Best of 2010

The best of 2010

Education’s tribute to the heroes of the year

This was a year of ups and downs: On the upside, there was increased focus on the betterment of elementary education, with a slew of measures and resolutions making their way from Parliament to the thousands of schools in the country, but on the downside, India's position as a global education hub took a severe beating when the IITs and IIMs slipped several notches in the many 'best education' lists that made the rounds.

In this column we pay tribute to the top innovations and innovators of this year. In their own way, these ordinary people have made a difference in the lives of thousands of people the world over. While some have simplified complex processes for the layman to understand well, others have provided educational opportunities to hundreds of deserving but financially poor students. And one person has changed the way the world looks at India.

 

MS Excel blogger

Purnachandra Rao Duggirala, more popularly known in the cyber world as Chandoo has several illustrious achievements to his credit. Not only did the simple Vizag boy get into IIM Indore's class of 2006, he wrote his story in a manner that it gained cult status over time.

Four years after getting a campus placement at TCS, Chandoo quit his job in April 2010 to run a Microsoft Excel-training start up he had built on the side doing what many of us do non-seriously -- blogging. Last month, Chandoo's lean two-member blog 'Chandoo.org' recorded revenues of $100,000, justifying his decision to quit and be completely on his own.

We caught up with Chandoo in a no-holds-barred interview. Here are excerpts:

What made you make the choice of quitting TCS and doing this fulltime?

I used to spend about two hours after work on Chandoo.org and was writing almost regularly. For me it was never really about 'work versus job'. My job at TCS was pretty exciting all along. I was working and interacting with new people every day, traveling internationally and was quite satisfied.

The reason why I made a choice was more because of family. I was traveling a lot, living alone in far-off places and missing my family during the job.

Of course, I had the confidence that Chandoo.org would make enough for us to live a comfortable life. Since I run the operation from my home in Vizag with just me and my wife working on it, almost all the money less server costs and income tax is mine.

What would you advise others who want to make some this way along with their corporate jobs?

Many companies have a 'moonlighting clause' in their employment contracts. I am not sure if my company had one, but the money I was making was too little while I was employed. Also, I knew a handful of people in my company who were also making money online, so I knew this it was not that wrong. Plus I had let my managers know that I had a website where I wrote and shared my knowledge. My Microsoft 'Most Valuable Professional' award status, blogger status and product details were kind of known to key colleagues and bosses through my LinkedIn updates.

That said, if anyone is starting today, it would be better to check with your HR policies to avoid conflicts. In most cases you can get an exception easily just by talking to the right people.

_______________________________________________________________________

Rs 1,500 laptop

Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal unveiled a Rs.1500 laptop designed specifically for students. The low-cost device would be made available to students in 2011.

When the ministry floated the concept of a low cost laptop some years ago, officials said it would cost Rs.500. It will now cost about three times the initial projections.

The ministry expects the prices to drop to Rs.1000 and reach Rs.500 as innovations are introduced.

The device, no bigger than a conventional laptop, is a single unit system with a touch screen and a built in key board along with a 2 GB RAM memory, wi-fi connectivity, USB port and powered by a 2-watt system to suit poor power supply areas.

"This is real and tangible and we will take it forward. Sun will rise for Indian students in 2011," Sibal said.

"If more companies decide to manufacture a similar device, prices will come down automatically," he added.

_______________________________________________________________________

Indrani Medhi, Rikin Gandhi, Ranveer Chandra: On MIT Top Innovators list

Three Indians have made to the annual list of young innovators published by Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Technological Review magazine. The list, called TR35, is a collection of the top 35 innovators under the age of 35 in a particular year.

Rikin Gandhi, an aerospace engineer from the US stumbled upon rural India for the first time in his life. He was so taken up by it, he decided to stay. The 29-year-old is CEO of Delhi-based Digital Green, which began in 2006 at Microsoft Research, Bangalore. The non-profit organisation aids farmers produce agricultural videos on their own. The videos, starring locals, are then screened before the community using a $100 hand-held, battery-operated projector.

The others on the list are 34-year-old Ranveer Chandra, who has been recognised for delivering high-speed wireless Internet connections over longer distances in the US, and 32-year-old Indrani Medhi whose effort at building interfaces for the illiterate has been recognised.

Chandra, for his part, made the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington, his laboratory for the first large-scale network to show the potential of using white spaces to deliver broadband wireless as a solution to the problem that Wi-Fi uses frequencies that can't carry a signal more than a few metres.

Medhi, based at Microsoft Research India's Bangalore lab, has done field research in India, South Africa and Philippines to design text-free interfaces that could help illiterate people find jobs.

_______________________________________________________________________

Man behind the Re symbol

Have you ever wondered who designed the text in your mobile phone? Or what thought went into the clarity of a road signage? Chennai boy D Udaya Kumar wondered years ago, and went on to pursue an unusual career in typography and designs, becoming one of the first post-graduate students from IIT-Bombay's Industrial Design Centre.

This year Kumar's name became part of Indian history, when his dynamic design for the symbol for the Rupee was approved by the Finance Minister as India's official currency sign.

An overwhelmed Kumar said, "My symbol is an amalgamation of several ideas -- it signifies the Devnagri script, which is the only script in the world which hangs from top. The central line, cutting through the 'R', subtly standardises it with other world currencies like the $, £ and Euro. Its top and bottom line together form an equal to (=) sign, denoting our belief in equality and together it also gives an appearance of the tricolour. I tried to balance Indianness and international mood in the symbol."

_______________________________________________________________________

Super 30

Super 30, if you haven't heard of it already, is an educational program that was started in Patna, under the banner of 'Ramanujan School of Mathematics', by Anand Kumar. Established in 2002, the program selects 30 meritorious and talented candidates each year from economically backward sections of society and trains them without charge for the IIT-JEE, the entrance examination for IITs. Time Magazine selected mathematician Anand Kumar's school in the list of Best of Asia 2010. Super 30 also received praise from United States President Barack Obama's special envoy Rashad Hussain, who termed it the "best" institute in the country. And Hollywood filmmaker James Cameron has hinted that he will make a film based on the unique school.

Newsweek Magazine has taken note of the initiative of mathematician Anand Kumar's Super 30 and included his school in the list of four most innovative schools in the world. Anand Kumar was awarded by top award of Bihar government Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad Shiksha Puraskar in November 2010.

Fascinated by mathematics since early childhood, Anand always dreamt of becoming a mathematician. He started showing sparks of brilliance since early days. In 1994, Anand got an opportunity to pursue higher education in Cambridge University, but his poor financial health came in the way.

Having witnessed extreme financial hardship since childhood, he felt the pangs of poverty so much that he decided to do something for the poor students, who invariably fade away without getting right opportunities. This led to the birth of new form of 'Ramanujam School of Mathematics', where he trained a small group of students for various competitive examinations without charging a fee. After a thorough screening, 30 poor, but talented students were shortlisted for the Super 30. Initially, making all arrangements for 30 students was not so easy, but Anand's family extended all help in his endeavour. Anand generated finances by tutoring students of other schools, while his mother, Jayanti Devi, cooked food for the students. For the students, there was only one goal - to study hard.

In 2003, when Super 30 started its journey, 18 out of 30 students cracked the IITs. The very next year, the number jumped to 22. In 2005, it improved further to 26. Continuing the trend, 28 students made it in 2006 and 2007. However, the 'magic moment' came in 2008, when the result was an astonishing 30 out of 30. Super 30 had hit the bull's eye. In 2009 and 2010, too, all 30 made it to the IITs.