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last word CNR Rao
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on record
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The champion of science Honoured with the Bharat Ratna recently, Rao is the leading scientist of India and a Dan David laureate. Known as one of the world’s foremost chemists, his clout intimidates his contemporaries. By Shubhadeep Choudhury
My
father was called ‘family planning Rao’ as he was a great believer in family planning. I was the only child in an era when having six or more children was the norm,” says CNR Rao (named for the Bharat Ratna Award recently) while talking about his school-headmaster father. “My wife is a single child too,” he says. An eminent scientist, Rao does not fit in the mould of the stereotype of the absentminded professor. Rubbing shoulders with VVIPs, Rao is fond of talking, but has no airs despite his enviable success. Rao, who will turn 80 on December 1, is likeable, in fact so much so that it is hard to think of him without a smile lighting up one’s face.
The accolades
Principal scientific adviser to the Prime Minister — the highest post a scientist can reach in the official hierarchy in India — Rao also arouses admiration and fear among those pursuing a career in science. But Chintamani Nagesa Ramchandra Rao is not just a scientist-cum-manager with power to extend favours to his admirers and fix those who dare to cross swords with him. Essentially a chemist, he has done solid work in his field. The citation of Dan David Prize awarded to him in 2005 (he shared it with two other scientists) says, “Prof Rao is one of the world’s foremost solid state and materials chemists. He has made prolific and sustained contributions to the development of the field over five decades. His work on transition metal oxides has led to basic understanding of novel phenomena and the relationship between materials properties and the structural chemistry of these materials. “Prof Rao was one of the earliest to synthesise two-dimensional oxide materials such as La2CuO4. His work has led to a systematic study of compositionally controlled metal-insulator transitions. Such studies have had a profound impact in application fields such as colossal magneto resistance and high temperature superconductivity.”
A sentimental Rao complains, “Nobody talks about the Dan David Prize awarded to me. Its prize money was $1 million. In the US everyone knows a Dan David laureate. It is as prestigious as the Nobel Prize.” He also appeared upset over Sachin Tendulkar getting all the media attention after the announcement of the Bharat Ratna to him (Sachin). “This is another madness,” he says about India’s obsession with cricket. “The work we do needs sustained attention. It is not just one shot,” Rao fumes, hastening to add that by shot he does not mean a cricket shot! Rao is far from modest when it comes to talking about his work, but he is never arrogant. And that makes him endearing. Rao, says Bangalore-based aerospace scientist Roddam Narasimha, has contributed to science in many ways and not by his research only. “He has found jobs for deserving people so that they remain in India and not leave the country,” he says. Rao, a Fellow of the Royal Society and associated with the multi-disciplinary research institution Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research that he founded, is currently working in the field of artificial photosynthesis, which may become an important source of alternative energy. His remains the only dissenting voice in Bangalore against the popularity of IT industry as a career choice. “How many parents now ask their children to become a scientist or a scholar? We Indians are only after money,” he says bitterly, adding that “I admit though that the attitude is slowly changing and a lot more young people are now studying pure science.” Last year, a controversy broke out over the alleged plagiarism in a paper co-authored by Rao. Drawing attention to the fact that the report regarding the matter appeared in the media two months after the issue was settled, Rahul Siddharthan, who is with the Institute of the Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, wrote in his blog, “Rao is a very successful scientist but — for reasons justified and unjustified — not a universally popular one. I very much suspect that the media was used by someone with a grudge.” After Rao was awarded the Bharat Ratna, this correspondent asked Siddharthan if he would care to elaborate on what he meant by “justified and unjustified” reasons, but he refused to comment. Popular or not, Rao has obviously been found eminent in his field and useful for the country enough to be declared a Bharat Ratna.
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profile
A matriculate, Martha says: “I hardly meet my children once or twice a year. I can’t really rest till every child is polio free.” A frontline polio worker from Darbhanga district in Bihar, Martha’s efforts of eight years to eliminate polio from Darbhanga got her acknowledgement from the UN Foundation. Last week she was honoured at the Global Leadership Awards 2013 in New York by the UN Foundation and United Nations Association of the US. “I am happy that polio has been eradicated from the area. It gives me immense pleasure that people now know about the crippling virus and are forthcoming to take the drops, which was not the case a few years ago,” she says. In her 40s, Martha is an auxiliary nursing midwife posted at the health centre in Darbhanga. She was recently selected as one of the best polio workers in India for her devotion and hard work in vaccination drives. Bihar has not reported a single case of polio in the last three years and has been polio free since 2010. But the state will have to wait till January 14, 2014, to be officially declared a polio-free state, when India will also be declared polio free. Martha, the only person from the Asian region chosen for the honour, has just returned from New York where she received the award. She said she was delighted and felt honoured to receive the award at a global stage. “We need to work together to eliminate polio from regions where the disease still exists. I will work harder in this field,” she says. She pleasantly surprised everyone by speaking in Hindi in the UN. She said she was humbled by the honour and had never thought that she would come to the US and meet global dignitaries who would speak about her work. She was joined on stage by UN ambassadors from Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan. The Global Leadership Awards honour inspirational leaders working towards peace, prosperity and justice and brings together the highest levels of contributors in the diplomatic, business, government, philanthropic, media, celebrity and social sectors.
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on record
Daud
Khan SaDOZAI represents Kabul gharana of classical music, plucking the strings of rabab in the traditional Dhrupad style. Born in Kabul in 1955, he studied the rabab under the tutelage of Ustad Muhammad Umar. He has taken this instrument onto the international stage, with several musical collaborations of the East and West. He has also studied the sarod under Ustad Amjad Ali Khan in India and has performed at many prestigious international music festivals — Frankfurt, Munich and Rome. In India, he was honoured with the Ustad Hafiz Ali Khan Award twice (1988 and 1995). Since 2004, he has been performing with Ensemble Radio Kabul. Khan, who is the head of the Academy of Indian Music, Cologne, Germany, gave a concert at the Jodhpur Rajasthan International Folk Festival recently. Excerpts: Few would have pursued music given the circumstances in Afghanistan. How did you get to love the rabab? As a child, I listened to the rabab being played. Those days you could hear music everywhere… in homes, cafes, streets, even trucks played out loud music, just like in India, where you get to hear film songs everywhere. My father used to invite musicians home and often our evenings were spent listening to music. I got deeply interested in the sound of the rabab. I heard someone play it on the radio and I think that was the time I decided this is what I wanted to do. The sound made a home in my mind and heart. The Afghanistan I grew up in was the land of love, music and poetry. There were green lawns where we could marvel at the beauty of nature. It doesn’t exist anymore. How did the political turmoil affect your music? Forty years of unrest in Afghanistan has reduced the knowledge of music. Ustads have gone away. There are no books. New ones are not written and old classics are hard to find. No fresh research is taking place. My country was in pain and I was in tears. Music became my language and a mode of expression. It heals me. I try to bring peace into the lives of people. I have been playing the rabab across the globe and the sound of this instrument is liked by people of alien cultures, in Greece, Italy, Europe and the US. I need to enrich my music with collaborations because our music was uprooted. It had to survive in foreign cultures. It lacked organic growth. Art needs peace to grow. I like collaborating with Indian classical music; it is like a homecoming for me. Do you sometimes wish you taught music in Afghanistan and not Europe? How different it is from the way you were tutored? I don’t have any regrets. I would rather invest my energy and share knowledge with people who are genuinely interested in learning this instrument and work at a place that fosters a conducive atmosphere. The few Afghan students who come to me are more interested in learning the keyboard. Their pursuits are cars and bikes. One thing I like about Europeans is once they put their mind to something, they take it seriously. They are also interested in learning how the instrument is made, how its acoustics work. They want to know everything. My ustad was very strict. He would get annoyed if I didn’t turn up on time. He wanted me to give up everything and focus entirely on the learning, without which, as I now understand, learning classical music is not possible. Are there any rabab makers left after the cultural cleansing by the Taliban? The Pakhtoons play the rabab. It is part of their music tradition. It is their folk instrument. There are many rabab players in that part of Pakistan. There have been many attempts in India — by Punjabi University, Patiala, and Namdharis — to make the rabab. Were you involved in any of these projects? I am aware of the rabab of Ghulam Bandagi Khan Bangash, one of the ancestors of Ustad Amjad Ali Khan who had brought the rabab from Afghanistan to India and developed sarod from it. It is displayed at Sarod Ghar in Gwalior. But if there are efforts to revive the instrument, I welcome it. Only in the Indian tradition of classical music can it survive. Are you aware of the significance of this instrument among the Sikhs? Once after I gave a concert in Punjab, a tall Sikh gentleman walked up to me. I got scared, thinking I had committed some mistake. But he bowed before me, saying how I introduced him to the sound of the instrument they revere because of its association with Guru Nanak Dev and Bhai Mardana. I have a Sikh disciple from Canada who narrates stories of the rabab to me. Why did you learn to play the sarod? When I gave my first concert in India in 1984, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan came to me and gave me a very warm welcome. He told me about his ancestors and his connection with the rabab. Rabab is the father of sarod. The plucking technique of both instruments is the same, and I wanted to enhance my understanding of Hindustani music. Things are improving in Afghanistan. Are there some efforts to revive music? Yes, I heard in Babur Garden they have concerts. They have also restored the palace. Aga Khan Trust is doing a lot of work under its Ustad Shagird music training programme in Kabul and Herat. For the first time, they have also selected girls for training in traditional music. How did you like collaborating with
Indian musicians? I often jam with jazz musicians, but this collaboration is close to my heart because we share the same raga system and ‘taal’. What is done for Rajasthani folk music at the RIFF deserves an award from the UN because when you lose heritage, you lose links of humanity.
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Farooq Abdullah, union minister Lal Thanhawla, mizoram chief minister P Chidambaram, union finance minister Rahul Gandhi, congress vice-president Sachin Tendulkar, former cricketer
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Vajpayee and hockey legend Dhyan Chand should be given the Bharat Ratna. Vajpayee's stature could be gauged from the fact that Nehru had told him in Parliament that he would be the Prime Minister one day.
I wiped the tilak on my forehead after the function, but how will those who took up arms and caused death of many innocents wipe the blood off their hands?
The first time I have heard that there is a request for providing security, and in that wonderful state (of Gujarat), security is provided by stalking and snooping.
My family hails from Kashmir and moved to UP and then Delhi. Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit too moved to Delhi from UP. The city embraces everyone and offers opportunities to all.
Please don't expect my son to perform just because I performed. Had that been the case, I should have had a pen in my hand as my father was a professor.