Dr.

Vijay Bhatkar: A Profile of Contributions

Indias Pre-eminence in Supercomputing A nations ability to advance its science and technology and to reach the very frontiers of science and competitive edge in technology now critically depends upon its ability to access supercomputing resources. In the late 80s the supercomputing technology was the sole preserve of USA and to some extend of Japan. In 1985, when India wanted to import a supercomputer from USA for weather forecasting which is critical for Indias agriculture on which Indias most of the population depended, it was denied to it. Not only India was denied the supercomputer, but also we were humiliated during the Regan-Rajiv Gandhi hightechnology accord meeting in Washington. This denial and humiliation inspired the then young Prime Minister of India Rajiv Gandhi to pose the formidable challenge of developing Indias own supercomputer to Indian scientists through Science Advisory Committee (SAC). In 1987, Dr. Vijay Bhatkar, a computer scientist of India, barely 41 then, was entrusted with Indias supercomputing mission. For delivering the supercomputing mission in a comprehensive manner covering science, technology, machine, applications, a national facilities, and creating next generation young engineers in advanced computing, Dr. Bhatkar founded and built the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, what is now widely known all over the world as C-DAC, in Pune in 1988 of which he remained its Executive Director from 1988 to 98 and still continues to mentor its successive missions. He led the architecture and development of Indias first supercomputer which was aptly named as PARAM, meaning supreme in Sanskrit. Param 8000 a gigaflop scale supercomputer equivalent to USAs Cray YMP then, was delivered in 1991 and India became worlds third country, next to USA and Japan, to possess this strategic technology. He then went on to architect and build Param 10000 a teraflop scale supercomputing which was dedicated to the nation in 1998. A full-fledged teraflop machine Param Padma was commissioned at C-DAC Bangalore Centre in 2002. In the early 90s, there was a heated debate and strong diversity of views on how to build scalable supercomputer. At this time Dr. Bhatkar took a strong position on the cluster architecture, building supercomputers using thousands of widely available commercially available off-the-shelf cheap components and subsystems; this architecture today is the most preferred architecture for building supercomputers.
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Not only Dr. Bhatkar built Indias first supercomputer, he went on to export Param series supercomputers to Russia, Germany, Canada and Singapore, demonstrating to the world Indias arrival in the supercomputing arena. Several strategic applications were developed on Param with the involvement of user agencies then including weather forecasting for agriculture, seismic data processing for oil exploration, launch vehicle design for Indias space programming, satellite image processing for national resource mapping and disaster management, nuclear reaction simulation for the atomic energy programme, for gene sequencing and drug design for advancement of biotechnology, materials research to advance nanoscience and nanotechnology programme, and a range of security and strategic applications relating to Indias defence programme. After building terascale architecture Param, and National Param Supercomputing Facility (NPSF), he then proposed the grid computing initiative which today connects 18 locations and 45 institutions across the country. Indeed, the Garuda Grid of C-DAC has formed the first backbone for launching Indias National Knowledge Network (iNKN), a gigabit backbone that will connect Indias all universities, colleges and research institutions paving the way for technology-enhanced education of the 21st century. Today, when India is once again faced with the challenge of lag in the supercomputing race compared to China due to chequered funding, Dr. Bhatkar has once again taken the lead in proposing the National Mission on Exascale Supercomputing Capability, Capacity and Infrastructure on National Knowledge Network. An Exascale supercomputer can perform 1000,000,000,000,000,000 mathematical operations in one second and is expected to become a reality by 2020. This mission will create several disruptive innovations that shape the next ICT revolution.

Driving Indias Electronics and ICT Revolution Indias most popular computer magazine Dataquest has acclaimed Dr. Vijay Bhatkar amongst 25 pioneers who shaped Indias celebrated IT industry with an annual turnover USD 80 Billion (approx. Rs. 4 Lakh crores), a distinction which he holds along with Padmabhushan F.C. Kohli, K.P.P. Nambiar, Sam Pitroda, N. Vittal, Devang Mehta, Kiran Karnik amongst other pioneers. As a young PhD from IIT, Delhi, now its Distinguished Alumnus, Vijay Bhatkar became the core member of the Information, Planning and Analysis Group (IPAG) of Electronics Commission in 1972. Here, he contributed to the shaping of Electronics policies under the leadership of Dr. N. Sheshagiri and Prof. M.G.K. Menon. He directly led the introduction of computer-based automation in Indias power plants and process industries and launched a massive training programme on newly arrived microprocessor that became the engine of IT revolution. In 1980, he joined (Padmabhushan) K.P.P. Nambiar, a step that was to usher Indias Electronics revolution by creating Indias first state-owned public sector Keltron. At a young age of 34, he
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became the Director of Electronics Research and Development Centre (ER&DC), Trivandrum, Indias largest application oriented R&D in Electronics. At ER&DC, he led the development of Indias first solid state colour TV and demonstrated the feasibility of Colour TV broadcast for the first time in India which made the then PM of India Mrs. Indira Gandhi to take the revolutionary decision of colour broadcasting Asiad Games in 1982. This bold decision really flagged off Indias Electronic Revolution in the 80s. At ER&DC, Dr. Bhatkar led the development of several innovations such as microprocessor-based traffic control systems, distributed control systems, surveillance and security systems, defence simulators, and the like from component level upward and contributed to building the indigenous foundations of the electronics industry which was to become Indias IT industry later. Along with an Executive Director of C-DAC in 1987, he concurrently held the position of Adviser in the Department of Electronics in Government of India and contributed in shaping Indias celebrated IT industry in many ways such as Software Technology Parks (STPs) of India, CMET, VLSI Design Centres and the like. Post 1998, he was one of the architects of Prime Ministers IT Task Force 108 policy initiatives that really propelled India as an IT Superpower In the telecom revolution, his main contributions were in wired and wireless broadband internet infrastructure and services that are now widely available in India. He then took upon himself the role of pioneering ICT applications, for inclusive development, the contribution that was acclaimed by Development Gateway and nomination to Petersberg Prize, a sort of Nobel in ICT for Development. Dissolving the Language Barrier on Computer While launching the supercomputing mission of C-DAC in 1988, Dr. Vijay Bhatkar foresaw the far-reaching impact computers will have on the society at large and their language and cultures. India over its history of 10,000 years had evolved diverse languages and cultures and this amazing diversity was its true richness. Computers in the 80s could be used only in English and some European languages and the work on Japanese and Chinese had just begun. India at that time had 16 official languages and these were written over 10 complex scripts having 57 main characters and hundreds of complex derived characters. English was spoken then by barely 3-4 percent of population and if Indian languages were not available on computers then most of the population would miss the coming wave of computer revolution. It is against this background, Dr. Bhatkar decided to formulate and undertake the multilingual technology mission complementing its main supercomputing mission. He then persuaded the Government to launch this mission and carved out about Rs. 5 cr. from the main mission and initiated the development of multilingual technology. In barely 2 years, C-DAC advanced the Indian Standard Code for Information Interchange (ISCII) which soon became a national standard, came out with a design of a PC add in card which made possible use of all 10 Indian scripts on the standard PC. C-DACs GIST group then developed a series of softwares for word processing and desktop publishing such as LEAP, ISM, etc. which
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soon became Indias most widely used software packages. The technology was called Graphics and Intelligence based Script, Technology, now popularly known as GIST technology. The advent of GIST technology was widely used for office automation, DTP, in web design, newspapers and e-Governance. Its large-scale use was made during 1990 election and then successive state elections for preparing ID cards of millions of votes. For the broadcast industry, a number of hardware and software products were developed such as teleprompter and subtitling system which made possible broadcasting of regional channels with simultaneous subtitling in 16 languages in the 90s. Later, for the telecom revolution, multilingual technology was extended to mobiles through a series of innovations. Here the technology challenge was to map more than 57 characters of Indian languages on 9 keys of mobile phones, which was considered almost impossible then. Now, thanks to C-DACs effort, Indian languages can be used on mobiles for SMS, e-mails, web browsing, etc. As the National Project Director of UNDP assisted knowledge-Based Computer System (KBCS) project he applied the emerging Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques for further development of multilingual technology that resulted in the development of LILA for learning Indian languages. He also initiated the development of optical character recognition (OCR), natural language processing (NLP) and machine translation (MT) for and across Indian languages. The initiative was then amplified and launched across many universities under the Technology Development of Indian Languages (TDIL) project of the Department of Information Technology (DIT) of Government of India. The development of GIST multilingual technology initiated by Dr. Bhatkar dissolved the language barrier on computers, mobiles and similar devices once for all. The standards have been extended to UNICODE. This is now having profound and far-reaching impact in every field such as office automation, publishing, banking, railway reservation, voting, broadcasting and eGovernance and in learning and teaching. A large body of material has become available on the web and even the internet sites can now bear names in Indian languages. Multilingual search engines and web-2 technologies have also become available which is making possible use of web technologies in Indian languages.

Transforming Education through ICT While traversing across India in the 1890s, almost 120 years back, Swami Vivekananda had lamented that there were so few schools for learning that Indian girls and boys have to travel several miles to reach the schools, many times swimming across the rivers in rainy season. He then exhorted, if our girls and boys cannot reach the school then the schools must be brought at the doorsteps of aspiring learner. Inspired by this prophetic vision of Swami Vivekananda, Dr. Vijay Bhatkar launched the Education-To-Home (ETH) mission of bringing education directly to home using the advancing DTH and ICT technology at the beginning of the 21st century.
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He founded the ETH Research Lb in Pune in 1998 and its first focus was to launch the computer literacy programme. There were no IT teachers in the required language numbers and therefore he decided to deploy CBT for IT learning. Pune University was roped in for computer literacy certification and several centres were opened for computer learning. So successful was this experiment that the computer literacy mission became hugely successful. To impart momentum to this mission and invoke the power of Government, he, along with Vivek Sawant and Prof. Ram Takwale, persuaded Government of Maharashtra to create a new vehicle for advancing ICT based education. This vehicle was called Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation Ltd. (MKCL), an innovative corporation promoted by Government and 6 Universities of Maharashtra. MKCL spearheaded the computer literacy MS-CIT programme which since its launch has created over 6 million computer literates within a span of 6 years, MS-CIT programme is regarded as one of the largest single programmes of the world ever undertaken for computer literacy! And all this was done without using Government funds! MKCLs education programme has now spread to other states of India and also to different countries of the world, to Saudi Arabia, Gulf, Africa, Malaysia, Singapore and soon it is slated to map the whole globe through internationalization of its technologies. Over 6000 centres were created providing direct employment to 30,000 people through thousands of first-time small entrepreneurs. Concurrently through ETH Research Lab Dr. Bhatkar conceived and launched ICT for School Transformation Mission for enhancing the quality of education in Indian schools at primary level. Today, the digital class and digital campus technologies developed by ETH Research Lab are being used by hundreds of schools, not only in India but also abroad, for learning, teaching, governance and for communication and collaborations benefitting over a million students till date.

Synthesis of Science & Spirituality for the Service of Humanity

India International Multiversity The India International Multiversity was launched by Dr. Vijay Bhatkar at the dawn of the 21st century to advance the paradigm of Integrative Education that aims to dissolve the barriers separating different disciplines of learning in the traditional education system. Multiversity is striving to bring about the synthesis of Science, Spirituality and Culture to impart holistic knowledge to its aspiring learners. Multiversitys education system is being built on the foundations of the Indian Knowledge System enshrined in Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita and Brahma-Sutra, the triad of Indian philosophy, which explores and enunciates the nature of Ultimate Reality, which is the very purpose of education. The objective is to create and nurture the next generation thinkers and philosophers, scientists and engineers, artists and architects, healers and doctors, economists and businessmen, managers and leaders, who will animate the emerging global society, understanding the oneness in the multiplicity of this multi-splendored world. Multiversity aims to resurrect Indias ancient Gurukul system of learning that originated thousands of years back in the Vedic times which is still practised with reverence in many branches of learning such as classical music and dance, Yoga and Ayurveda, and traditional arts and crafts. Retaining its essential core of learning from the Master or Guru, the ancient Gurukul system will be reinterpreted for the contemporary world driven by science and technology. In its education system, Multiversity will leverage the current and emerging advances in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) covering technology enhanced learning, eLearning, m-Learning, interactive TV-centric learning, education e-Governance and emerging modes of communication and collaboration. In this process it will dissolve the barriers of distance, languages and economic levels for aspiring learners of tomorrow. Instead of bringing students to the portals of university, Multiversity will reach out to the doors of its learners. The new integrative education system that Multiversity is advancing will coexist and will be interoperable with the formal education system of today. It will be possible to move from one system to the other as well as to take advantage of both the systems simultaneously. Multiversity will recognize the non-formal experiential education that occurs in real life. Through its tiered Membership Program, it will recognize people from different walks of life who have developed skills and competencies or new knowledge in their respective fields of work and made a noteworthy contribution to society. Multiversity will incorporate multiple modes of learning in its education system such as learning in classroom, learning by exploration, learning by doing, learning through enquiry, creative learning and even learning through failure. The aim is to go beyond the present examinationcentric learning to creative learning that is joyful and experiential. The Gurukul system will

make it possible to offer personalized learning and ICT will make mass personalized learning possible. Multiversity will try to teach to its students the art and science of living that can impart heightened meaning to their life. Multiversity believes it is possible to endow all the six opulences to ones life namely, Success, Prosperity, Righteousness, Generosity, Knowledge and Detachment through integral education based on the synthesis of science, spirituality and culture.