Dinesh C Sharma’s ‘Beyond Biryani’ tells how scientific temper shaped Hyderabad

A constant theme of Dinesh Sharma’s book is the visionary role played by the political class, from the Nizams to the CMs, in guiding the development of science and technology in the region

Aunindyo Chakravarty

Updated At : 08:50 AM Oct 13, 2024 IST

Beyond Biryani: The Making of a Globalised Hyderabad by Dinesh C Sharma. Westland. Pages 336. Rs 799

The first thing that I did after unwrapping the review copy of Dinesh C Sharma’s ‘Beyond Biryani’ was to set it aside. The title had distracted me. I had to do something important first — order a plate of Hyderabadi biryani. It was only after I had satiated my greed — it wasn’t even mealtime — that I began to get into the meat of the book.

As the title suggests, biryani is just a talking point that Sharma uses to enlarge upon his city. After all, Hyderabad is as famous for its biryani as it is for being the cyber hub of India and home to some of the country’s biggest pharmaceutical companies.

Sharma’s background as a science journalist has shaped the theme of his work. He answers one of the key questions that the meteoric rise of Hyderabad raises: how did it end up being such a major IT and pharmaceutical hub? What in its history pushed its entrepreneurs to dabble in the practical application of the pure sciences?

Much of the credit has been laid at the door of Chandrababu Naidu for his ability to make the most of liberalisation in India. Sharma complicates that common conception by drawing our attention to Hyderabad’s long history of fostering a scientific temper.

Unlike in other parts of colonial India, the focus on modern science didn’t come from the British, but from the local rulers and nobility. A diet based on western ‘modern’ medicine helped the Nizam with his diabetes, convincing him that Hyderabadis be trained in the modern sciences. Hyderabad’s ruling class also recognised the importance of English language and introduced it as a subject in major madrassas.

One major achievement was the Chloroform Commissions, which experimented with anaesthesia, giving birth to the ‘Hyderabad technique’ of the safe use of chloroform instead of ether. Its global acceptance had much to thank the Nizam, who gave a grant of 1,000 pounds to bring top experts to Hyderabad to certify the technique.

Successive Nizams backed scientific projects, ranging from studying the malaria parasite to setting up observatories. New scientific knowledge was used to design civil projects in Hyderabad, under the legendary M Visvesvaraya, India’s foremost civil engineer, who had been appointed the Diwan of Hyderabad. He built the famous Osman Sagar dam to break the recurring cycle of the Musi river breaking its banks and flooding large tracts around it. His modern drainage system was one of the most well-planned for any global city of the time.

Hyderabad’s development as a knowledge centre owes a lot to Osmania University, established in 1918 by Nizam Mir Osman Ali Khan. Sharma traces the history of its foundation as India’s first vernacular university, where modern science would be taught in Urdu so that it could reach a wider population. This probably played a crucial role in Hyderabad emerging as a technological centre later, for it took science beyond the small class of people who were fluent in English.

Sharma traces the development of research institutions in Hyderabad, and how scientists and researchers had to make do with small amounts of the Central finance and support. The focus was always on providing practical solutions to people’s problems — from gassifying coal for supply of city gas to homes, producing fertilisers, supplying handmade paper, which used to be imported till then, and producing white cement.

Hyderabad also happened to become an early centre for computer sciences in India. Sharma chronicles how software development began in the Administrative Staff College of India and then spread to the public sector company CMC. IT services were already being exported to the Soviet bloc by the government sector. The first major ‘western’ contract came in 1986, when CMC was hired to develop the scheduling and signaling system of the London Underground. The book traces how IBM’s exit during the Janata Party government opened the door for smaller private IT firms to flourish, both domestically and in the software export market.

Another key contribution of Hyderabad’s scientists was the research into drug development. Sharma comes into his own when he narrates the story of the city’s emergence as one of India’s biggest pharma centres. Once again, as it was in the case of computers, scientific research and drug development in the government sector became a catalyst for the emergence of pharma majors like Dr Reddy’s Laboratories and Bharat Biotech.

One constant theme running through Sharma’s book is the visionary role played by Hyderabad’s political class — from the Nizams before Independence to the chief ministers of democratic India — in encouraging and guiding the development of science and technology in the region. This, however, is the book’s weakness as well. In its focus on governmental policy, individual politicians, institutions and their charismatic leaders, the book misses out on telling the reader a bit more about the social processes which gave rise to Hyderabad’s entrepreneurial class.

But that is a small quibble. Sharma’s book does an admirable job of painting a picture of how Hyderabad came to be what it is. Most importantly, it is a well-crafted read. In a lesser hand, a subject such as this could well have become arid. Sharma’s greatest achievement has been to present a wide range of information and tie it all up within a flowing narrative.

— The writer is an economic analyst