Dr. G. D. Agrawal, an icon of selfless devoted environmetalist Part -II

 A memorable story of my stay at IIT, Kanpur and research under his guidance -II

It was the period  political turmoil in India. Although Kanpur IIT was funded by the US, the students were dominated by the Left Communists in West Bengal. The magazines and newspapers that came to the library were from left parties. There were some RSS students and staff but their numbers were very small. Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan's agitation had started. Students were hypnotized by concept of total revolution. Dr. Subrahmanyam Swami Former Vice Chancellor of Shivaji University Dr.  Dhanagare were in the IIT at the same time. In our Environment department,Dr. Agrawal and Malay Chaudhary were Hindi speakers from Uttar Pradesh and Bangal, while Prabhakarrao, Venkobochar, Iyengar, Dayaratnam, etc. were English speakers from South India. Maharashtrian Bokil was the only Marathi professor and he wanted to get along with both the groups (later he committed suicide due to  promotion issue.) Agrawal was also kept away from other professors due to his strict nature. (I learned from his letter that this  was the reason for his leaving the directorship.)

 

 I had to live in the hostel for the first term. In the next tem I got shared quarters and we (with Shubhangi and two and a half year old Sumedha) started living with a Bengali family. Basu Roy was doing his PhD in Mechanical and was a staunch left communist. We had a kitchen and bedroom whereas  main hall and a room belonged to him. He had son as our Sumedha. Though our political views were extreme, we were at peace at home. There were movements against the student director. Their night meetings were a way to attract students to the communist student. Even my closest friend had become a communist by following his diet. Most of the disciplinary work in IITs had to be done by Agrawal. (Later he became the student dean) The students did not like his strict discipline. Some professors from the south seduce students.

In Kanpur at that time there were only two groups, the very poor and the very rich. Bullying and murder were commonplace. In our IIT campus also, there was obe incidence where one person was shot dead in a social outdoor gathering. The tempo by which we used to go to Kanpur (at a distance of 13 km) often had some passenger with gun. Nobody cared about life. At night, Hynas gang lift away the sleeping children from slum dwellers. I, too, had escaped once from the the hyna following my bicycle while going home from the library at night.

The banks of the Ganges were a crowded with  slums, uncleanliness and crime. Agrawal was trying to improve this situation with social agencies. Dr. Agarwal used to take us to the surrounding rural villages for participating in the cleaning and education programs of the schools and community centers there. IIT had adopted a village for development. English speaking professors from South India did not participate. The northern professors complained that they were ignored in promotions because of their lack of English and insistence on Hindi.

Although Dr. Agrawal had came from the US with a PhD, he did not like computers at all. He had given me such strong warning for not using computers. He was of the opinion that if one did the calculations himself, he would understand better than the computer answer.

I, however, had a strong fascination with computers there. My Marathi friends used to come to our house in the evening. Most of them worked on computers. With their help, I used to go to the computer lab at night. Our neighbor Mrs. Athavale was employed in a computer lab and I got admission there through her acquaintance. By punching the cards, one card for each sentence, a bundle of cards was given to the computer lab operator just as we give floor to grain mill After one or two days all the bundles of cards with output paper rolls were distributed. Wrong  cards had to be punched again. Some people deliberately made mistakes when they saw that they get blank papers. After realizing this, a programmer  was appointed to check the program before feeding to computer.

Dr. G. D. Agrawal did not like to do research in the laboratory or on theoretical subjects. Shri Jayant Kardile had constructed  Dual Media Filter at Nasik using crushed coconut shell. Dr. Agrawal suggested to use  crushed  apricot shells, which were  abundant in supply in Uttar Pradesh,. So I did research on experimental filters and published the paper. We knew that anthracite was used for dual media abroad but it was not available in India. Since low quality coal was being used in households in North India and was the cause of domestic  air pollution, our attention was drawn to the physical properties of this coal and the experiment proved that it would be suitable for filters.

Then Dr. Agrawal asked me to study process at Kanpur. As per his advice, I used to go to Kanpur Waterworks every morning with Tiffin box  and study all the systems there and test the water samples. In the afternoon, we used to take  lunch with the workers in the filter house. Keeping in touch with the workers, chemists and engineers throughout the day gave me a thorough understanding of all the technical as well as social conditions there. I have closely watched the plight of the workers. They used to have barley bread, onion and wet gram dal, onion  and chilli in the box. Engineers behaved very harshly with them.

The Chief Engineer Shri. Y. D. Mishra was very strict with subordinates. He used to go round all the plant with me every morning. He kept the plant equipment clean and in working condition. His house was in the plant area. All the household works  were done by waterworks staff. Mishra used to invite outside guests and took pride in introducing  me as IIT research scholar.