) to Rs300 N. The inns more than make up for it in their food bills, which can run up to Rs500 N per person per day. A coke which costs Rs15 N at Pokhara can cost Rs 60 N at Jomsom or Ghorepani as it has to be hauled up on mule back. It is best to stick to dal - bhat, Nepal’s national dish and Tibetan bread with honey or eggs. In fact, it is always safe to stick to the local dish, since the cooks know it best! People who have eaten masala dosa in Delhi and parotha or puri-bhaji in Tiruvananthapuram would swear by this wisdom.
Drink: Try hot lemon juice and even tato pani (hot water) after a tiring day or even in the early morning. If you are a tea drinker from India ask for Nepali chay. It is inexpensive and exquisitely brewed with tea, ginger and cinnamon. If you want to try local alcoholic drinks, go for home-made millet brews like chhang or rakshi. In villages like Marpha an Tukuche, there are local distilleries that manufacture brandies from locally- grown apricots, apples and oranges.
Guides and porters: If you are past your twenties and are used to a sedentary lifestyle then it is better to hire a guide-cum–porter at Pokhara. They charge anywhere from Rs.400 N to Rs.1,000 N a day.
Equipment: Nothing, except a camera or a camcorder to record at least a tiny bit of the natural splendour. Because of the abundance of inns for trekkers at every village on all the trekking routes, one does not need tents or even a sleeping bag unless one is going to Tilicho lake.
Interestingly at Kagbeni near Jomsom on the way to Muktinath, one can still find 100 million-year-old fossils of marine animals. These fossils are major evidence for the theory of continental drift, according to which, 65 million years ago there was a sea where the Himalayas stand today and the Indian tectonic plate came and hit the Tibetan plate leading to the formation of the Himalayas. A common fossil one finds in ammonite rocks is that of a conch. These fossilised conches are revered by devout Hindus as symbols of Vishnu and are called shaligram. If you are not lucky enough to find a shaligram on the Kali Gandaki riverbed then you could always buy one from the numerous Tibetan souvenir traders that you will find on the trek.
On the Jomsom-pokhara trek, start from Jomsom after spending a day at Jomsom. Reach Tukuche (2,591m) by evening after passing through Marpha. On day two, go from Tukuche via Kalopani to Ghasa (2,031m). The second day provides you with unparalleled panoramic views of Dhavalgiri and Tukuche peaks from the Kali Gandaki riverbed. While trekking in the Kali Gandaki valley, a strong wind starts everyday at about 11:00 am till about 3 pm which carries a lot of dust. So make sure that you start as early as possible.
On day three start from Ghasa and reach Tatopani (1,189 m). This stretch passes through the world's deepest river valley which is over 7,000 feet deep. Tatopani means hot water and the name is derived from the hot water springs there, where one can wash away the tiredness from one's limbs. Tatopani also provides the best food in the entire route. On day four, start from Tatopani and reach Ghaleshor. If the first three days were more or less on level ground at about 10,000-8,000 feet along the Kali Gandaki river valley, the fourth day involves steep climbs up and down and the temperature also climbing as you come down to about 3,000 feet from 8,000 feet. The next day it takes a two-hour trek from Ghaleshor to Beni from where one can get a bus ride to Pokhara. The bus takes about four-and-a-half hours to reach Pokhara and goes through several steep ups and downs. A day's rest in Pokhara and boating on Phewa lake can top your trek.
For the more ambitious trekkers there is a 14-day trek from Pokhara to the Annapurna base camp (4,500 m) and back. There is a 28-day trek around Annapurna from Besishahar to Pokhara via Manang, Thorungla pass (5,416 m), Muktinath, Jomsom and back to Pokhara via Ghorepani or via Beni. If you have only seven days but want to do high altitude trekking then one can also fly from Pokhara to Hungde near Manang and trek to Tilicho lake and back. Tilicho is a glaciated lake at about 15,500 feet and is one of the highest lakes in the world.
In short the Annapurna range is a goldmine for trekkers and can cater to all varieties from city slickers who want to stretch their limbs a bit, to hard core trekkers. What attracts literally lakhs from around the world every year to this region is of course the glorious views of the mountains and the friendly people. In fact one is yet to hear of a robbery or any sort of crime against trekkers in this area. So what are you waiting for, pack your rucksack, take a few thousand rupees and get ready to be overwhelmed by the Himalayas!
Thursday, September 13, 2007
PSLV Crash -Failure Analysis
Business India, January 17-30, 1994
What went wrong?
The Failure Analysis Committee's report
Shivanand Kanavi
The Failure Analysis Committee headed by N. Pant, to probe the failure of the PSL V -Dl flight launched from Shriharikota, on 20 September 1993, has submitted its report. Three factors have been identified as having caused the failure.
First is the time gap between switching off the second stage engine and switching the third stage engine. Second, some retro-rockets failed to get fired after the second stage separated from the third stage, leading to an imbalance. And third, there was an error in the control software. How these three factors combined to plunge the Rs.45crore PSLV D1 into the Bay of Bengal is a revealing tale of the technological complexities of such a mission.
Theorising, modelling, and simulating possible scenarios started in ISRO in earnest right after the mission failed. Simultaneously, the Space Commission launched an independent probe, through the Failure Analysis Committee, ploughing through the 100,000 pages of telemetric data from the launch vehicle.
Control systems
To understand what went wrong it is essential to understand how the vehicle is controlled. The rocket is under control only when the main thrust motors are firing. Any deviations from the flight path due to disturbances in the pitch, yaw or roll of the vehicle, are then set right by firing the control systems.
In the period between one stage being shut down and another being ignited there is no control. This gap is unavoidable due to the number of operations required for a clean separation of the stages.
The second and third stages are separated by exploding a ring of explosive embedded in the casing that shears the aluminium alloy. At that time, though separated, the second and third stages will still be moving with more or less the same velocity. If there is even a small imbalance in velocities, the jettisoned second state can hit the third stage.
To prevent such a mishap retro-rockets are fitted to the jettisoned part and are fired along with the separation explosion so that the jettisoned part is slowed down slightly. It is in order to complete these operations smoothly, that a small gap is kept between shutting one stage's engine and firing the next. If liquid propellants are used, the engine can get hiccups when the fuel is over. So it is advisable to shut it off before the fuel gets exhausted.
Earlier ground simulations had given ISRO grounds to believe that if there was a three-second gap between the separation of stage two and three, nothing drastic would happen. But now, in the light of PSLV-Dl having failed, it is felt that the three-second gap may have been too large, allowing errors to multiply dangerously. Hence, the committee suggests this gap should be reduced.
The second flaw was that all the retro-rockets did not ignite to slow down the jettisoned stage. This caused a slight imbalance in the jettisoned stage, and could have hit the third stage before ignition. It is conjectured that the firing circuits of the two retro-rockets got so disturbed by the explosive separation that they did not fire. Hence, further isolation and protection of these circuits from the shearing explosion has been recommended.
Error compounded
The third problem with PSLV-D1 was a software error caused by the 'overflow' in a control parameter. What it means is that the control software in the mother console was designed to handle variations in a particular parameter, between, let us say, plus (+) or minus (-) 99.99. Now when that parameter crosses, say, -99.99 and reaches -100.00, the seven characters in 100.00 could not be recognised and so the software ignores the bit representing the ‘-’ (minus) sign. The result was that in the flight a control command geared to correct a parameter of say -99.99 was suddenly changed by default to that required for + 100.00, while the system was actually suffering from a deviation of -100.00.
Thus the control command from the computer instead of correcting an error, actually compounded it. ISRO is debugging the control software to remove any other such glitches. Some believe that despite the problems created by the retrorockets, etc, the vehicle could still have been controlled if the correct command had reached the control systems. (Incidentally, such software errors are not unusual. NASA's space shuttle mission had to be grounded in 1988 when similar software errors were found and all the five on-board computers had to be debugged.)
The rocket motors for the second flight, PSLV-D2, in 1994, are under construction. The corrections required will not lead to any major design changes. In fact, but for this mishap in the separation of stage two and three, all other systems (including many new technologies) have worked remarkably well. Thus, despite the truism in space flights anything less than 100 per cent success is a failure', the PSLV-D1 flight is considered a 90 per cent success.
What went wrong?
The Failure Analysis Committee's report
Shivanand Kanavi
The Failure Analysis Committee headed by N. Pant, to probe the failure of the PSL V -Dl flight launched from Shriharikota, on 20 September 1993, has submitted its report. Three factors have been identified as having caused the failure.
First is the time gap between switching off the second stage engine and switching the third stage engine. Second, some retro-rockets failed to get fired after the second stage separated from the third stage, leading to an imbalance. And third, there was an error in the control software. How these three factors combined to plunge the Rs.45crore PSLV D1 into the Bay of Bengal is a revealing tale of the technological complexities of such a mission.
Theorising, modelling, and simulating possible scenarios started in ISRO in earnest right after the mission failed. Simultaneously, the Space Commission launched an independent probe, through the Failure Analysis Committee, ploughing through the 100,000 pages of telemetric data from the launch vehicle.
Control systems
To understand what went wrong it is essential to understand how the vehicle is controlled. The rocket is under control only when the main thrust motors are firing. Any deviations from the flight path due to disturbances in the pitch, yaw or roll of the vehicle, are then set right by firing the control systems.
In the period between one stage being shut down and another being ignited there is no control. This gap is unavoidable due to the number of operations required for a clean separation of the stages.
The second and third stages are separated by exploding a ring of explosive embedded in the casing that shears the aluminium alloy. At that time, though separated, the second and third stages will still be moving with more or less the same velocity. If there is even a small imbalance in velocities, the jettisoned second state can hit the third stage.
To prevent such a mishap retro-rockets are fitted to the jettisoned part and are fired along with the separation explosion so that the jettisoned part is slowed down slightly. It is in order to complete these operations smoothly, that a small gap is kept between shutting one stage's engine and firing the next. If liquid propellants are used, the engine can get hiccups when the fuel is over. So it is advisable to shut it off before the fuel gets exhausted.
Earlier ground simulations had given ISRO grounds to believe that if there was a three-second gap between the separation of stage two and three, nothing drastic would happen. But now, in the light of PSLV-Dl having failed, it is felt that the three-second gap may have been too large, allowing errors to multiply dangerously. Hence, the committee suggests this gap should be reduced.
The second flaw was that all the retro-rockets did not ignite to slow down the jettisoned stage. This caused a slight imbalance in the jettisoned stage, and could have hit the third stage before ignition. It is conjectured that the firing circuits of the two retro-rockets got so disturbed by the explosive separation that they did not fire. Hence, further isolation and protection of these circuits from the shearing explosion has been recommended.
Error compounded
The third problem with PSLV-D1 was a software error caused by the 'overflow' in a control parameter. What it means is that the control software in the mother console was designed to handle variations in a particular parameter, between, let us say, plus (+) or minus (-) 99.99. Now when that parameter crosses, say, -99.99 and reaches -100.00, the seven characters in 100.00 could not be recognised and so the software ignores the bit representing the ‘-’ (minus) sign. The result was that in the flight a control command geared to correct a parameter of say -99.99 was suddenly changed by default to that required for + 100.00, while the system was actually suffering from a deviation of -100.00.
Thus the control command from the computer instead of correcting an error, actually compounded it. ISRO is debugging the control software to remove any other such glitches. Some believe that despite the problems created by the retrorockets, etc, the vehicle could still have been controlled if the correct command had reached the control systems. (Incidentally, such software errors are not unusual. NASA's space shuttle mission had to be grounded in 1988 when similar software errors were found and all the five on-board computers had to be debugged.)
The rocket motors for the second flight, PSLV-D2, in 1994, are under construction. The corrections required will not lead to any major design changes. In fact, but for this mishap in the separation of stage two and three, all other systems (including many new technologies) have worked remarkably well. Thus, despite the truism in space flights anything less than 100 per cent success is a failure', the PSLV-D1 flight is considered a 90 per cent success.
PSLV Success
Business India, October 24-November 6, 1994
The great leap forward
The successful launch of the PSLV puts India’s satellite launch capacity on a firmer footing
Shivanand Kanavi
The countdown started at 10:02, thirty minutes prior to launch (T-30:00). As the minutes ticked away, each of the hundreds of scientists and engineers manning different stations reported to the mission control about the health of the sub-system he was monitoring.
Suddenly, as the launch sequence was being initiated, at T -14:50, the Precision Coherent Monopulsed C band (PCMC) Radar that would track the launch reported 'carrier loss' - it was not receiving signals from the C band transponder placed in the PSLV. The countdown was immediately stopped, raising the spectre of an aborted launch.
The tension in the mission control centre, and even in the press room 7 kill away from the launch pad, was palpable. Three minutes passed in attempts to restore the connection; then, the mission director Madhavan Nair gave the go ahead for the launch, despite the problem. In a complex space mission, the risk of mission failure due to malfunction of a single component or subsystem is extremely high; hence there is redundancy built in, so that if something fails, then its back up can take over. And that is exactly what happened . Another channel was switched on, the mission director saw that minimum configuration was achieved and gave the all important go ahead.
The countdown was, resumed and, step by step, the rocket was detached from the launch pad as the internal systems took over. The power was cut from the ground and the internal batteries switched on. Twelve minutes before launch the automatic launch sequence was initiated and the onboard computers took charge.
At 10:35 precisely, amidst billowing clouds of smoke, the first stage assisted by two strap-on boosters appeared to a novice's eye to be struggling to lift the mammoth 300-tonne rocket and start it on an accelerating trajectory that would achieve speeds up to 25,000 km per hour before injection into orbit. Then, with an ear-splitting roar, it roared up and as the ignition, separation and success of each stage was announced, cheering broke out in the control room .
But it was clearly still too early for self-congratulations. The mission would not be complete till the injection of the satellite into its designated orbit nearly 17 minutes after lift off. The grim memories, of the first developmental fligt of PSLV plunging into the Bay of Bengal into the Bay of Bengal a few minute after lift-off in last September, were too fresh. It was only when the on-line data showed that the fourth stage had separated from the satellite and steered itself out of orbit, that the tension gave way to elation and an overwhelmed Kasturi Rangan, chairman of the Space Commission, hugged his colleagues.
Later, when a galaxy of space scientists including Kasturi Rangan, Satish Dhawan, Yash Pal, Abdul Kalam, S.C. Gupta, N.S. Pant, Deekshithalu, P. Kale and Madhavan Nair addressed thousands of ISRO scientists and technicians in an open air auditorium, words seemed superfluous. Twelve years of toil had finally paid off and the bitter disappointment of a failed launch was overcome. Every one to a man had a proud smile on his face.
The drama of the PSLV's successful launch is worth recording at some length. Mere description of the payload, orbital characteristics, thrusts generated by different stages and myriad other details do not bring out a living picture of our space programme or the significance of the PSLV. After the failure of PSLV D-1. ISRO personnel and the fault analysis committee had ploughed through 100,000 pages of data, to discover an overflow error in the control software. Instead of correcting a deviation in the course caused by the failure of retro rockets during the separation of second and third stages, this overflow aggravated the tilt, which made the rocket tumble uncontrollably into a suborbital flight and plunge into the Bay of Bengal.
In PSLV D-2, this overflow error was corrected, the positioning of the actuator for the flex nozzle of stage three was altered, and the time gap between the burn-out of the second stage and ignition of the third stage, during which the rocket coasts along without control, was cut down. Even after all these improvements, if the desired 817 km-radius, sun-sychronous, circular-polar orbit was not achieved then a fall-back programme on the onboard computer would allow the satellite to be injected into a lower, 770 km orbit. No wonder, some ISRO top guns were so sure of success that one of them, who could not be present at the launch; left a post-dated congratulatory message! ,
The remote sensing satellite IRS P-2 that was launched had also undergone some improvements. It carries two Linear Imaging Self Scanner-II (LISS-II) cameras connected to a single optical unit, thus saving on costs and weight. In satellite technology, anything that saves weight of the payload is a most welcome development, since each kg added to the payload requires tones of added thrust at the lower stages. That is why multistage rocket design, where each stage provides a certain thrust and falls off, is so popular. Once the fuel is exhausted, the empty motors and casing need not be carried along into orbit.
The PSLV incorporates a number of new technologies, as compared to the earlier SLV and ASLV. It is the first rocket in Indian space programme, where liquid fuelled engines have been used for primary propulsion. The first stage comprises third largest solid-fuelled booster in the world, after the American space shuttle and the Titan boosters. New technologies include the gimbaled motors for the liquid-fuelled second and fourth. stage, flex nozzle for the solid fuelled third stage, the Redundant Strap- down Inertial Navigation System, and the heat shield, which protects the satellite and the fourth stage from the atmosphere and opens at an altitude of about 120 km.
A number of new materials like the super alloy maraging steel for the giant first stage casings, new propellants for all stages and Kevlar and Titanium alloy for the third and fourth stages, were also developed. In short, PSLV was ten times more complex than the earlier generation ASLV.
Though ISRO has a vast network of centres in Bangalore, Thiruvananthapuram, Sriharikota and Ahmedabad, it has constantly endeavoured to transfer technology to industry and involve them as suppliers. Thus Larsen & Toubro and Walchandnagar Industries precision- machined the motor casings made of maraging steel for PSLV stage one. NOCIL manufactured hundreds of tonnes of Hydroxyl Terminated Poly Butadiene, the high powered solid propellant for the main booster rocket. The liquid-fuelled engine for the second stage named Vikas was an engineering marvel jointly manufactured and assembled by Hyderabad based MTAR and Godrej. When PSLV: D-1 failed, ISRO'S 150-odd vendors were naturally concerned that the systems supplied by them had been the cause. They heaved a collective sigh of relief when the software error was detected.
But does the successful launch mean we are ready to offer PSLV as a commercial vehicle to launch remote sensing satellites in polar orbits? The answer is: not yet. The next developmental, flight of PSLV is sometime next year and a new series of three more flights are being planned. Work has already started in ISRO to increase the payload to reach the magic figure of one tonne so that large remote sensing satellites like the coming IRS 1-D can be launched indigenously. So far, IRS 1-A and 1-B have been launched from the Russian cosmodrome at Baikanour, as will 1-C be in late 1995.
Interestingly, the existing rocket can launch a payload weighing a little over one and a half tonnes into a polar sun-synchronous orbit. But as the trajectory from Sriharikota crosses Sri Lanka" and no country allows a rocket to over fly its territory, the rocket has to accomplish a complicated yaw manoeuvre, before it reaches the desired orbit. This limits the weight of the payload.
It is important to note that India's most ambitious space programme yet, the GSLV, which can provide it capabilities to launch -2.5 tonne communication satellites, is largely made up of stage one and two of PSLV. Only a third cryogenic stage needs to be developed. A few cryogenic engines have been bought from the Russians to start the programme. By building on its own INSAT 2-A and 2-B, India has already demonstrated its ability to build world class communication satellites. Thus, in a real sense, PSLV's success is a stepping stone to the ambitious GSLV.
Can the PSLV be used to launch Motorola’s Iridium network, the global cellular phone network based on 77 low earth orbiting satellites? The answer is 'yes' but again 'not yet'. Iridium consists of a large number of polar satellites weighing around 400 to 600 kg and orbiting at about 600 km. Thus, once the technology to launch independently targeted multiple satellites is mastered then PSLV can launch a cluster of 3-4 low earth communication satellites for Iridium type of projects. Since there are not enough launch vehicles in the world to launch 77 satellites in quick succession, one can, expect PSLV to play a role in this.
Another question normally asked is whether the PSLV can be use to launch reconnaissance satellites. Technically, the answer is 'yes'. After all, they are small satellites orbiting at an altitude of around 300 km altitude. They need to orbit at low altitudes to get good resolution, that is the ability to discern small objects. However, due to friction with rarefied atmosphere, their life is shortened.
Can PSLV technology be used for developing inter-continental ballistic missiles? Technically, "yes'. In fact, the Americans were barking up the, wrong tree when they twisted Russian arms to renege on the cryogenic deal. Cryogenic engines cannot be used for missiles of any kind, as it will take months to prepare them for flight and great expense to maintain them in readiness. There is no single missile in the world in which cryogenic engines are being used. The most popular rocket is a solid-fuelled "booster. Although ISRO is not involved in military applications, DRDO is. Technically India can build ICBMS. It is a different issue that India can, ill afford to misspend vast resources in militarisation.
The timing of the flight and the unprecedented invitation to the press to witness the, flight seems to have been a decision originating in PMO - the obvious reasons being India’s pitch in the UN to be made a permanent member of the Security Council and secondly, the need to redeem ourselves in international eyes after the ignominy of the recent 'plague' outbreak. As a scribe exclaimed after the launch, "If we were Chinese, we would call 1994 the Year of the Prithvi, Plague and the PSLV!"
The great leap forward
The successful launch of the PSLV puts India’s satellite launch capacity on a firmer footing
Shivanand Kanavi
The countdown started at 10:02, thirty minutes prior to launch (T-30:00). As the minutes ticked away, each of the hundreds of scientists and engineers manning different stations reported to the mission control about the health of the sub-system he was monitoring.
Suddenly, as the launch sequence was being initiated, at T -14:50, the Precision Coherent Monopulsed C band (PCMC) Radar that would track the launch reported 'carrier loss' - it was not receiving signals from the C band transponder placed in the PSLV. The countdown was immediately stopped, raising the spectre of an aborted launch.
The tension in the mission control centre, and even in the press room 7 kill away from the launch pad, was palpable. Three minutes passed in attempts to restore the connection; then, the mission director Madhavan Nair gave the go ahead for the launch, despite the problem. In a complex space mission, the risk of mission failure due to malfunction of a single component or subsystem is extremely high; hence there is redundancy built in, so that if something fails, then its back up can take over. And that is exactly what happened . Another channel was switched on, the mission director saw that minimum configuration was achieved and gave the all important go ahead.
The countdown was, resumed and, step by step, the rocket was detached from the launch pad as the internal systems took over. The power was cut from the ground and the internal batteries switched on. Twelve minutes before launch the automatic launch sequence was initiated and the onboard computers took charge.
At 10:35 precisely, amidst billowing clouds of smoke, the first stage assisted by two strap-on boosters appeared to a novice's eye to be struggling to lift the mammoth 300-tonne rocket and start it on an accelerating trajectory that would achieve speeds up to 25,000 km per hour before injection into orbit. Then, with an ear-splitting roar, it roared up and as the ignition, separation and success of each stage was announced, cheering broke out in the control room .
But it was clearly still too early for self-congratulations. The mission would not be complete till the injection of the satellite into its designated orbit nearly 17 minutes after lift off. The grim memories, of the first developmental fligt of PSLV plunging into the Bay of Bengal into the Bay of Bengal a few minute after lift-off in last September, were too fresh. It was only when the on-line data showed that the fourth stage had separated from the satellite and steered itself out of orbit, that the tension gave way to elation and an overwhelmed Kasturi Rangan, chairman of the Space Commission, hugged his colleagues.
Later, when a galaxy of space scientists including Kasturi Rangan, Satish Dhawan, Yash Pal, Abdul Kalam, S.C. Gupta, N.S. Pant, Deekshithalu, P. Kale and Madhavan Nair addressed thousands of ISRO scientists and technicians in an open air auditorium, words seemed superfluous. Twelve years of toil had finally paid off and the bitter disappointment of a failed launch was overcome. Every one to a man had a proud smile on his face.
The drama of the PSLV's successful launch is worth recording at some length. Mere description of the payload, orbital characteristics, thrusts generated by different stages and myriad other details do not bring out a living picture of our space programme or the significance of the PSLV. After the failure of PSLV D-1. ISRO personnel and the fault analysis committee had ploughed through 100,000 pages of data, to discover an overflow error in the control software. Instead of correcting a deviation in the course caused by the failure of retro rockets during the separation of second and third stages, this overflow aggravated the tilt, which made the rocket tumble uncontrollably into a suborbital flight and plunge into the Bay of Bengal.
In PSLV D-2, this overflow error was corrected, the positioning of the actuator for the flex nozzle of stage three was altered, and the time gap between the burn-out of the second stage and ignition of the third stage, during which the rocket coasts along without control, was cut down. Even after all these improvements, if the desired 817 km-radius, sun-sychronous, circular-polar orbit was not achieved then a fall-back programme on the onboard computer would allow the satellite to be injected into a lower, 770 km orbit. No wonder, some ISRO top guns were so sure of success that one of them, who could not be present at the launch; left a post-dated congratulatory message! ,
The remote sensing satellite IRS P-2 that was launched had also undergone some improvements. It carries two Linear Imaging Self Scanner-II (LISS-II) cameras connected to a single optical unit, thus saving on costs and weight. In satellite technology, anything that saves weight of the payload is a most welcome development, since each kg added to the payload requires tones of added thrust at the lower stages. That is why multistage rocket design, where each stage provides a certain thrust and falls off, is so popular. Once the fuel is exhausted, the empty motors and casing need not be carried along into orbit.
The PSLV incorporates a number of new technologies, as compared to the earlier SLV and ASLV. It is the first rocket in Indian space programme, where liquid fuelled engines have been used for primary propulsion. The first stage comprises third largest solid-fuelled booster in the world, after the American space shuttle and the Titan boosters. New technologies include the gimbaled motors for the liquid-fuelled second and fourth. stage, flex nozzle for the solid fuelled third stage, the Redundant Strap- down Inertial Navigation System, and the heat shield, which protects the satellite and the fourth stage from the atmosphere and opens at an altitude of about 120 km.
A number of new materials like the super alloy maraging steel for the giant first stage casings, new propellants for all stages and Kevlar and Titanium alloy for the third and fourth stages, were also developed. In short, PSLV was ten times more complex than the earlier generation ASLV.
Though ISRO has a vast network of centres in Bangalore, Thiruvananthapuram, Sriharikota and Ahmedabad, it has constantly endeavoured to transfer technology to industry and involve them as suppliers. Thus Larsen & Toubro and Walchandnagar Industries precision- machined the motor casings made of maraging steel for PSLV stage one. NOCIL manufactured hundreds of tonnes of Hydroxyl Terminated Poly Butadiene, the high powered solid propellant for the main booster rocket. The liquid-fuelled engine for the second stage named Vikas was an engineering marvel jointly manufactured and assembled by Hyderabad based MTAR and Godrej. When PSLV: D-1 failed, ISRO'S 150-odd vendors were naturally concerned that the systems supplied by them had been the cause. They heaved a collective sigh of relief when the software error was detected.
But does the successful launch mean we are ready to offer PSLV as a commercial vehicle to launch remote sensing satellites in polar orbits? The answer is: not yet. The next developmental, flight of PSLV is sometime next year and a new series of three more flights are being planned. Work has already started in ISRO to increase the payload to reach the magic figure of one tonne so that large remote sensing satellites like the coming IRS 1-D can be launched indigenously. So far, IRS 1-A and 1-B have been launched from the Russian cosmodrome at Baikanour, as will 1-C be in late 1995.
Interestingly, the existing rocket can launch a payload weighing a little over one and a half tonnes into a polar sun-synchronous orbit. But as the trajectory from Sriharikota crosses Sri Lanka" and no country allows a rocket to over fly its territory, the rocket has to accomplish a complicated yaw manoeuvre, before it reaches the desired orbit. This limits the weight of the payload.
It is important to note that India's most ambitious space programme yet, the GSLV, which can provide it capabilities to launch -2.5 tonne communication satellites, is largely made up of stage one and two of PSLV. Only a third cryogenic stage needs to be developed. A few cryogenic engines have been bought from the Russians to start the programme. By building on its own INSAT 2-A and 2-B, India has already demonstrated its ability to build world class communication satellites. Thus, in a real sense, PSLV's success is a stepping stone to the ambitious GSLV.
Can the PSLV be used to launch Motorola’s Iridium network, the global cellular phone network based on 77 low earth orbiting satellites? The answer is 'yes' but again 'not yet'. Iridium consists of a large number of polar satellites weighing around 400 to 600 kg and orbiting at about 600 km. Thus, once the technology to launch independently targeted multiple satellites is mastered then PSLV can launch a cluster of 3-4 low earth communication satellites for Iridium type of projects. Since there are not enough launch vehicles in the world to launch 77 satellites in quick succession, one can, expect PSLV to play a role in this.
Another question normally asked is whether the PSLV can be use to launch reconnaissance satellites. Technically, the answer is 'yes'. After all, they are small satellites orbiting at an altitude of around 300 km altitude. They need to orbit at low altitudes to get good resolution, that is the ability to discern small objects. However, due to friction with rarefied atmosphere, their life is shortened.
Can PSLV technology be used for developing inter-continental ballistic missiles? Technically, "yes'. In fact, the Americans were barking up the, wrong tree when they twisted Russian arms to renege on the cryogenic deal. Cryogenic engines cannot be used for missiles of any kind, as it will take months to prepare them for flight and great expense to maintain them in readiness. There is no single missile in the world in which cryogenic engines are being used. The most popular rocket is a solid-fuelled "booster. Although ISRO is not involved in military applications, DRDO is. Technically India can build ICBMS. It is a different issue that India can, ill afford to misspend vast resources in militarisation.
The timing of the flight and the unprecedented invitation to the press to witness the, flight seems to have been a decision originating in PMO - the obvious reasons being India’s pitch in the UN to be made a permanent member of the Security Council and secondly, the need to redeem ourselves in international eyes after the ignominy of the recent 'plague' outbreak. As a scribe exclaimed after the launch, "If we were Chinese, we would call 1994 the Year of the Prithvi, Plague and the PSLV!"
ISRO men in global space industry
Business India, February 8-21, 1999
Career launchpad
ISRO has launched the career of many a senior executive in the global satellite industry
Shivanand Kanavi
If one were to organise an Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) alumni reunion, it could easily be mistaken for a conference of the global satellite industry. There would be high-level executives from Inmarsat, PanAmSat, World Space, Agrani, ICO Global, Lockheed Martin, Matra Marconi, and Loral, in essence, every player that counts in the bird business (see table).
"We are proud that a single Indian organisation has contributed so much talent to the global satellite industry. It is an acknowledgement of ISRO'S talent pool and capabilities," says Dr Kasturirangan, chairman, ISRO. He maintains that the talent flight has not affected the organisation. "While we do regret losing such highly trained and capable people, we cannot stop this. We have enough depth to replace such people; hence overall the space programme does not suffer."
ISRO alumni in the global satellite industry
Inmarsat: D V Ramana
ICO-Global: P Ramachandran, Y N Bhushan
Agrani: Jai P Singh, K Narayanan
World Space: M G Chandrasekhar, D Venugopal
Matra Marconi: Mrinal Saha
MTSat: K P M Bhat
Loral: P Damodaran, Devendra Verma
Intelsat: S Manoharan,
Discovery: Kiran Karnik
Every year ISRO loses about 150 people, mainly to the software industry. Besides new recruits, people who have been with ISRO for 10 years and who have taken on independent responsibilities also start looking for opportunities outside.
"We continue to recruit from regional engineering colleges and other good colleges. It depends on the projects on hand, but about 300-350 scientists and engineers are recruited every year," says Kasturirangan. ISRO is increasingly targeting MTechs rather than BTechs as many private sector companies are doing, and encourages them to do an in-house PhD as well in a specialised field.
Nonetheless, thanks to the Fifth Pay Commission, ISRO'S packages at the entry level are now as good as in the private sector, except probably for software. A new recruit gets above Rs.15,000 on a monthly cost-to-company basis, though at the senior level people do not find it very attractive monetarily. For example, the chairman himself gets a pay package of around Rs30,000 and a few perks like housing and car.
Jai Singh, CEO of Agrani Satellite Communications and an ISRO alumnus, concurs that the organisation has very good depth in its management ranks. Singh left ISRO in 1988 after a 15-year stint. Says he: "The work, albeit hi-tech, was getting a bit routine. I had no other problems at ISRO. It was for personal reasons- I wanted my family to get an international environment and so on -that I took on the Inmarsat assignment."
K. Narayanan, who was Insat programme director and director of satellite communications at the Department of Space and is now executive vice-president at Agrani, suggests: "ISRO people should be allowed to work in Indian industry for a couple of years and join back. That will help both sides. The hi-tech developed within ISRO will get transferred to industry and they will bring back industry practices in cost-cutting, customer service, and so on."
Kasturirangan is all for lateral movement of professionals into ISRO. "Already an MS or PhD from a decent university abroad with some experience is taken in directly. They can send in their CVs any time. Professionals working in India are also taken in through advertisements."
Some engineers feel ISRO restricts their career mobility. Being a government organisation, it discourages
employees with over 10 years of service from taking voluntary retirement and joining the private sector, by stipulating a two-year 'cooling off' period. Such a rule makes sense in cases where, for example, a bureaucrat might award a government contract to a private sector company and then leave to join the same company as a quid pro quo. But engineers today would turn down any company that restricts their mobility.
ISRO is an organisation with over 18,000 personnel and has been successful in a hi-tech area on a shoestring budget. Naturally it has become a favourite for headhunters. It should be given a free hand by the government to formulate a liberal HRD policy which takes cognisance of market realities. However, ISRO would benefit by networking the wider ISRO parivar. Almost all of them hold fond memories, and would help ISRO gain an entry into the $60-billion global space industry.
Career launchpad
ISRO has launched the career of many a senior executive in the global satellite industry
Shivanand Kanavi
If one were to organise an Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) alumni reunion, it could easily be mistaken for a conference of the global satellite industry. There would be high-level executives from Inmarsat, PanAmSat, World Space, Agrani, ICO Global, Lockheed Martin, Matra Marconi, and Loral, in essence, every player that counts in the bird business (see table).
"We are proud that a single Indian organisation has contributed so much talent to the global satellite industry. It is an acknowledgement of ISRO'S talent pool and capabilities," says Dr Kasturirangan, chairman, ISRO. He maintains that the talent flight has not affected the organisation. "While we do regret losing such highly trained and capable people, we cannot stop this. We have enough depth to replace such people; hence overall the space programme does not suffer."
ISRO alumni in the global satellite industry
Inmarsat: D V Ramana
ICO-Global: P Ramachandran, Y N Bhushan
Agrani: Jai P Singh, K Narayanan
World Space: M G Chandrasekhar, D Venugopal
Matra Marconi: Mrinal Saha
MTSat: K P M Bhat
Loral: P Damodaran, Devendra Verma
Intelsat: S Manoharan,
Discovery: Kiran Karnik
Every year ISRO loses about 150 people, mainly to the software industry. Besides new recruits, people who have been with ISRO for 10 years and who have taken on independent responsibilities also start looking for opportunities outside.
"We continue to recruit from regional engineering colleges and other good colleges. It depends on the projects on hand, but about 300-350 scientists and engineers are recruited every year," says Kasturirangan. ISRO is increasingly targeting MTechs rather than BTechs as many private sector companies are doing, and encourages them to do an in-house PhD as well in a specialised field.
Nonetheless, thanks to the Fifth Pay Commission, ISRO'S packages at the entry level are now as good as in the private sector, except probably for software. A new recruit gets above Rs.15,000 on a monthly cost-to-company basis, though at the senior level people do not find it very attractive monetarily. For example, the chairman himself gets a pay package of around Rs30,000 and a few perks like housing and car.
Jai Singh, CEO of Agrani Satellite Communications and an ISRO alumnus, concurs that the organisation has very good depth in its management ranks. Singh left ISRO in 1988 after a 15-year stint. Says he: "The work, albeit hi-tech, was getting a bit routine. I had no other problems at ISRO. It was for personal reasons- I wanted my family to get an international environment and so on -that I took on the Inmarsat assignment."
K. Narayanan, who was Insat programme director and director of satellite communications at the Department of Space and is now executive vice-president at Agrani, suggests: "ISRO people should be allowed to work in Indian industry for a couple of years and join back. That will help both sides. The hi-tech developed within ISRO will get transferred to industry and they will bring back industry practices in cost-cutting, customer service, and so on."
Kasturirangan is all for lateral movement of professionals into ISRO. "Already an MS or PhD from a decent university abroad with some experience is taken in directly. They can send in their CVs any time. Professionals working in India are also taken in through advertisements."
Some engineers feel ISRO restricts their career mobility. Being a government organisation, it discourages
employees with over 10 years of service from taking voluntary retirement and joining the private sector, by stipulating a two-year 'cooling off' period. Such a rule makes sense in cases where, for example, a bureaucrat might award a government contract to a private sector company and then leave to join the same company as a quid pro quo. But engineers today would turn down any company that restricts their mobility.
ISRO is an organisation with over 18,000 personnel and has been successful in a hi-tech area on a shoestring budget. Naturally it has become a favourite for headhunters. It should be given a free hand by the government to formulate a liberal HRD policy which takes cognisance of market realities. However, ISRO would benefit by networking the wider ISRO parivar. Almost all of them hold fond memories, and would help ISRO gain an entry into the $60-billion global space industry.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Oceanography
Business India, November 30-December 13, 1998
Fish curry, feni, and oceanography
The National Institute of Oceanography, Goa, is learning to merge good oceanography with commercially exploitable R&D and consultancy services
Shivanand Kanavi
Serious study of various aspects of the deep sea at the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) does not jell with the stereotype of life in Goa, carefree and fun-loving. Dr Ehrlich Desa, the director, NIO, is a rarity himself. A well-known oceanographer and one of the first Indian scientists to explore the Antarctic in the mid1980s, he is neither a geologist nor a marine biologist, as most oceanographers are He is actually an electronics engineer who specialised in instrumentation. However, Desa does not rest on his past laurels. Ask him about the Antarctic expeditions and he brushes the query aside. "That is history. My task now is to lead NIO in the current environment, where we have to do first-rate oceanography while earning revenue."
However combining good science with commercially useful R&D is a daunting task. Till recently, the majority of the 40-odd laboratories of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) produced neither. The autarky of the 1970s and 1980s proclaimed import substitution, not globally competitive technology, as the goal of lndian R&D. However things started to change in the late 1980s. For example, the National Chemical Laboratory (NCL) in Pune built up a reputation for good science, global patents, and impressive dollar revenues. R.A. Mashelkar inspired other laboratories to do the same when he moved from NCL to become the director-general of CSIR in 1995. Today NIO, like many other CSIR laboratories, is buzzing with Mashelkar's slogan "research as business".
To describe the work being done at NIO, you are forced to state the obvious. Oceans are vast. So is the scope of oceanography. For academic convenience, oceanography is divided into physical oceanography, chemical oceanography, biological oceanography, ocean engineering, geophysics, and soon.
How do the ocean floors change when continents drift? What are the effects of vast amounts of sediments being brought in by the great rivers of the world, like the Indus and the Ganges? Which are the red-hot spots of submarine volcanic activity? Such questions are studied by physical oceanographers.
Similarly, sea water is not just salty water, say the chemical oceanographers. It is a rich storehouse of chemicals. Indian chemical oceanographers often compare their work to the mythical" samudra manthan" - the churning of the seas that brought forth an amazing number of things, from nectar to the most potent toxins.
By now, the variegated colours of marine life have reached the living rooms of people, thanks to Jacques Cousteau's underwater TV footage. Biological oceanographers study all forms of life in the oceans, from plankton and algae to whales. It is a fascinating subject. Many marine creatures exist in high-pressure depths. Temperatures too vary from the very cold of the Antarctic to the very hot of submarine volcanoes. Some marine species have survived for millions of years without appreciable change, like the shark and the horseshoe crab. Dr Anil Chatterjee at NIO has been studying the latter - a species of crab aptly called "the living fossil". He has interesting discoveries to his credit that can be very useful to the pharmaceutical and paints industries (see box).
Treasure hunt in the Indian Ocean
NIO has a dedicated team of treasure hunters. No, they are not looking for sunken Spanish gold, but for valuable metals at the bottom of the oceans. Many metals like copper, nickel, manganese, and cobalt exist in sea water in minute amounts. Over time these metals precipitate out and form nuggets as big as potatoes on the ocean floor. Early discoverers of these nuggets, more than a century ago, called them "black potatoes". However surveying ocean floors, collecting samples of these polymetallic nodules, analysing them, assessing the economic potential of these deposits, and so on, requires expensive ships, oceanographic expertise, and lots of hard work on board. NIO scientists developed this expertise with leased oceanographic ships in the 1980s. In fact, in 1987, the UN recognised India as a pioneer investor and, in fact, registered India's deep-sea mining claim the first ever by any country.
Since then, NIO scientists using the R/V Sidorenko in 1994-95 discovered rich ferromanganese deposits on the Afanasiy-Nikitin sea mount 1,000 km southeast of Sri Lanka in the north central Indian Ocean. The sea mount exists at a depth of 1.5 km. The nodules found here are rich in cobalt as well (as reported by NIO scientists V.K. Bankar, J.N. Pattan, and A.V. Mudholkar in Marine Geology, 136, 1997, pp299-31 5). However Bankar, true to NIO'S circumspect tradition, says: "The crust has substantial significance both in terms of R&D and economic potential, but I feel it is premature to give it publicity. We still have to investigate the extent of coverage of the sea mount by this crust. Moreover, no mining technology is yet available for this kind of deposit." In an atmosphere of grand announcements of unverified "breakthroughs" (remember press conferences organised amidst great fanfare not so long ago about breakthroughs in cold fusion and high-temperature superconductors!), this circumspection is welcome.
Similarly, marine organisms yield millions of different molecules which can be a rich source of active ingredients for the agrochemical and pharmaceutical industries. Appropriately, NIO has initiated a 'Drugs from the Sea' programme. Dr Raghu Kumar and other NIO scientists studying certain fungi found in the mangroves have discovered some chemicals with bleaching properties. These could reduce the chlorine intake of the paper industry by half, which in turn would reduce the load of effluent treatment.
NIO also has an active team of oceanographers who are studying the effect of oceans on weather systems. Their work will be greatly assisted by the Indian Space Research Organisation's Oceansat, which is going to be launched soon. Oceansat is a remote sensing satellite which will provide extensive data on ocean surface temperatures. Study of this data can lead to a better understanding of complex global weather phenomena like the monsoons or El Nino.
The Crab man
Animal rights activists would just love him. Dr Anil Chatterjee's discoveries, when commercially exploited by the pharmaceutical industry, will save the lives of quite a few rabbits. Pharmaceutical companies producing injectibles have to certify them for no contamination and the Indian Pharmacopoeia (IP) prescribes that the sample of the drug be injected into a rabbit and the effects seen after 48 hours. The drug is safe only if the rabbit survives. But this is not a fail-safe test. Recently, batches of injectibles exported from India have been rejected for failing more rigorous tests. The USFDA insists that injectibles be tested using a chemical found in the limulus horseshoe crab. The chemical, Limulous Amoebocyte Lysate (LAL), can detect even a single bacterium present in the sample. Now the IP too has changed the rules to allow the LAL test. Today India imports some Rs.80-90 crore worth of LAL from the US. There are six companies worldwide that produce LAL by extracting it from the blood of the horseshoe crab.
Dr Anil Chatterjee of the bio-oceanography group at NIO has spent years studying the horseshoe crab - the oldest living species on earth. Chatterjee has found that the blood of another. "species of horseshoe crab, called the trachypheus, found off the coast of Orissa, can be used to extract Trachypheus Amoebocyte Lysate (TAL), which is as effective as LAL. He has also patented a method to extract 20 per cent of the crab's blood without killing it. His current ambition is to develop a cloning process to produce TAL so that no more horseshoe crabs need be killed.
Billions of blistering, bilious barnacles!
We are not quoting Captain Haddock from the Tintin comics. It is an exclamation of every mariner who finds his newly painted ship soon covered with colonies of barnacles and molluscs. But ye ancient mariners, have patience, research at NIO might help you soon!
While at his favourite pastime of crab-watching, Chatterjee has made another discovery: that male horseshoe crabs have barnacles and molluscs clinging to their backs, while the female of the species is squeaky clean! Investigating the phenomenon further he has isolated a chemical (glycoprotein) in the female that has this anti-fouling property. If this glycoprotein can be synthesised then marine paints will get a powerful anti-fouling ingredient
The geophysics department at NIO, along with the National Geophysical Research Laboratory, Hyderabad, have carried out seismic surveys on the continental slopes of India and detected the presence of gas hydrates (frozen methane gas) at several places. This work might help India solve its hydrocarbon problem in the long run. At depths like 600m below the ocean floor, where the pressure is high and the temperatures low, methane and other components of natural gas can solidify into ice as hydrates. A tonne of hydrates brought up to the surface will yield 0.8 tonnes of water and 168 cubic metres of natural gas. So mastering exploration and mining of gas hydrates could be the key to overcoming the severe hydrocarbon shortage in India.
“The least glamorous of all departments at NIO is ocean engineering," says Dr P. Chandramohan, assistant director of the ocean engineering division. But the ocean engineers are the institute's bread and butter and jam! Every project along the coast of India, be it in petrochemicals, oil refining, steel, cement, ports, and so on, has to get an environmental impact survey done by NIO'S ocean engineers for clearance.
It is clear that, slowly, Desa and his team at NIO are learning to combine good science with its commercially exploitable applications. Today Mashelkar is proud of the work being done at NIO. Situated next to the romantic legend of Dona Paula and the white sands of Miramar beach, this centre of excellence is quietly proclaiming: “Goa is not just fish curry and feni, but oceanography too."
Fish curry, feni, and oceanography
The National Institute of Oceanography, Goa, is learning to merge good oceanography with commercially exploitable R&D and consultancy services
Shivanand Kanavi
Serious study of various aspects of the deep sea at the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) does not jell with the stereotype of life in Goa, carefree and fun-loving. Dr Ehrlich Desa, the director, NIO, is a rarity himself. A well-known oceanographer and one of the first Indian scientists to explore the Antarctic in the mid1980s, he is neither a geologist nor a marine biologist, as most oceanographers are He is actually an electronics engineer who specialised in instrumentation. However, Desa does not rest on his past laurels. Ask him about the Antarctic expeditions and he brushes the query aside. "That is history. My task now is to lead NIO in the current environment, where we have to do first-rate oceanography while earning revenue."
However combining good science with commercially useful R&D is a daunting task. Till recently, the majority of the 40-odd laboratories of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) produced neither. The autarky of the 1970s and 1980s proclaimed import substitution, not globally competitive technology, as the goal of lndian R&D. However things started to change in the late 1980s. For example, the National Chemical Laboratory (NCL) in Pune built up a reputation for good science, global patents, and impressive dollar revenues. R.A. Mashelkar inspired other laboratories to do the same when he moved from NCL to become the director-general of CSIR in 1995. Today NIO, like many other CSIR laboratories, is buzzing with Mashelkar's slogan "research as business".
To describe the work being done at NIO, you are forced to state the obvious. Oceans are vast. So is the scope of oceanography. For academic convenience, oceanography is divided into physical oceanography, chemical oceanography, biological oceanography, ocean engineering, geophysics, and soon.
How do the ocean floors change when continents drift? What are the effects of vast amounts of sediments being brought in by the great rivers of the world, like the Indus and the Ganges? Which are the red-hot spots of submarine volcanic activity? Such questions are studied by physical oceanographers.
Similarly, sea water is not just salty water, say the chemical oceanographers. It is a rich storehouse of chemicals. Indian chemical oceanographers often compare their work to the mythical" samudra manthan" - the churning of the seas that brought forth an amazing number of things, from nectar to the most potent toxins.
By now, the variegated colours of marine life have reached the living rooms of people, thanks to Jacques Cousteau's underwater TV footage. Biological oceanographers study all forms of life in the oceans, from plankton and algae to whales. It is a fascinating subject. Many marine creatures exist in high-pressure depths. Temperatures too vary from the very cold of the Antarctic to the very hot of submarine volcanoes. Some marine species have survived for millions of years without appreciable change, like the shark and the horseshoe crab. Dr Anil Chatterjee at NIO has been studying the latter - a species of crab aptly called "the living fossil". He has interesting discoveries to his credit that can be very useful to the pharmaceutical and paints industries (see box).
Treasure hunt in the Indian Ocean
NIO has a dedicated team of treasure hunters. No, they are not looking for sunken Spanish gold, but for valuable metals at the bottom of the oceans. Many metals like copper, nickel, manganese, and cobalt exist in sea water in minute amounts. Over time these metals precipitate out and form nuggets as big as potatoes on the ocean floor. Early discoverers of these nuggets, more than a century ago, called them "black potatoes". However surveying ocean floors, collecting samples of these polymetallic nodules, analysing them, assessing the economic potential of these deposits, and so on, requires expensive ships, oceanographic expertise, and lots of hard work on board. NIO scientists developed this expertise with leased oceanographic ships in the 1980s. In fact, in 1987, the UN recognised India as a pioneer investor and, in fact, registered India's deep-sea mining claim the first ever by any country.
Since then, NIO scientists using the R/V Sidorenko in 1994-95 discovered rich ferromanganese deposits on the Afanasiy-Nikitin sea mount 1,000 km southeast of Sri Lanka in the north central Indian Ocean. The sea mount exists at a depth of 1.5 km. The nodules found here are rich in cobalt as well (as reported by NIO scientists V.K. Bankar, J.N. Pattan, and A.V. Mudholkar in Marine Geology, 136, 1997, pp299-31 5). However Bankar, true to NIO'S circumspect tradition, says: "The crust has substantial significance both in terms of R&D and economic potential, but I feel it is premature to give it publicity. We still have to investigate the extent of coverage of the sea mount by this crust. Moreover, no mining technology is yet available for this kind of deposit." In an atmosphere of grand announcements of unverified "breakthroughs" (remember press conferences organised amidst great fanfare not so long ago about breakthroughs in cold fusion and high-temperature superconductors!), this circumspection is welcome.
Similarly, marine organisms yield millions of different molecules which can be a rich source of active ingredients for the agrochemical and pharmaceutical industries. Appropriately, NIO has initiated a 'Drugs from the Sea' programme. Dr Raghu Kumar and other NIO scientists studying certain fungi found in the mangroves have discovered some chemicals with bleaching properties. These could reduce the chlorine intake of the paper industry by half, which in turn would reduce the load of effluent treatment.
NIO also has an active team of oceanographers who are studying the effect of oceans on weather systems. Their work will be greatly assisted by the Indian Space Research Organisation's Oceansat, which is going to be launched soon. Oceansat is a remote sensing satellite which will provide extensive data on ocean surface temperatures. Study of this data can lead to a better understanding of complex global weather phenomena like the monsoons or El Nino.
The Crab man
Animal rights activists would just love him. Dr Anil Chatterjee's discoveries, when commercially exploited by the pharmaceutical industry, will save the lives of quite a few rabbits. Pharmaceutical companies producing injectibles have to certify them for no contamination and the Indian Pharmacopoeia (IP) prescribes that the sample of the drug be injected into a rabbit and the effects seen after 48 hours. The drug is safe only if the rabbit survives. But this is not a fail-safe test. Recently, batches of injectibles exported from India have been rejected for failing more rigorous tests. The USFDA insists that injectibles be tested using a chemical found in the limulus horseshoe crab. The chemical, Limulous Amoebocyte Lysate (LAL), can detect even a single bacterium present in the sample. Now the IP too has changed the rules to allow the LAL test. Today India imports some Rs.80-90 crore worth of LAL from the US. There are six companies worldwide that produce LAL by extracting it from the blood of the horseshoe crab.
Dr Anil Chatterjee of the bio-oceanography group at NIO has spent years studying the horseshoe crab - the oldest living species on earth. Chatterjee has found that the blood of another. "species of horseshoe crab, called the trachypheus, found off the coast of Orissa, can be used to extract Trachypheus Amoebocyte Lysate (TAL), which is as effective as LAL. He has also patented a method to extract 20 per cent of the crab's blood without killing it. His current ambition is to develop a cloning process to produce TAL so that no more horseshoe crabs need be killed.
Billions of blistering, bilious barnacles!
We are not quoting Captain Haddock from the Tintin comics. It is an exclamation of every mariner who finds his newly painted ship soon covered with colonies of barnacles and molluscs. But ye ancient mariners, have patience, research at NIO might help you soon!
While at his favourite pastime of crab-watching, Chatterjee has made another discovery: that male horseshoe crabs have barnacles and molluscs clinging to their backs, while the female of the species is squeaky clean! Investigating the phenomenon further he has isolated a chemical (glycoprotein) in the female that has this anti-fouling property. If this glycoprotein can be synthesised then marine paints will get a powerful anti-fouling ingredient
The geophysics department at NIO, along with the National Geophysical Research Laboratory, Hyderabad, have carried out seismic surveys on the continental slopes of India and detected the presence of gas hydrates (frozen methane gas) at several places. This work might help India solve its hydrocarbon problem in the long run. At depths like 600m below the ocean floor, where the pressure is high and the temperatures low, methane and other components of natural gas can solidify into ice as hydrates. A tonne of hydrates brought up to the surface will yield 0.8 tonnes of water and 168 cubic metres of natural gas. So mastering exploration and mining of gas hydrates could be the key to overcoming the severe hydrocarbon shortage in India.
“The least glamorous of all departments at NIO is ocean engineering," says Dr P. Chandramohan, assistant director of the ocean engineering division. But the ocean engineers are the institute's bread and butter and jam! Every project along the coast of India, be it in petrochemicals, oil refining, steel, cement, ports, and so on, has to get an environmental impact survey done by NIO'S ocean engineers for clearance.
It is clear that, slowly, Desa and his team at NIO are learning to combine good science with its commercially exploitable applications. Today Mashelkar is proud of the work being done at NIO. Situated next to the romantic legend of Dona Paula and the white sands of Miramar beach, this centre of excellence is quietly proclaiming: “Goa is not just fish curry and feni, but oceanography too."
ISRO--Remote Sensing
Business India, February 28-March 13, 1994
Remotely sensing profits
Remote sensing is becoming important in corporate planning
Shivanand Kanavi
What do ITC, Tata Tea, Tata Chemicals, Indal, Gujarat' Ambuja and fishermen's cooperatives in the west coast of India have in common? They are among the more than 700 users of Satellite Remote Sensing data from the Indian Remote Sensing satellites, IRS-IA and IRS-IB. ITC, the cigarette giant, is using remote sensing to get advance intelligence on the tobacco harvest to better predict the price of tobacco when it comes to the market. They have also used it to study sunflower and soybean crops in certain districts of Andhra Pradesh.
Similarly Tata Tea is using it to scout for land that is suitable for tea plantations. Tata Chemicals is using RS to try better watershed management and cropping patterns to help the drought-hit villagers around their plant in Mithapur, Gujarat. They are also using it to survey siliceous limestone reserves near their cement plant for possible sourcing. According to Dr Manu Seth, Tata Chem's deputy managing director, they are very interested in developing remote sensing applications to study the post harvest soil condition with respect to nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous content over whole districts. This will help them to advise farmers about the right mix of fertiliser inputs. With their own urea plant coming up at Babrala, UP, this novel application of remote sensing will not only help farmers with scientific information but also help Tata Chern estimate demand and adjust production accordingly. Similarly a number of companies, like Indal and Gujarat Ambuja Cements, are using remote sensing for geological prospecting.
The National Remote Sensing Agency at Hyderabad and National Natural Resources Management System and Regional Remote Sensing Service Centres are together making considerable efforts to popularise the technology. They provide satellite data in various forms to Indian users at throwaway prices that are one-third of what a foreign user has to pay but even then internationally they are cheaper than the French, who are their main competitors. They also help in interpreting it for specific applications. This service is being widely used by various government agencies and a large number of users from the private sector. Among them are 250 fishermen's cooperatives, for whom NRSA provides charts of the best fishing grounds off both the east and west coasts. It has been found that the catch along these recommended routes is at least 30 per cent more than that without the help of such charts.
It is a classic case of a technology developed for war finally being turned around for peaceful developmental purposes. After all, remote sensing was pioneered in the US to locate Vietcong guerrillas hidden in the jungles of IndoChina. Remote sensing is based on the fact that different objects reflect or scatter different amounts of electromagnetic energy in different wave length bands.
The electromagnetic spectrum spans wavelengths right from gamma rays to long radio waves. In remote sensing, the most useful regions are visible light, infra red and the microwaves. While passing through the atmosphere, electromagnetic radiation is scattered and absorbed by gases like oxygen, carbon dioxide and ozone and water vapour and dust. The absorption occurs at particular wave lengths whereas certain wavelengths pass through the atmosphere without much attenuation. These are called atmospheric windows.
The reflective or emissive properties of various surfaces at different wavelengths are called their 'spectral signatures'. The spectral signatures combined with spatial variation of these signatures tell us about the size, shape and texture of objects. In case both these factors are the same for two crops, then the temporal variation of reflectance comes to our rescue since for different crops in their growing period it is different. Apart from wavelength, another characteristic of electromagnetic radiation is polarization. The polarisation of reflected radiation also tells us about the object.
Spectral reflectance of vegetation, for example, is quite distinct and plant pigments, leaf structure and water content influence it in the visible, near infra red and middle infra red regions. Since vegetation has maximum reflectance in the infra red, it always appears dark red In RS photographs instead of the usual green that we associate with vegetation. Hence RS photographs are also called 'false colour composites'.
Soil reflectance tells us, about moisture content, amount of organic matter; iron oxide present, relative percentages of clay, slit and sand and roughness of the soil surface. Water reflectance is influenced by its turbidity, etc.
The IRS satellite with a special camera called the Linear Imaging Self Scanner, based on charged coupled device technology, scans a piece of the earth's surface for radiation in four bands. l) 0.45-0.52 micron: This band is useful for mapping suspended sediments or water quality and various, studies related to coastal region. 2) O.52-0.59 micron: Sensitive towards vegetation discrimination and ferric oxides. 3) 0.62-0.68 micron: Useful for green bio –mass estimation and crop yield studies.
The IRS-IA and IRS-IB carry three cameras. The LISS-I camera provides a picture covering 148.48 km in width with a resolution of 72.5 metres. The LISS-2A and 2B cameras provide a resolution of 36.25 metres and a width of74.24 km. The entire payload including the world class LISS cameras are being make in the Space Applications Centre at Ahmedabad. The data is digitised but requires corrections to be applied for the earth’s rotation and the roll- pitch –yaw motion of the satellite itself.
For furthers analysis of data one needs to know the exact spectral signatures of different crops, soils , terrains, etc, this is called 'ground truth' . The preliminary analysis is compared with actual detailed data from the ground in a small area. For example, if one is looking for cotton acreage under cultivation, probable yield and evidence of pests and disease afflicting the crop, then one needs to correlate satellite data with data from a typical cotton growing area.
Remote sensing cannot tell you what is inside the earth but the detailed study of topography can tell you about ground water potential and even probable areas for certain minerals. Recently it has been applied to find probable gold and tungsten bearing regions in Andhra Pradesh. Remote sensing applications in planning are innumerable. Inland aquaculture development, drought monitoring, irrigation an command area development, flood risk zone mapping, urban sprawl, land encroachment, study of forest cover, even damage assessment of forest fires, pipelines and major roads lying are just some of them.
Due to increasing demand for satellite data a whole industry of small scale entrepreneurs has come up around Bangalore and Hyderabad for manufacturing equipment required for data analysis and even consultancies which specialise in data analysis. The skills developed in India in analyzing IRS, Landsat and SPOT data have become so internationally competitive that when France wanted to do a survey on land use to settle subsidy claims of farmers, the contract was given to ISRO. Today, most Regional Remote Sensing Service Centres have become self sufficient indicating the popularity of RS. Besides ISRO has created a wide infrastructure by training over 5,500 spe cialists in the field.
To the credit of ISRO' s satellite tracking, telemetry and command team goes the fact that IRS-lA, whose design life was only three years, has been working like a charm for nearly six years due to astute handling of the satellite from the ground. The IRS-1A and 1B data is top class compared to the American Landsat and the I French SPOT data. In fact, since Landsat- 5 has become old and Landsat—6 launched in 1993 was lost in space (accidents in space do not happen in India alone!) and since IRS data is highly price competitive, compared to the French SPOT, there is tremendous potential to market IRS data in North America. Eosat a US company that is a major in global marketing of remote sensing products, has tied up with Antrix Corporation - set up to market Indian space technology worldwide - to do just that. In fact recognizing ISRO' s experience in building and operating ground stations at Bangalore, Lucknow and Mauritius, Eosat will buy ground receiving systems and data processing software also, from the department of space.
The next generation IRS-l C, to be launched in mid-1995 from Baikanour, Russia, is even more advanced and wjl1 provide stereoscopic data with LISS-3 that has three times higher resolution than LISS-l and 2.The satellite also has a bigger power pack and, most important, the capacity to record and transmit later. The additional wide field sensor in IRS- 1 C will make it capable of looking at vegetation in an area Once in four days instead of the present 11 days. It is clear that painstaking efforts by ISRO scientists, since the late sixties to learn remote sensing data analysis, application development and even acquiring the capability to fabricate world class remote sensing satellites is finally paying off.
Remotely sensing profits
Remote sensing is becoming important in corporate planning
Shivanand Kanavi
What do ITC, Tata Tea, Tata Chemicals, Indal, Gujarat' Ambuja and fishermen's cooperatives in the west coast of India have in common? They are among the more than 700 users of Satellite Remote Sensing data from the Indian Remote Sensing satellites, IRS-IA and IRS-IB. ITC, the cigarette giant, is using remote sensing to get advance intelligence on the tobacco harvest to better predict the price of tobacco when it comes to the market. They have also used it to study sunflower and soybean crops in certain districts of Andhra Pradesh.
Similarly Tata Tea is using it to scout for land that is suitable for tea plantations. Tata Chemicals is using RS to try better watershed management and cropping patterns to help the drought-hit villagers around their plant in Mithapur, Gujarat. They are also using it to survey siliceous limestone reserves near their cement plant for possible sourcing. According to Dr Manu Seth, Tata Chem's deputy managing director, they are very interested in developing remote sensing applications to study the post harvest soil condition with respect to nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous content over whole districts. This will help them to advise farmers about the right mix of fertiliser inputs. With their own urea plant coming up at Babrala, UP, this novel application of remote sensing will not only help farmers with scientific information but also help Tata Chern estimate demand and adjust production accordingly. Similarly a number of companies, like Indal and Gujarat Ambuja Cements, are using remote sensing for geological prospecting.
The National Remote Sensing Agency at Hyderabad and National Natural Resources Management System and Regional Remote Sensing Service Centres are together making considerable efforts to popularise the technology. They provide satellite data in various forms to Indian users at throwaway prices that are one-third of what a foreign user has to pay but even then internationally they are cheaper than the French, who are their main competitors. They also help in interpreting it for specific applications. This service is being widely used by various government agencies and a large number of users from the private sector. Among them are 250 fishermen's cooperatives, for whom NRSA provides charts of the best fishing grounds off both the east and west coasts. It has been found that the catch along these recommended routes is at least 30 per cent more than that without the help of such charts.
It is a classic case of a technology developed for war finally being turned around for peaceful developmental purposes. After all, remote sensing was pioneered in the US to locate Vietcong guerrillas hidden in the jungles of IndoChina. Remote sensing is based on the fact that different objects reflect or scatter different amounts of electromagnetic energy in different wave length bands.
The electromagnetic spectrum spans wavelengths right from gamma rays to long radio waves. In remote sensing, the most useful regions are visible light, infra red and the microwaves. While passing through the atmosphere, electromagnetic radiation is scattered and absorbed by gases like oxygen, carbon dioxide and ozone and water vapour and dust. The absorption occurs at particular wave lengths whereas certain wavelengths pass through the atmosphere without much attenuation. These are called atmospheric windows.
The reflective or emissive properties of various surfaces at different wavelengths are called their 'spectral signatures'. The spectral signatures combined with spatial variation of these signatures tell us about the size, shape and texture of objects. In case both these factors are the same for two crops, then the temporal variation of reflectance comes to our rescue since for different crops in their growing period it is different. Apart from wavelength, another characteristic of electromagnetic radiation is polarization. The polarisation of reflected radiation also tells us about the object.
Spectral reflectance of vegetation, for example, is quite distinct and plant pigments, leaf structure and water content influence it in the visible, near infra red and middle infra red regions. Since vegetation has maximum reflectance in the infra red, it always appears dark red In RS photographs instead of the usual green that we associate with vegetation. Hence RS photographs are also called 'false colour composites'.
Soil reflectance tells us, about moisture content, amount of organic matter; iron oxide present, relative percentages of clay, slit and sand and roughness of the soil surface. Water reflectance is influenced by its turbidity, etc.
The IRS satellite with a special camera called the Linear Imaging Self Scanner, based on charged coupled device technology, scans a piece of the earth's surface for radiation in four bands. l) 0.45-0.52 micron: This band is useful for mapping suspended sediments or water quality and various, studies related to coastal region. 2) O.52-0.59 micron: Sensitive towards vegetation discrimination and ferric oxides. 3) 0.62-0.68 micron: Useful for green bio –mass estimation and crop yield studies.
The IRS-IA and IRS-IB carry three cameras. The LISS-I camera provides a picture covering 148.48 km in width with a resolution of 72.5 metres. The LISS-2A and 2B cameras provide a resolution of 36.25 metres and a width of74.24 km. The entire payload including the world class LISS cameras are being make in the Space Applications Centre at Ahmedabad. The data is digitised but requires corrections to be applied for the earth’s rotation and the roll- pitch –yaw motion of the satellite itself.
For furthers analysis of data one needs to know the exact spectral signatures of different crops, soils , terrains, etc, this is called 'ground truth' . The preliminary analysis is compared with actual detailed data from the ground in a small area. For example, if one is looking for cotton acreage under cultivation, probable yield and evidence of pests and disease afflicting the crop, then one needs to correlate satellite data with data from a typical cotton growing area.
Remote sensing cannot tell you what is inside the earth but the detailed study of topography can tell you about ground water potential and even probable areas for certain minerals. Recently it has been applied to find probable gold and tungsten bearing regions in Andhra Pradesh. Remote sensing applications in planning are innumerable. Inland aquaculture development, drought monitoring, irrigation an command area development, flood risk zone mapping, urban sprawl, land encroachment, study of forest cover, even damage assessment of forest fires, pipelines and major roads lying are just some of them.
Due to increasing demand for satellite data a whole industry of small scale entrepreneurs has come up around Bangalore and Hyderabad for manufacturing equipment required for data analysis and even consultancies which specialise in data analysis. The skills developed in India in analyzing IRS, Landsat and SPOT data have become so internationally competitive that when France wanted to do a survey on land use to settle subsidy claims of farmers, the contract was given to ISRO. Today, most Regional Remote Sensing Service Centres have become self sufficient indicating the popularity of RS. Besides ISRO has created a wide infrastructure by training over 5,500 spe cialists in the field.
To the credit of ISRO' s satellite tracking, telemetry and command team goes the fact that IRS-lA, whose design life was only three years, has been working like a charm for nearly six years due to astute handling of the satellite from the ground. The IRS-1A and 1B data is top class compared to the American Landsat and the I French SPOT data. In fact, since Landsat- 5 has become old and Landsat—6 launched in 1993 was lost in space (accidents in space do not happen in India alone!) and since IRS data is highly price competitive, compared to the French SPOT, there is tremendous potential to market IRS data in North America. Eosat a US company that is a major in global marketing of remote sensing products, has tied up with Antrix Corporation - set up to market Indian space technology worldwide - to do just that. In fact recognizing ISRO' s experience in building and operating ground stations at Bangalore, Lucknow and Mauritius, Eosat will buy ground receiving systems and data processing software also, from the department of space.
The next generation IRS-l C, to be launched in mid-1995 from Baikanour, Russia, is even more advanced and wjl1 provide stereoscopic data with LISS-3 that has three times higher resolution than LISS-l and 2.The satellite also has a bigger power pack and, most important, the capacity to record and transmit later. The additional wide field sensor in IRS- 1 C will make it capable of looking at vegetation in an area Once in four days instead of the present 11 days. It is clear that painstaking efforts by ISRO scientists, since the late sixties to learn remote sensing data analysis, application development and even acquiring the capability to fabricate world class remote sensing satellites is finally paying off.
Story of TCS-An IT Pioneer
Business India, June 7-20, 2004
Megasoft
India’s software leader continues to be innovative
Shivanand Kanavi
Wordsmiths are grateful to Saddam Hussein for providing that colourful phrase ‘mother of all...’ to describe all sorts of things irreverently. So while IT historians may hail T C S as the ‘mother of all Indian software’, Dalal Street awaits the ‘mother of all Indian IPOs’. The billion-dollar IPO could happen anytime (those with long memories might accuse us of saying the same thing for the last four years!). The market was expecting it in April. And then came the elections and turbulence in the stock market. Once the market stabilises, many expect the money being pulled out of PSU stocks to pour into a good tech offer like TCS. Bombay House, the headquarters of the Tata Group, is keeping its cards close to its chest. The company has officially gone into a cooling-off period and executives are not available for comments or interviews, or even photo shoots. Group chairman Ratan Tata and Tata Sons finance director Ishaat Hussain have both gone abroad.
But the prospectus is ready to be filed any time now and soon everyone will be talking about the TCS IPO. It is one of the most successful Indian companies, with branches in 32 countries with over 800 foreign nationals working for it and serving clients round the world. A true Indian MNC.
Business India has been following the company for decades now and started doing this particular story almost a year back. We found that the company is set for a quantum leap. Many of the quotes are from interviews done several months ago.
Starting with four people in 1968, TCS has grown into a giant of 28,000 software engineers, adding 3,000–5,000 people (the size of a medium-sized company) every year. At any time about 10,000 engineers are abroad and some of them are working at global delivery centres in Australia, Canada, China, Hungary, Japan, the UK, Uruguay, and the US. How does TCS manage all this growth in a highly competitive business environment that is constantly changing in terms of technology?
An apt term to describe TCS is ‘software factory’. The analytical framework and terminology that senior management uses in dealing with various aspects of TCS are clearly those of the manufacturing sector. They talk about managing the supply chain of TCS recruits, the same way as Toyota or Ford do. They talk of inventory management of its engineers, logistics of deploying them in a way Dell would be proud of. They talk of enterprise resource planning to deliver their software, the way Reliance or Tata Steel would do with petrochemicals or steel. Ironically, it sounds like the revenge of the manufacturing nerds on the services industry! But in terms of management theory, this is a truly remarkable framework that untangles the spaghetti of managing a services company.
Interestingly, T C S starts its ‘raw material scouting’ and ‘vendor development’ right at the college level. It takes it seriously enough to assign more than 50 senior executives to interact with academic institutions. At these institutions TCS funds many academic events like conferences and seminars, and also gets involved in improving teaching and curricula, establishing fellowships, and exchanging expertise through visiting faculty programmes, etc. They top it with an annual retreat with over a hundred top academics in Trivandrum, the training hub of TCS.
According to H. Kesavan at the University of Waterloo, Canada, who headed the electrical engineering department of IIT Kanpur in the 1960s, not many people know that TCS took an active role in building the computer science department at IIT Kanpur. Similarly, according to Juzer Vasi of IIT Bombay, the chip designing community owes a lot to TCS, which sponsored an entire M-Tech programme in VLSI design at IIT Bombay. IIT Madras too has a TCS-sponsored programme in mathematical modelling.
“TCS is extending the relationship to several universities abroad as well. It has sponsored projects at M I T, Harvard, the Kellogg School, Carnegie Mellon, University of Waterloo, and institutions in Japan, Australia, China, and Singapore,” says executive vice-president S. Padmanabhan.
As an industry leader TCS has played a premier role in the creation of infrastructure for IT education in India. And all that spadework does not hurt TCS when it goes recruiting to these institutions. Moreover, the way TCS conducted itself during the downturn has enhanced its brand equity in academic institutions. To recap, several companies, including some IT blue chips, did not honour their offer letters given to campus recruits in 2002, citing the downturn in business as the reason. But TCS did.
Moulding the recruits is a very important activity and a large centre at Trivandrum’s I T park is exclusively engaged in this. “The training in TCS is no doubt excellent, and that is why everybody tries to lure a TCS engineer,” says Radha Krishnan, CEO of Innova Solutions, a Silicon Valley software services company.
“How to keep track of our assets – our people, their current competencies and skill sets, where they are deployed, who is finishing one project and is ready to be deployed in a new one, and so on – is a key issue in our business. We have brought in digitization of this whole process, which has led to efficient use of our resources. At times it is the key to delivery of the solution to the client in time,” says global practice director (manufacturing and process industries) Ravi Gopinath.
“In TCS we have an important global systems integrator partner that can be trusted to deliver. They combine deep domain and technical knowledge with a global delivery model that brings tremendous value to our customers.” --Bill Gates, Chairman, Microsoft
“Senior consultants give inputs and brainstorm about changes in technology and likely demand for new skill sets in the near future, so that we can plan our recruitment and training programmes accordingly,” he adds. Thus digitisation acts as an ERP package for TCS.
Companies like Oracle claim that such internal ERP implementations have led to savings to the tune of a billion dollars. What would the monetary gain of digitisation of TCS be? “In terms of pre-project planning and delivery times one can use metrics (engineers’ jargon for ways to measure something), and we see a lot of gain. However in terms of opportunity costs it is difficult to monetise what we have gained,” says Gopinath.
TCS is a rare services company to have a decent-sized R&D. “We spend about 2 per cent of our sales on R&D,” says Ramadorai. “Our R&D is different from the blue sky research done in universities. It has to show its effect on our consulting practice in terms of products or tools and methodologies,” he adds. TCS has outstanding academics like M. Vidyasagar from the University of Waterloo, Canada, Kesav Nori from IIT Kanpur, and Mathai Joseph from the University of Warwick, UK, in its R&D ranks.
In fact TCS was way ahead of its times when it established TRDDC (Tata Research, Design and Development Centre) in Pune in 1981. Today R&D is more decentralised and advanced R&D is being done in Hyderabad, Chennai, and Bangalore as well.
Pathbreakers
The graphic which traces the history of IT brings out one point clearly — that when TCS came into being in 1968, Microsoft, Apple, Sun, Accenture, Cisco, Dell, Compaq, Sapient, Oracle, Novell, SAS, SAP, and Siebel did not exist. Neither were technologies like Unix, C, Java, Microprocessor, PC, LAN, Internet, Linux, and the World Wide Web invented. That shows the prescience of pioneers like F.C. Kohli and entrepreneurs like J.R.D. Tata in venturing into new territory.
“Tata Sons pumped in Rs35 lakh in 1969. The company made a loss of Rs20 lakh,” says F.C. Kohli, a power engineer who was roped in by JRD to build TCS. “Nobody could believe that computer services could be done out of India. I was a director of the prestigious IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). I used to flash my IEEE visiting card and use my old contacts from MIT to get people to listen to my pitch. Nobody dared question my ability to deliver software solutions. If they had, I would have been in trouble. We had only ideas and a can-do attitude, but no track record,” reminisced Kohli, when Business India profiled him as one of the 50 path breakers of India in a special issue on the occasion of the golden jubilee of India’s independence.
“We cold-called and persisted, and built it brick by brick. There was nobody to help. The government was hindering us and nobody knew about India,” recalls Ramadorai. Today encomiums about the pathbreaking role of TCS are plenty.
“Thirty years ago when I came to Canada, people would ask me, ‘do you have an elephant in your home in India?’ Now the pendulum has swung the other way around and the world thinks that everyone in India is a math wiz and an expert computer programmer. The patient and steady efforts of TCS have contributed significantly to brand India globally,” says Desh Deshpande, chairman of Sycamore Networks.
Other Indian software honchos too are generous in their praise. Satyam chairman Ramalinga Raju says, “TCS helped lay the foundation for the growth of the IT industry.”
Infosys CEO Nandan Nilekani elaborates, “TCS pioneered the Indian software industry and has played a seminal role in the global acceptance of Indian software capabilities.”
“I remember the first Burroughs computer TCS imported in 1974. I was a junior officer at Citibank. One never knew that it was going to be the acorn that subsequently grew into the mighty oak of TCS— and in fact of India’s IT industry. I still get goose pimples knowing that I was there at the beginning, even if only in a peripheral role,” says Jerry Rao, chairman of MphasiS– BFL.
However, it is sometimes said that while TCS was surely a pioneer, it has been slow in growth. They cite the fact that while TCS crossed a billion dollars in revenue in June
2003, 35 years after its founding, the newer companies like Infosys and Wipro also joined the club a year later.
But this misses the point. A true path breaker always has to struggle to clear the undergrowth in a jungle and then others follow with great alacrity.
The result of this is clearly seen in the mathematical modelling used in improving manufacturing processes or in connecting the process control at the shop floor level to the enterprise software and so on. The R&D has come out with product suites like Master- Craft and Bio-Suite. The former is used to translate the specifications for a programme into code. Such tools are called CASEpac (computer aided software engineering pack). They greatly accelerate code-writing or converting the code written for one platform to another. Bio-Suite is a product developed in collaboration with CSIR to help pharma companies and genetics laboratories to efficiently extract useful information from vast amounts of genetic data. TCS has a bouquet of about 30 patents for products and processes by now.
In fact the evolution of some automation tools like CASE pac can be traced to highly intelligent engineers being forced to do mundane code conversion way back in the 1970s. The result was an intelligent solution, why not automate this conversion? TCS engineers developed a tool called the ‘data dictionary’ to illustrate these ideas. The tool was used in several projects in the 1980s. “The whole idea of software engineering is to change the programming from an individual-centred artisan-like process with its inherent stamp of individuality and hence non-standardisation to an industrial one, where others can easily understand and debug the programmes written by somebody else. Creating components which can be used repeatedly in different projects, thereby reducing time and manpower required for a project, is another feature of software engineering,” says Kesav Nori, EVP.
Another example of successfully applying manufacturing strategies in software development is how TCS dealt with Y2K projects. It developed appropriate tools to automate the task of finding and changing the ‘date field’ in any programme from two digits to four digits. Once the task was thus simplified, an ‘assembly line’ was setup in Chennai and personnel were outsourced from local software companies.
Quality assurance systems are another important aspect of modern factory life. TCS has been at it for a very long time. So much so that not only are a large number of its establishments certified at Level 5, the highest such standard, but they have contributed to the evolution of the CMM system itself. “We started quality initiatives quite early as members of IEEE standards group. They involved hardware interfaces, programme management, importance of peer review, code review, etc. We have worked with Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute (SEI) and recently we presented a paper on integrated quality management systems at the chartered engineers conference. We are also founder members of the Internet Security Alliance,” says Ramadorai.
Has the software factory approach led to dehumanisation of human resource (H R) development? Is HR using PeopleSoft and forgetting that you are dealing with soft people? These questions constantly trouble Ramadorai and his senior colleagues. Their quest for the human touch is being partly fulfilled by a new initiative headed by Mala Ramadorai and other ‘TCS wives’, who have formed an organisation called Maitree (friendship). How is it different from the generals’ wives doing their bit in the Army Wives Association? “It’s not an organisation where someone does something for somebody but a network and support group for TCS families spread all over the globe. Through Maitree we help each other relocate, find appropriate schools, doctors, housing, and so on. We organize numerous activities for TCS families from trekking and adventure sports to origami and classes in ballroom dancing and theatre workshops,” says Mrs. Ramadorai.
Underplay
Not much is known about Ramadorai. He is a techie to the core, but then so is much of TCS. The problem -solver’s approach of an engineer comes through all the time. When the markets crashed by 25 per cent in two days after the recent general election results, one would have thought that Ramadorai was worried sick about his company’s IPO. Instead he was pointing out to a visitor that both BSE and NSE had withstood the stress test. As a postscript he also added that the systems at both BSE and NSE had been built by TCS engineers.
Ram, as S. Ramadorai, is simply known within TCS, is a good listener. He speaks little and when he does, it is clear that he has thought the subject through. He is also very candid, circumspect, and self-critical, a quality one rarely sees in a sector otherwise characterised by hubris.
His father served in the accounts and audit service of the Government of India, so Ram’s childhood was spent in Delhi. He graduated from Delhi University with a BSc (Hons) in physics and then studied electronics and telecommunications at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, which incidentally awarded him the distinguished achievement award for 2001. In the 1960s computer science was just shaping up as an independent subject and Ram graduated with a master’s from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1970. UCLA was a hotspot for computer networking in those days. In fact, much of modern data networking developed at UCLA under Len Kleinrock’s leadership.
Soon after UCLA Ram had a short stint with NCR, which was one of the big three computer manufacturers of the times. But soon he joined the fledgling TCS in 1972.
In those days TCS was forging a relationship with Burroughs and, along with his
mentor F.C. Kohli, Ram played a key role in the ensuing saga that brought state-of the art mainframe computer technology to India. Since then he has not looked back.
Today he is one of the most traveled executives in India. Does he enjoy it? “What lies at the end of the travel is relationship-building, which is the heart of consulting,” says Ram. “Travel is not something one looks forward to, but there is no option. My travel started in 1981–82. Those days it was mostly to the US.” In the last 6–7 years he has been to all parts of the world. “I spend about 45 per cent of my time with customers, the same with employees, and the balance with stakeholders and analysts, and in board meetings,” he adds.
Ram’s passions are reading, classical music, and golf, in that order. Of course
having a wife who is an accomplished Hindustani vocalist of the Gwalior gharana helps. “I spend time in a lot of things other than technology: reading on a range of subjects. My favourites are: New York Times’ science supplement every Tuesday, which covers a wide range of topics like biotech, archaeology, and anthropology, similarly, New Yorker, The Economist (especially the surveys), novels in Tamil, and so on.
He likes playing golf. “I play more when I am travelling. I like the golf ranges in California and Scotland.” What about deals — are they made on golf ranges? “Rarely. After all, one plays with one’s friends. If we talk business, it would be ‘insider trading’. However, a lot of deals are made outside the office in informal settings, in the club, while traveling together. People invariably want to work with those they trust,” Ram adds.
If there is one word to describe Ramadorai, it is ‘underplay’. For those who have seen the flamboyance of neweconomy poster boys like Michel Dell, Steve Jobs, or Larry Ellison, the chief of India’s biggest software play is a far cry from all that. Having been in the shadow of F.C. Kohli for most of his career, little is known about Ram. But he has delivered when entrusted with responsibility to lead the company. TCS has grown more than 14 times in revenue in eight years, from Rs.500 crore in 1996, when Ram took over as CEO, to an estimated Rs7,000 crore this year, growing at a compounded rate of 40 per cent a year.
Not bad for an underplay.
Software can be a stressful profession with long hours of separation between husbands and wives. Then there are problems of adjustment in different environments and cultures at different client sites. Maitree is trying to mitigate these chronic issues and bring in that human touch to HR, though it is not a part of HR.
What are the strengths of TCS? One acknowledged one is building longterm relationships with clients. “Everywhere we have gone in, it has been a long relationship — Amex 27 years, SEGA 13 years, and so on. In fact most of the big accounts have been with us for a minimum of 10 years,” says Padmanabhan.
We are our own model
There are enough people in India and the West (mostly in Silicon Valley) who would give gyaan about what is wrong with India. When they see islands of excellence, like the Indian software industry, they often engage in clichés like ‘body shopping’ and low-end coding vs. consulting and ‘high-end’ work. The names that are frequently mentioned as role models in this regard are Accenture, EDS, Cap Gemini, and so on.
So Business India looked at the financials of these would-be ‘role models’ and came up with surprising numbers. The big three are definitely impressive in revenue, with EDS leading the pack at over $20 billion and Accenture following it with $13 billion and Cap Gemini at nearly $7 billion. The last three years have been bad for technology consulting and hence either their revenues have not grown, as in the case of EDS and Accenture, or have actually declined by over 25 per cent, as in the case of Cap Gemini.
The largest Indian software house, TCS, crossed a billion dollars in 2002–3 and is estimated to have done $1.5 billion in 2003–4. At a CAGR of 40 per cent (TCS has grown at this rate in the last eight years), TCS will be a $11 billion company in 2009–10. By that time, of course, the big three might have pulled out of the last three years’ doldrums and gone much further ahead.
But the opposite could happen too.
Just look at their bottom lines. EDS had profits of $1.36 billion, a mere 6 per cent of its revenues in 2001, and dipped to a loss of $1.7 billion in 2003! Accenture’s profits were $1.05 billion in 2001, nearly 7 per cent of its revenues, and slipped to $500 million, less than 4 per cent of revenue, in 2003. Cap Gemini’s profits were 152 million in 2001, less than 2 per cent of its revenues. And these meagre profits fell to a loss of nearly 200 million in 2003.
TCS profits were Rs1,221 crore in 2001, a healthy 28 per cent of its turnover of Rs.4,163 crore. They dipped to Rs1,140 crore in 2002–3, but are expected to have reached over Rs1,700 crore on a turnover of Rs7,000 crore in 2003–4. (The company has not declared the revenue and profit figures for 2003–4. These figures are market expectations.)
As far as high-end consulting goes, earlier clients did not believe that work could be done offshore in a country of ‘snake charmers and elephants’, and neither did sophisticated telecom links exist, when TCS started offering its services abroad in the mid- 1970s. Most of the export work involved exporting consultants and programmers.
Things changed in the late 1980s. Telecom links improved and due to painstakingly built up reputation to deliver, clients started slowly recognising brand TCS. The first major project SEGA, the securities settlement system for the Swiss authorities, was done on a turnkey basis, from requirements to architecture. At the same time, 70 per cent of the work was done offshore in India. Thus was born the Indian model and has grown from strength to strength.
Indian companies have demonstrated their strength globally and have remained highly profitable (the good ones reporting PAT-to-sales ratios of 25–28 per cent). Do we still consider the giants with low profitability as role models? One wonders.
“TCS has been a valued GE partner for the past 14 years and has our largest global development centre (GDS) for software services. Their technical expertise, high quality processes, and global delivery capabilities in Hungary, China, and India have been vital to their success in developing missioncritical applications for GE,” says an effusive Scott Bayman, CEO of GE India.
“During the Internet boom we may not have grown fast enough compared to other companies because our people were already deployed in longterm contracts. But when the downturn came, the same long-term relationships helped us survive the bad days better than others,” says CFO
S. Mahalingam.
“Many people who worked on the clients’ side several years ago as junior or middle-level managers have grown to become CIOs and CEOs. We keep in touch. Nobody compromises in value and delivery, but the network helps. I don’t remember any client who started with us and then walked away from us. Of course they bring in other vendors, but you become a strategic partner. The senior management at TCS have been in the company for a long time and learned to take the ups and downs. They have the ability to convert uncertainty to small certainties. It helps in dealing with chaos. In a difficult year we call up their top people and tell them, ‘This is a difficult year for us — how will we structure the deal?’ They also do the same. Wining, dining, and partying is not our culture. Relations are built on mutual value and respect,” explains Padmanabhan.
TCS has been known to be strong in banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI). More than 55 per cent of its revenue is estimated to come from this sector. Jay Dvivedi, CIO of Shinsei Bank, Japan, says: “TCS has a vast pool of highly skilled software engineers. I have extensively used them when I was in Citibank Japan and now at Shinsei Bank.” Mark Barton, vice-president of channels and alliances at Oracle Asia Pacific, adds: “As TCS conquers new markets in the world we are confident our mutual relationship will strengthen and grow.” After all, TCS championed relational databases when Oracle was still a fledgling company.
But the new avenue for business has been e-business, which has taken off like a rocket. Headed by young N. Chandrasekharan, 38, the e-biz division started modestly in 1999 with 10 people. In 2000 the division clocked $90 million and in 2003–4 it was expected to clock nearly half a billion dollars!
The turning point for the e-biz group came when it implemented a highly complex project for GE Medical in 30 countries. Recently Forrester, a well-known I T research group, rated TCS as having the best value proposition in customer relationship management (CRM) consulting. The field consisted of IBM, EDS, Accenture, Cap Gemini, Deloitte Consulting, Infosys, Bearing Point, and so on.
The manufacturing group headed by Ravi Gopinath too has made considerable inroads into the auto industry, working with Cummins in engine development, with G M in engineering and supply chain, with Johnson Controls in CRM, etc. In the case of process industries the modelling skills developed at TRDDC have helped in working with Alcoa, Lafarge, and the Indian cement industry, which also happens to be one of the most advanced in the world. The group is looking to develop oil & gas as a major growth area. It is also developing a special software package for powerplant maintenance along with BHEL.
The niche that T C S has become famous for is stock exchanges. It has built the systems not only for NSE and BSE in India but also for the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, the Canadian Depository System, and of course the Swiss SEGA.
The turning point in this business came with the planning and execution of SEGA. In fact the project, won against international competition in 1989, seems to have been one of the defining moments in TCS history. “It was like linking NSE, Stock Holding Corporation or NSDL, and RBI and member banks in India seamlessly. It was a complex and mission-critical system. The solution had to be very robust with multiple linkages to share registers, depositories, and cross-border entities, etc. We got it purely because we could deliver technically and our architecture could meet demands 10 years ahead. The selection process took nine months. The price was not an issue since it was mission- critical. It was developed from scratch. None of the clients spoke English. The deadline, announced two years in advance, was the first long weekend of October, when the Swiss financial community changes its system. We consistently met all the deadlines. That is when all the onsite and offshore methodologies were defined, communication links were established. The way Indian software companies were doing business changed with that project,” Padmanabhan recalls proudly.
Where is TCS headed now? “BPO is definitely the flavour of the month. We actually started as a BPO doing data-centre-based processing for banks, billing for Bombay telephones, examination processing, share accounting, custodial operations, and so on. Later we started offshore development centres. We have done everything but voice (call centres). So we are well equipped for that,” says Ramadorai.
But what about the backlash in the US against outsourcing? After all, TCS was its first Indian victim, when a contract of $15 million was cancelled by the Indiana government. “There has to be a short-term, medium-term, and long-term response to the backlash. In the short term we should take extra care in compliance with all regulatory issues. In the medium term we should be ready with our global delivery centres to finish our projects in case restrictions are put on visas and movement of our people. In the long term we should look at the potential of WTO negotiations for globalization of services,” says Ramadorai.
“As for future business opportunities we are looking at several. We are seriously developing engineering and design services capabilities. We have a joint venture with GE for aircraft engines, and offshore development centres with a couple of other companies. It is a growing chunk of business. We are beginning to get into chip design. In the 1980s we worked with Hewlett-Packard on chip design tools, verification and testing of chips. CMC has embedded software capabilities, besides expertise in port automation, automotive embedded systems, railway automation, Scada and powerline automation, and other real-time systems. The government is planning to spend Rs10,000 crore, so we are looking seriously at government projects also. We did a good engagement in Sri Lanka and we are looking at South Africa,” he adds.
“As for challenges that need innovative solutions, I see first of all people-building, secondly developing new business model for delivery of services. For example a citizen services portal, data, applications, etc, in a kiosk. Say I want a driver’s licence and I pay Rs100 and you say, fine. One has to build applications for that, and so on.”
And thus, folks, the engineers’ engineer keeps ticking, ably carrying on the legacy of his mentors F.C. Kohli and J.R.D. Tata.
Megasoft
India’s software leader continues to be innovative
Shivanand Kanavi
Wordsmiths are grateful to Saddam Hussein for providing that colourful phrase ‘mother of all...’ to describe all sorts of things irreverently. So while IT historians may hail T C S as the ‘mother of all Indian software’, Dalal Street awaits the ‘mother of all Indian IPOs’. The billion-dollar IPO could happen anytime (those with long memories might accuse us of saying the same thing for the last four years!). The market was expecting it in April. And then came the elections and turbulence in the stock market. Once the market stabilises, many expect the money being pulled out of PSU stocks to pour into a good tech offer like TCS. Bombay House, the headquarters of the Tata Group, is keeping its cards close to its chest. The company has officially gone into a cooling-off period and executives are not available for comments or interviews, or even photo shoots. Group chairman Ratan Tata and Tata Sons finance director Ishaat Hussain have both gone abroad.
But the prospectus is ready to be filed any time now and soon everyone will be talking about the TCS IPO. It is one of the most successful Indian companies, with branches in 32 countries with over 800 foreign nationals working for it and serving clients round the world. A true Indian MNC.
Business India has been following the company for decades now and started doing this particular story almost a year back. We found that the company is set for a quantum leap. Many of the quotes are from interviews done several months ago.
Starting with four people in 1968, TCS has grown into a giant of 28,000 software engineers, adding 3,000–5,000 people (the size of a medium-sized company) every year. At any time about 10,000 engineers are abroad and some of them are working at global delivery centres in Australia, Canada, China, Hungary, Japan, the UK, Uruguay, and the US. How does TCS manage all this growth in a highly competitive business environment that is constantly changing in terms of technology?
An apt term to describe TCS is ‘software factory’. The analytical framework and terminology that senior management uses in dealing with various aspects of TCS are clearly those of the manufacturing sector. They talk about managing the supply chain of TCS recruits, the same way as Toyota or Ford do. They talk of inventory management of its engineers, logistics of deploying them in a way Dell would be proud of. They talk of enterprise resource planning to deliver their software, the way Reliance or Tata Steel would do with petrochemicals or steel. Ironically, it sounds like the revenge of the manufacturing nerds on the services industry! But in terms of management theory, this is a truly remarkable framework that untangles the spaghetti of managing a services company.
Interestingly, T C S starts its ‘raw material scouting’ and ‘vendor development’ right at the college level. It takes it seriously enough to assign more than 50 senior executives to interact with academic institutions. At these institutions TCS funds many academic events like conferences and seminars, and also gets involved in improving teaching and curricula, establishing fellowships, and exchanging expertise through visiting faculty programmes, etc. They top it with an annual retreat with over a hundred top academics in Trivandrum, the training hub of TCS.
According to H. Kesavan at the University of Waterloo, Canada, who headed the electrical engineering department of IIT Kanpur in the 1960s, not many people know that TCS took an active role in building the computer science department at IIT Kanpur. Similarly, according to Juzer Vasi of IIT Bombay, the chip designing community owes a lot to TCS, which sponsored an entire M-Tech programme in VLSI design at IIT Bombay. IIT Madras too has a TCS-sponsored programme in mathematical modelling.
“TCS is extending the relationship to several universities abroad as well. It has sponsored projects at M I T, Harvard, the Kellogg School, Carnegie Mellon, University of Waterloo, and institutions in Japan, Australia, China, and Singapore,” says executive vice-president S. Padmanabhan.
As an industry leader TCS has played a premier role in the creation of infrastructure for IT education in India. And all that spadework does not hurt TCS when it goes recruiting to these institutions. Moreover, the way TCS conducted itself during the downturn has enhanced its brand equity in academic institutions. To recap, several companies, including some IT blue chips, did not honour their offer letters given to campus recruits in 2002, citing the downturn in business as the reason. But TCS did.
Moulding the recruits is a very important activity and a large centre at Trivandrum’s I T park is exclusively engaged in this. “The training in TCS is no doubt excellent, and that is why everybody tries to lure a TCS engineer,” says Radha Krishnan, CEO of Innova Solutions, a Silicon Valley software services company.
“How to keep track of our assets – our people, their current competencies and skill sets, where they are deployed, who is finishing one project and is ready to be deployed in a new one, and so on – is a key issue in our business. We have brought in digitization of this whole process, which has led to efficient use of our resources. At times it is the key to delivery of the solution to the client in time,” says global practice director (manufacturing and process industries) Ravi Gopinath.
“In TCS we have an important global systems integrator partner that can be trusted to deliver. They combine deep domain and technical knowledge with a global delivery model that brings tremendous value to our customers.” --Bill Gates, Chairman, Microsoft
“Senior consultants give inputs and brainstorm about changes in technology and likely demand for new skill sets in the near future, so that we can plan our recruitment and training programmes accordingly,” he adds. Thus digitisation acts as an ERP package for TCS.
Companies like Oracle claim that such internal ERP implementations have led to savings to the tune of a billion dollars. What would the monetary gain of digitisation of TCS be? “In terms of pre-project planning and delivery times one can use metrics (engineers’ jargon for ways to measure something), and we see a lot of gain. However in terms of opportunity costs it is difficult to monetise what we have gained,” says Gopinath.
TCS is a rare services company to have a decent-sized R&D. “We spend about 2 per cent of our sales on R&D,” says Ramadorai. “Our R&D is different from the blue sky research done in universities. It has to show its effect on our consulting practice in terms of products or tools and methodologies,” he adds. TCS has outstanding academics like M. Vidyasagar from the University of Waterloo, Canada, Kesav Nori from IIT Kanpur, and Mathai Joseph from the University of Warwick, UK, in its R&D ranks.
In fact TCS was way ahead of its times when it established TRDDC (Tata Research, Design and Development Centre) in Pune in 1981. Today R&D is more decentralised and advanced R&D is being done in Hyderabad, Chennai, and Bangalore as well.
Pathbreakers
The graphic which traces the history of IT brings out one point clearly — that when TCS came into being in 1968, Microsoft, Apple, Sun, Accenture, Cisco, Dell, Compaq, Sapient, Oracle, Novell, SAS, SAP, and Siebel did not exist. Neither were technologies like Unix, C, Java, Microprocessor, PC, LAN, Internet, Linux, and the World Wide Web invented. That shows the prescience of pioneers like F.C. Kohli and entrepreneurs like J.R.D. Tata in venturing into new territory.
“Tata Sons pumped in Rs35 lakh in 1969. The company made a loss of Rs20 lakh,” says F.C. Kohli, a power engineer who was roped in by JRD to build TCS. “Nobody could believe that computer services could be done out of India. I was a director of the prestigious IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). I used to flash my IEEE visiting card and use my old contacts from MIT to get people to listen to my pitch. Nobody dared question my ability to deliver software solutions. If they had, I would have been in trouble. We had only ideas and a can-do attitude, but no track record,” reminisced Kohli, when Business India profiled him as one of the 50 path breakers of India in a special issue on the occasion of the golden jubilee of India’s independence.
“We cold-called and persisted, and built it brick by brick. There was nobody to help. The government was hindering us and nobody knew about India,” recalls Ramadorai. Today encomiums about the pathbreaking role of TCS are plenty.
“Thirty years ago when I came to Canada, people would ask me, ‘do you have an elephant in your home in India?’ Now the pendulum has swung the other way around and the world thinks that everyone in India is a math wiz and an expert computer programmer. The patient and steady efforts of TCS have contributed significantly to brand India globally,” says Desh Deshpande, chairman of Sycamore Networks.
Other Indian software honchos too are generous in their praise. Satyam chairman Ramalinga Raju says, “TCS helped lay the foundation for the growth of the IT industry.”
Infosys CEO Nandan Nilekani elaborates, “TCS pioneered the Indian software industry and has played a seminal role in the global acceptance of Indian software capabilities.”
“I remember the first Burroughs computer TCS imported in 1974. I was a junior officer at Citibank. One never knew that it was going to be the acorn that subsequently grew into the mighty oak of TCS— and in fact of India’s IT industry. I still get goose pimples knowing that I was there at the beginning, even if only in a peripheral role,” says Jerry Rao, chairman of MphasiS– BFL.
However, it is sometimes said that while TCS was surely a pioneer, it has been slow in growth. They cite the fact that while TCS crossed a billion dollars in revenue in June
2003, 35 years after its founding, the newer companies like Infosys and Wipro also joined the club a year later.
But this misses the point. A true path breaker always has to struggle to clear the undergrowth in a jungle and then others follow with great alacrity.
The result of this is clearly seen in the mathematical modelling used in improving manufacturing processes or in connecting the process control at the shop floor level to the enterprise software and so on. The R&D has come out with product suites like Master- Craft and Bio-Suite. The former is used to translate the specifications for a programme into code. Such tools are called CASEpac (computer aided software engineering pack). They greatly accelerate code-writing or converting the code written for one platform to another. Bio-Suite is a product developed in collaboration with CSIR to help pharma companies and genetics laboratories to efficiently extract useful information from vast amounts of genetic data. TCS has a bouquet of about 30 patents for products and processes by now.
In fact the evolution of some automation tools like CASE pac can be traced to highly intelligent engineers being forced to do mundane code conversion way back in the 1970s. The result was an intelligent solution, why not automate this conversion? TCS engineers developed a tool called the ‘data dictionary’ to illustrate these ideas. The tool was used in several projects in the 1980s. “The whole idea of software engineering is to change the programming from an individual-centred artisan-like process with its inherent stamp of individuality and hence non-standardisation to an industrial one, where others can easily understand and debug the programmes written by somebody else. Creating components which can be used repeatedly in different projects, thereby reducing time and manpower required for a project, is another feature of software engineering,” says Kesav Nori, EVP.
Another example of successfully applying manufacturing strategies in software development is how TCS dealt with Y2K projects. It developed appropriate tools to automate the task of finding and changing the ‘date field’ in any programme from two digits to four digits. Once the task was thus simplified, an ‘assembly line’ was setup in Chennai and personnel were outsourced from local software companies.
Quality assurance systems are another important aspect of modern factory life. TCS has been at it for a very long time. So much so that not only are a large number of its establishments certified at Level 5, the highest such standard, but they have contributed to the evolution of the CMM system itself. “We started quality initiatives quite early as members of IEEE standards group. They involved hardware interfaces, programme management, importance of peer review, code review, etc. We have worked with Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute (SEI) and recently we presented a paper on integrated quality management systems at the chartered engineers conference. We are also founder members of the Internet Security Alliance,” says Ramadorai.
Has the software factory approach led to dehumanisation of human resource (H R) development? Is HR using PeopleSoft and forgetting that you are dealing with soft people? These questions constantly trouble Ramadorai and his senior colleagues. Their quest for the human touch is being partly fulfilled by a new initiative headed by Mala Ramadorai and other ‘TCS wives’, who have formed an organisation called Maitree (friendship). How is it different from the generals’ wives doing their bit in the Army Wives Association? “It’s not an organisation where someone does something for somebody but a network and support group for TCS families spread all over the globe. Through Maitree we help each other relocate, find appropriate schools, doctors, housing, and so on. We organize numerous activities for TCS families from trekking and adventure sports to origami and classes in ballroom dancing and theatre workshops,” says Mrs. Ramadorai.
Underplay
Not much is known about Ramadorai. He is a techie to the core, but then so is much of TCS. The problem -solver’s approach of an engineer comes through all the time. When the markets crashed by 25 per cent in two days after the recent general election results, one would have thought that Ramadorai was worried sick about his company’s IPO. Instead he was pointing out to a visitor that both BSE and NSE had withstood the stress test. As a postscript he also added that the systems at both BSE and NSE had been built by TCS engineers.
Ram, as S. Ramadorai, is simply known within TCS, is a good listener. He speaks little and when he does, it is clear that he has thought the subject through. He is also very candid, circumspect, and self-critical, a quality one rarely sees in a sector otherwise characterised by hubris.
His father served in the accounts and audit service of the Government of India, so Ram’s childhood was spent in Delhi. He graduated from Delhi University with a BSc (Hons) in physics and then studied electronics and telecommunications at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, which incidentally awarded him the distinguished achievement award for 2001. In the 1960s computer science was just shaping up as an independent subject and Ram graduated with a master’s from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1970. UCLA was a hotspot for computer networking in those days. In fact, much of modern data networking developed at UCLA under Len Kleinrock’s leadership.
Soon after UCLA Ram had a short stint with NCR, which was one of the big three computer manufacturers of the times. But soon he joined the fledgling TCS in 1972.
In those days TCS was forging a relationship with Burroughs and, along with his
mentor F.C. Kohli, Ram played a key role in the ensuing saga that brought state-of the art mainframe computer technology to India. Since then he has not looked back.
Today he is one of the most traveled executives in India. Does he enjoy it? “What lies at the end of the travel is relationship-building, which is the heart of consulting,” says Ram. “Travel is not something one looks forward to, but there is no option. My travel started in 1981–82. Those days it was mostly to the US.” In the last 6–7 years he has been to all parts of the world. “I spend about 45 per cent of my time with customers, the same with employees, and the balance with stakeholders and analysts, and in board meetings,” he adds.
Ram’s passions are reading, classical music, and golf, in that order. Of course
having a wife who is an accomplished Hindustani vocalist of the Gwalior gharana helps. “I spend time in a lot of things other than technology: reading on a range of subjects. My favourites are: New York Times’ science supplement every Tuesday, which covers a wide range of topics like biotech, archaeology, and anthropology, similarly, New Yorker, The Economist (especially the surveys), novels in Tamil, and so on.
He likes playing golf. “I play more when I am travelling. I like the golf ranges in California and Scotland.” What about deals — are they made on golf ranges? “Rarely. After all, one plays with one’s friends. If we talk business, it would be ‘insider trading’. However, a lot of deals are made outside the office in informal settings, in the club, while traveling together. People invariably want to work with those they trust,” Ram adds.
If there is one word to describe Ramadorai, it is ‘underplay’. For those who have seen the flamboyance of neweconomy poster boys like Michel Dell, Steve Jobs, or Larry Ellison, the chief of India’s biggest software play is a far cry from all that. Having been in the shadow of F.C. Kohli for most of his career, little is known about Ram. But he has delivered when entrusted with responsibility to lead the company. TCS has grown more than 14 times in revenue in eight years, from Rs.500 crore in 1996, when Ram took over as CEO, to an estimated Rs7,000 crore this year, growing at a compounded rate of 40 per cent a year.
Not bad for an underplay.
Software can be a stressful profession with long hours of separation between husbands and wives. Then there are problems of adjustment in different environments and cultures at different client sites. Maitree is trying to mitigate these chronic issues and bring in that human touch to HR, though it is not a part of HR.
What are the strengths of TCS? One acknowledged one is building longterm relationships with clients. “Everywhere we have gone in, it has been a long relationship — Amex 27 years, SEGA 13 years, and so on. In fact most of the big accounts have been with us for a minimum of 10 years,” says Padmanabhan.
We are our own model
There are enough people in India and the West (mostly in Silicon Valley) who would give gyaan about what is wrong with India. When they see islands of excellence, like the Indian software industry, they often engage in clichés like ‘body shopping’ and low-end coding vs. consulting and ‘high-end’ work. The names that are frequently mentioned as role models in this regard are Accenture, EDS, Cap Gemini, and so on.
So Business India looked at the financials of these would-be ‘role models’ and came up with surprising numbers. The big three are definitely impressive in revenue, with EDS leading the pack at over $20 billion and Accenture following it with $13 billion and Cap Gemini at nearly $7 billion. The last three years have been bad for technology consulting and hence either their revenues have not grown, as in the case of EDS and Accenture, or have actually declined by over 25 per cent, as in the case of Cap Gemini.
The largest Indian software house, TCS, crossed a billion dollars in 2002–3 and is estimated to have done $1.5 billion in 2003–4. At a CAGR of 40 per cent (TCS has grown at this rate in the last eight years), TCS will be a $11 billion company in 2009–10. By that time, of course, the big three might have pulled out of the last three years’ doldrums and gone much further ahead.
But the opposite could happen too.
Just look at their bottom lines. EDS had profits of $1.36 billion, a mere 6 per cent of its revenues in 2001, and dipped to a loss of $1.7 billion in 2003! Accenture’s profits were $1.05 billion in 2001, nearly 7 per cent of its revenues, and slipped to $500 million, less than 4 per cent of revenue, in 2003. Cap Gemini’s profits were 152 million in 2001, less than 2 per cent of its revenues. And these meagre profits fell to a loss of nearly 200 million in 2003.
TCS profits were Rs1,221 crore in 2001, a healthy 28 per cent of its turnover of Rs.4,163 crore. They dipped to Rs1,140 crore in 2002–3, but are expected to have reached over Rs1,700 crore on a turnover of Rs7,000 crore in 2003–4. (The company has not declared the revenue and profit figures for 2003–4. These figures are market expectations.)
As far as high-end consulting goes, earlier clients did not believe that work could be done offshore in a country of ‘snake charmers and elephants’, and neither did sophisticated telecom links exist, when TCS started offering its services abroad in the mid- 1970s. Most of the export work involved exporting consultants and programmers.
Things changed in the late 1980s. Telecom links improved and due to painstakingly built up reputation to deliver, clients started slowly recognising brand TCS. The first major project SEGA, the securities settlement system for the Swiss authorities, was done on a turnkey basis, from requirements to architecture. At the same time, 70 per cent of the work was done offshore in India. Thus was born the Indian model and has grown from strength to strength.
Indian companies have demonstrated their strength globally and have remained highly profitable (the good ones reporting PAT-to-sales ratios of 25–28 per cent). Do we still consider the giants with low profitability as role models? One wonders.
“TCS has been a valued GE partner for the past 14 years and has our largest global development centre (GDS) for software services. Their technical expertise, high quality processes, and global delivery capabilities in Hungary, China, and India have been vital to their success in developing missioncritical applications for GE,” says an effusive Scott Bayman, CEO of GE India.
“During the Internet boom we may not have grown fast enough compared to other companies because our people were already deployed in longterm contracts. But when the downturn came, the same long-term relationships helped us survive the bad days better than others,” says CFO
S. Mahalingam.
“Many people who worked on the clients’ side several years ago as junior or middle-level managers have grown to become CIOs and CEOs. We keep in touch. Nobody compromises in value and delivery, but the network helps. I don’t remember any client who started with us and then walked away from us. Of course they bring in other vendors, but you become a strategic partner. The senior management at TCS have been in the company for a long time and learned to take the ups and downs. They have the ability to convert uncertainty to small certainties. It helps in dealing with chaos. In a difficult year we call up their top people and tell them, ‘This is a difficult year for us — how will we structure the deal?’ They also do the same. Wining, dining, and partying is not our culture. Relations are built on mutual value and respect,” explains Padmanabhan.
TCS has been known to be strong in banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI). More than 55 per cent of its revenue is estimated to come from this sector. Jay Dvivedi, CIO of Shinsei Bank, Japan, says: “TCS has a vast pool of highly skilled software engineers. I have extensively used them when I was in Citibank Japan and now at Shinsei Bank.” Mark Barton, vice-president of channels and alliances at Oracle Asia Pacific, adds: “As TCS conquers new markets in the world we are confident our mutual relationship will strengthen and grow.” After all, TCS championed relational databases when Oracle was still a fledgling company.
But the new avenue for business has been e-business, which has taken off like a rocket. Headed by young N. Chandrasekharan, 38, the e-biz division started modestly in 1999 with 10 people. In 2000 the division clocked $90 million and in 2003–4 it was expected to clock nearly half a billion dollars!
The turning point for the e-biz group came when it implemented a highly complex project for GE Medical in 30 countries. Recently Forrester, a well-known I T research group, rated TCS as having the best value proposition in customer relationship management (CRM) consulting. The field consisted of IBM, EDS, Accenture, Cap Gemini, Deloitte Consulting, Infosys, Bearing Point, and so on.
The manufacturing group headed by Ravi Gopinath too has made considerable inroads into the auto industry, working with Cummins in engine development, with G M in engineering and supply chain, with Johnson Controls in CRM, etc. In the case of process industries the modelling skills developed at TRDDC have helped in working with Alcoa, Lafarge, and the Indian cement industry, which also happens to be one of the most advanced in the world. The group is looking to develop oil & gas as a major growth area. It is also developing a special software package for powerplant maintenance along with BHEL.
The niche that T C S has become famous for is stock exchanges. It has built the systems not only for NSE and BSE in India but also for the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, the Canadian Depository System, and of course the Swiss SEGA.
The turning point in this business came with the planning and execution of SEGA. In fact the project, won against international competition in 1989, seems to have been one of the defining moments in TCS history. “It was like linking NSE, Stock Holding Corporation or NSDL, and RBI and member banks in India seamlessly. It was a complex and mission-critical system. The solution had to be very robust with multiple linkages to share registers, depositories, and cross-border entities, etc. We got it purely because we could deliver technically and our architecture could meet demands 10 years ahead. The selection process took nine months. The price was not an issue since it was mission- critical. It was developed from scratch. None of the clients spoke English. The deadline, announced two years in advance, was the first long weekend of October, when the Swiss financial community changes its system. We consistently met all the deadlines. That is when all the onsite and offshore methodologies were defined, communication links were established. The way Indian software companies were doing business changed with that project,” Padmanabhan recalls proudly.
Where is TCS headed now? “BPO is definitely the flavour of the month. We actually started as a BPO doing data-centre-based processing for banks, billing for Bombay telephones, examination processing, share accounting, custodial operations, and so on. Later we started offshore development centres. We have done everything but voice (call centres). So we are well equipped for that,” says Ramadorai.
But what about the backlash in the US against outsourcing? After all, TCS was its first Indian victim, when a contract of $15 million was cancelled by the Indiana government. “There has to be a short-term, medium-term, and long-term response to the backlash. In the short term we should take extra care in compliance with all regulatory issues. In the medium term we should be ready with our global delivery centres to finish our projects in case restrictions are put on visas and movement of our people. In the long term we should look at the potential of WTO negotiations for globalization of services,” says Ramadorai.
“As for future business opportunities we are looking at several. We are seriously developing engineering and design services capabilities. We have a joint venture with GE for aircraft engines, and offshore development centres with a couple of other companies. It is a growing chunk of business. We are beginning to get into chip design. In the 1980s we worked with Hewlett-Packard on chip design tools, verification and testing of chips. CMC has embedded software capabilities, besides expertise in port automation, automotive embedded systems, railway automation, Scada and powerline automation, and other real-time systems. The government is planning to spend Rs10,000 crore, so we are looking seriously at government projects also. We did a good engagement in Sri Lanka and we are looking at South Africa,” he adds.
“As for challenges that need innovative solutions, I see first of all people-building, secondly developing new business model for delivery of services. For example a citizen services portal, data, applications, etc, in a kiosk. Say I want a driver’s licence and I pay Rs100 and you say, fine. One has to build applications for that, and so on.”
And thus, folks, the engineers’ engineer keeps ticking, ably carrying on the legacy of his mentors F.C. Kohli and J.R.D. Tata.
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