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Gauhar Raza: Ever since your childhood, you had that spirit of enquiry and humanism, which you never le . When did you decide that science was going to be your destiny?Yash Pal: I don’t know when the conscious decision about science came in but I do know that generally in school teachers ask you questions. But I used to argue and say ‘How could it be like this?’ I used to be in Balochistan at that time and one of my friends, Habib used to say ‘Yaar tumhara naam toh Mota Sir hai’ (Your name is Fathead, my friend), (laughs)

INCONVERSATION

Gauhar Raza: But this ‘Mota sir’ had a big brain also that was active doing something and creating things.Yash Pal: Look, I enjoyed myself like a child, like every other child. Its just that if one heard something one wanted to fi nd out ‘how’ and ‘why’. That’s all. Then suddenly it occurred to me that I wanted to study B.Sc. Honours in Lahore.

Gauhar Raza: Which was disrupted.Yash Pal: Yes, it was disrupted. So we thought we should start something here. Some other friends from Lahore also came and we went to the head of physics department in Delhi University, Dr. D.S. Kothari, and said, ‘We too want to study Kothari sir. Is there any way to do that?

East Punjab University is yet to come up.’ He said, ‘Yes, you can study but for that buildings will have to be made and work will have to be done. That will require time’. So I said, can it be possible that you allow us to attend classes of your physics honours school. Your teachers should take our classes and our teachers who have come from Lahore should also come and take classes to teach us. Two-three rooms of yours are lying vacant and a few things can be arranged there. Kothari said yes, this can be done. This happened at the time when a new world was beginning. People were extremely cooperative and they worked together. So my B.Sc. Honours started there and then I secured my M.Sc. degree also from there.

INTERVIEW

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important thing. But there was something else which was a conscious policy on the part of some people, including me, at that time. It was that we don’t have to say that we are doing everything but let us begin doing things which are frontier but where we do have some advantage. For example, if we work in particle physics or high-energy physics using cosmic rays then we have an advantage because we have a country very close to the equator where only high-energy cosmic rays come and the low-energy ones are bent away. So we will have a greater advantage over Europeans and Americans. And so we started fl ying balloons like they did in America and Europe.

Gauhar Raza: And this was the time when even balloon technology was blocked, Americans didn’t want to give us balloon technology.

Yash Pal: Well, we didn’t want it. We wanted to make our own balloons. We found that the balloons we made with polythene, were also made in Britain. But the balloons made by Britain went up to the altitude of 50-60,000 feet and still nothing much happened to them whereas our balloons when they went above 50,000 feet they burst quite often. Then we studied and found that the lowest temperature, which occurs in the atmosphere, is at around 60,000 feet, after that it warms up again. And the quality (of polythene), which we were using, became brittle at such low temperature. The balloon fabric then becomes brittle like thin glass.

Gauhar Raza: And it cracked.

Yash Pal: So what we did was wonderful. We had people like M.G.K. Menon and a team of wonderful colleagues. We

INCONVERSATION

PROFESSOR YASH PAL (born 1926), an eminent scientist and educationist, is one of the most popular faces of Indian science. He was Professor, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai; Director, Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) Space Applications Centre (ISAC), Ahmedabad; Secretary, Department of Science & Technology (DST); Chairman, University Grants Commission (UGC), and Chancellor of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. As a Scientist, Professor Yash Pal made pioneering contributions to the study of cosmic rays, high-energy physics and astrophysics. His contribution to Indian education is also highly signifi cant. The National Advisory Committee set up by the Ministry of Human Resource Development under the Chairmanship of Professor Yash Pal went into the issue of overburdening of school children. The report prepared by the Committee entitled “Learning without Burden” is regarded as a seminal document in Indian education. Professor Yash Pal was also the Chairman of the Steering Committee of the National Curriculum Framework developed by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), New Delhi. He was closely associated with the pioneering Hoshangabad Science Training Programme. He had played a key role in planning and executing the Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE) during 1975-76, which added a new dimension in educational communication. Besides Padma Bhushan (1976) and Padma Vibhushan (2013), Professor Yash Pal has received many national and international awards including Marconi International Fellowship Award (1980), G. P. Chatterjee Memorial Award (1987) of Indian Science Congress Association (1987), Association of Space Explorers Award (1989), Lal Bahadur Shastri National Award for excellence in public administration, academics and management (2011), and Kalinga Prize of the United Nations Educational, Scientifi c and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for popularization of science (2009).

In an interview given to GAUHAR RAZA, Prof. Yash Pal talks about science education, scientifi c temper and the curiosity of the child.

Gauhar Raza: Did you think at that time that science was so essential for nation building?

Yash Pal: Well, nation building was there. But science was enjoyable. I wanted to do it and went around and did it. Sometimes you were surprised that you could actually do things that seemed to be very diffi cult and you also did things in ways which were different from what anybody else had done and you found that if it worked, it was appreciated everywhere.

Gauhar Raza: Did you consciously choose physics, which was a very diffi cult area, diffi cult in the sense that it was very new, especially nuclear physics?

Yash Pal: It was, it was new in the world so you were at the front of world knowledge and if you did something, the world also took notice right away. So that was a very

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thought that when the balloon is fl own during daytime, the sunshine is there. If the balloon is blackened and fl own, it will stay warm. It will be warm and wouldn’t crack.

Gauhar Raza: That’s because it will absorb the heat rays.

Yash Pal: So we made balloons, which were slightly dark by mixing some carbon black with the polythene. There was no problem of cracking and we got very nice balloons and very successful fl ights were undertaken. As India has a big landmass, the balloons could fl y from one place to another, travel back and forth. This gave us an opportunity of really travelling through the countryside, meeting people and that was wonderful.

Gauhar Raza: Professor Yash Pal, your education was disrupted. You picked up the threads and you did wonderful work. But you were always a rebel in the TIFR. I remember that when somebody asked you how come you are coming to the offi ce or the lab in a kurta and that you should change your dress, you had said that ‘when I signed my contract there was no dress code’. Were you always a rebel like that?

Yash Pal: Well, it didn’t seem much of a rebellion to insist that I will come the way I want to, except that I have to be decent. But yes when someone said that Dr Bhabha does not like it, then I said, ‘You please request Dr Bhabha to tell me not to wear the kurta.’ (laughs)

Gauhar Raza: As Chairman of UGC and Secretary, DST, you started shaping the country’s science in a manner where the

future was most important. But you were also very involved with schools. You still love children. How important was it for you to build scientifi c temper in the country?

Yash Pal: I wrote a little pamphlet with Krishan Kumar and others, which was called ‘Learning without Burden’. It started by saying that a lot is taught but very little is learnt because we don’t pick things out of children’s lives. It is something esoteric and we don’t make learning and observed life overlap each other. So what we wrote had a fair amount of impact. Actually what the thought, which has struck me whenever we talk about Jawahar Lal Nehru and scientifi c temper, pertains to is that whatever you do, you should be able to understand that. But understanding is increasingly going missing from thought and to the extent that anything is being taught but even the teacher does not know what is learning. The effort is not to learn but to score marks by learning. Understanding is different for every person and every child. The elements that go into understanding for a child are always different. I think that Nehru also somewhere said and I believe he is right that the real element of scientifi c thinking is understanding. If understanding is there, scientifi c input will come automatically, otherwise it doesn’t.

Gauhar Raza: That is why it is diffi cult to understand children.

Yash Pal: See, for a long time people used to send in their queries and I used to reply to them. And then after giving the reply I used to think that probably it was not the correct reply. This reply is there even in the book. This reply had

been given earlier too when a similar query was there. But this one is different. So then you realize that there are hidden questions in every question. When the answer incorporates those questions then that is a special answer.

Gauhar Raza: Why was it important for the scientifi c leadership as well as the political leadership to emphasize scientifi c temper at that time?

Yash Pal: As a nation and as a person if understanding comes, then output will come too. If we give up understanding then how will temper come? Starting to understand will automatically inculcate scientifi c temper. That is the scientifi c connection.

Gauhar Raza: In one of your lectures you said that generally society progresses but there are times when it takes a retrogressive path. Can we avoid that kind of situation for India by emphasizing our commitment to scientifi c temper?

Yash Pal: Sometimes I feel that we are not successful in avoiding such diffi cult periods. I also feel that another mistake we make is we behave exactly like those countries which are at a level higher than us in science accomplishments. They are behaving with a better scientifi c temper? Not true. Doing more science doesn’t mean that you have better scientifi c temper. You can practise little science but still have greater scientifi c temper. Often you get so engrossed, diverted so much with the beauties of science and technology particularly, that you forget that this particular bomb you are making is going to demolish (destroy) hundreds and thousands of people. This problem can affect those whose

INCONVERSATION

We studied and found that the lowest temperature, which occurs in the atmosphere, is at around 60,000 feet, after that it warms up again. And the quality (of polythene), which we were using, became brittle at such low temperature. The balloon fabric then becomes brittle like thin glass.

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technological achievements are very signifi cant.

Gauhar Raza: Professor Yash Pal, you started the science education programme on Doordarshan called ‘Turning Point’. You also conceived the programme called Jan Vigyan Jatha, which was the largest programme that humanity has ever seen. Five crore people were touched through the programme. When you look back do you think it made an impact?

Yash Pal: I don’t know. I still keep on meeting a lot of people. To please oneself one feels good because a lot of effort had been put in. Maybe they (the people) didn’t change, I changed. I think those who took part in it also changed. That’s also a measure.

Gauhar Raza: One of the evidence of the change that it brought about is that people started looking at the eclipse with joy instead of ge ing scared of it. That did make a diff erence, in my opinion.

Yash Pal: We made quite a lot of efforts to present it properly to them (the people). In those days we had got satellites as well so it was possible to show everyone the solar eclipse at three locations in India and I think that made a tremendous impact. But this eclipse programme may not have helped in the progress of science. This deals with the real curiosity of people. What is this aspect of astronomy? And you fi nd they are deeply interested. If you look down upon them and think that it is not meant for them, then you don’t really communicate.

Gauhar Raza: Communicating science in Europe has been about reaching out to people and changing their worldview and vision so that they could come closer to science. India could do be er in this area.

Yash Pal: A lot still needs to be done. And this should be done by relating to everyday life. If you think then what do you think? If you see the stars, what comes to the mind? Answers should be given for

questions. If a child is asking too many questions because he is very intelligent, then it is better to tell him that one does not really know the answers. One can say that maybe it is like this or that and when you grow up you will know more.

Gauhar Raza: Would you like to give a message to the younger generation?

Yash Pal: I think we all are equal and the message is to remain rustic and raw, don’t become artifi cially well-rounded. Well-rounded people are not really interesting (laughs).

(The interview is based on a telecast of the interview on Rajya Sabha TV as part of a series called “Eureka”. The interview is available at http://scm.niscair.res.in/videos/308/prof.-yash-pal,-eminent-scientist)

Mr Gauhar Raza is Chief Scientist, CSIR-National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources

INCONVERSATION

For example, if we work in particle physics or high-energy physics using cosmic rays then we have an advantage because we have a country very close to the equator where only high-energy cosmic rays come and the low-energy ones are bent away. So we will have a greater advantage over Europeans and Americans. And so we started fl ying balloons like they did in America and Europe.

i If hild i ki

The effort is not to learn but to score marks by learning. Understanding is different for every person and every child.