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In
Retrospective
A
person is revealed, said a nineteenth century Russian
writer, more by his lesser known interests than his well
known works. A renowned scientist & top academician says
he is fond of Keats, Byron, Wordsworth & Yeats; given
choice he would rather settle down writing poetry, doing
nothing else & may be some day he would do the same.
Unusual
it may appear, an environment scientist & Chair of Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change is passionate for poetry, for,
aren't we told science with its unflinching commitment
to empiricism & rationalism is antithesis to dreams &
imaginations, a poet indulges into. A postmodern deconstructionist
would, however, find some definite links here. The energy
scientist, when points, his institution, keen to show
the results & find solutions, went for actual implementation
projects rather than mere lab based research; he at once
brings concerns of poetry, greater common good, into the
value neutral science. |
That
science is not an end, but a means to an end. That further brings
Lyotard, another postmodernist, with incredulity towards meta
narratives or self validating claims. Science, an undisputed
meta narrative since European renaissance loses its self proclaimed
authority, once denuded of intrinsic legitimizing narratives.
Poetry thus emerges as an external validating narrative, offering
a human space of dreams & desires, where lab based scientific
innovations are tested & tried, and acquire legitimacy. Science
in turn, concretizes the dreams of poetry, and both eventually
come to hold a mutually validating & harmonious position.
With
this harmony as background can be seen twenty five years of
TERI ( The Energy & Research Institute). Striving to find harmonious
( read sustainable) solutions to energy & environment, TERI
has evolved & grown into a behemoth. With strong presence in
Europe, USA, Japan, TERI is amongst those few science research
institutions of developing world to acquire global recognition.
To
cover its journey of twenty five years, IndianNGOs.com spoke
to its Director General, Dr R K Pachauri, present Chair of IPCC,
an accomplished scientist with profound baritone, who also loves
poetry & cricket. At sixty seven, he can swing the ball & has
three hundred wickets in corporate cricket tournaments, he participates
regularly. This passion, when employed into TERI has taken the
institution to dizzying heights of research & innovation, a
non profit organization may not even dream of.
Yet,
challenges are galore for TERI. It remains to be seen, how quickly
entire euphoria around global warming gets converted into concrete
actions. A far greater policy & action play is required to take
fruits of biotechnology from few projects to one billion Indians.
As TERI looks set to step in Nanotechnology & Africa, the strategy
it adopts should be keenly awaited
Before
that in retrospective, TERI's journey with Dr Rajendra K Pachauri.
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I
begin with early 1970s, when Darbari Seth underlined the significance
of energy as an issue. Let alone understanding, there wasn't
even acknowledgment of energy then. What were the events, eventually
leading up to Darbari Seth establishing TERI in 1974?
Mr
Darbari Seth was the architect of TATA Chemicals at Mithapur,
Gujrat. That's an area, where you have no water & no form of
energy that's available commercially. He had to use his ingenuity
& ability to innovate to find solutions for the energy problem.
For instance, lot of salt is needed for running caustic soda
factories & he decided to use solar energy for producing salt
in huge salt pans.
In
every respect, conservation of water & conservation of energy,
he really had to use his mind to come up with a solution. He
realized the critical importance of energy & that was the lesson
which stayed with him. Of course, he went up the ladder & became
chairman of thirteen companies at one point of time, but well
before that he decided that TATA Group should set up an institute
to deal with energy & he set up TERI in 1974.
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He
was the founder of TERI
He
was the founder; the first chairman was J R D Tata. Darbari
Seth was the vice chairman. He was the one who actually ran
the whole organization.
From
TATA House in Mumbai.
From Mumbai. Quite right.
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TERI
was established in 1974 & plunged into full fledged research
in 1982. What were its activities during this period?
They firstly set up a documentation information centre in Mumbai.
They felt it was important to inform the public, decision makers
& researchers about all aspects of energy. This documentation
centre provided material on a range of energy issues. There
was a little unit, that was essentially around an individual
in Pondicherry, which was doing a few odd projects in solar
energy & so on; but bulk of the activity was carried out by
funding institutions in the country. It spurred a lot of activities
in various institutions in the country. By the time I took over,
they were spending roughly a crore of rupees over it.
We
started with a corpus of Rs 3.5 crores & by 1981 it had grown
to around Rs 9 crores. A good part of that was spent in funding
projects in the country. But they also realized that a research
institution can't function in this manner. Also they did not
have a chief executive. I got to know Mr Darbari Seth in 1979.
In 1980, he asked me if I would you be interested in this position
as a Director. I said I had no intention at this point of time.
In any case, I was planning to teach for another year in US.
Yet, we remained into this dialogue & he had me interviewed
by two other people from the TATA Board.
He
was very eager that I should be based in Mumbai. I said if you
really wanted to start a research institute, Mumbai was not
an appropriate place. It had to be Delhi. In any case, though
TERI had no activity in Delhi, it was registered in Delhi. This
incidentally was on the suggestion of Mrs Gandhi. JRD Tata met
her on an occasion & told about the proposed institution on
energy. She said, while you do everything in Jamshedpur, Gujarat,
Mumbai, why not something in Delhi.
When
I came back from US, I had extensive correspondence with Mr
Seth. He told that he had got a good flat for me in Mumbai.
I just stuck to my position that TERI should be in Delhi. When
I landed in Delhi, there was no infrastructure. My family &
I stayed in a room of a guest house, owned by Tata Oil Mills.
It was a small little room & my family was there with all baggage
& luggage. Kitchen & dining area was my office & I managed to
recruit my secretary for half time, as she had some other engagements
& could manage to give only half time.
That's
how TERI started in Delhi.
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That
was a very humble beginning & now TERI has grown into a behemoth.
What was your agenda when you took over as Director?
I was researching into energy ever since I got into Ph.D.. My
agenda was that TERI should develop as a think tank, should
come up with solutions to the energy problem. I really had nothing
more than a very broad vision of what TERI should be.
I
was invited to attend one of the meetings of the governing council
of TERI before I left for US. A member of the Board made the
presentation over his vision of TERI. It included hiring 12
research professionals at around Rs 3 lakh per year, including
infrastructure, secretarial support & so on. That takes away
Rs 36 lakhs. With Rs One crore as annual income of TERI, remaining
Rs 64 lakhs could be provided to various institutions & these
12 people would be able to guide that research & ensure it reached
a degree of success.
I
sat & listened to this person & said to myself, if he thought
that I was going to take over this institution & be happy with
something like funding small little projects here & there totaling
Rs 64 lakhs, he did not know what he was talking about.
My
intention right from beginning was that TERI should mark its
place on the Indian horizon. It should be able to show policies
& solutions, not merely remain an advocacy organization. We
should be able to develop & demonstrate solution. In that sense,
we are not really an NGO. I call ourselves NGRI, Non Government
Research Institute.
When
I started in Delhi, I realized the problems we would face. Our
income was not that much. If you want to set up an institution
with elaborate infrastructure, you necessarily have to raise
resources much beyond what a small corpus could support. Right
from the beginning, I told the small number of colleagues, I
collected over a few months, even though we had a corpus, we
were going to go out & get research funding for ourselves. This
philosophy has created a culture within the organization & even
the youngest person in TERI knows that you have to come up with
good ideas & must also see that you get funded for those ideas.
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What
hick ups did you face in initial years? Did you have any issue
with sponsors or the TATA's for instance?
Not really. But well, I will tell you one major issue soon after
I came to Delhi. The Department of Scientific & Industrial Research,
which on account of being a scientific research institution
gave us tax exempt status from any donation we got, decided
to discontinue it. When I went to them, they told me, all your
governing council members are full of people from TATA industries.
Secondly, where are your labs & where is your infrastructure.
How can you call yourself as research institution meriting tax
exempt status? I conveyed it to Mr Seth. Subsequently, Mr Seth
& JRD Tata decided that everybody would tender his or her resignation
& reconstitute the Board. We then got some outsiders, people
of some standing, including the Secretary to the Government
of India & so on. By then, we had rented a building in Jor Bagh
& started functioning out of there.
Then
of course, rest is history.
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Things
went quite smooth after that.
Well, they weren't smooth in real sense, we had all kinds of
hick ups on the way, but I got enormous amount of support from
Mr Seth. He tested me initially, naturally he wanted to see
what kind of a person I was, but once he realized that he could
trust me fully, he placed so much confidence in me. He was a
builder, a person, who liked to see results. When I would give
him some good news about TERI, his eyes would light up, he would
chuckle like a little boy. He & I established a wonderful relationship.
It was wonderful to have a chairman, who was intelligent, focused,
but gave you the freedom to operate.
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You
just mentioned of NGRI & not NGO. I always say the geographical
spread & thematic impact of TERI can make any MNC brand envy.
Well, I don't know about it.
I
have usually noticed small town college teachers & research
students in the field of energy do not consider TERI as an NGO.
For them, TERI is a company, may be a research company, in fact
anything but a typical NGO.
Well, nobody has called us a company. But right, we are not
a typical NGO. We are doing lot of things that NGOs do. We have
lots of rural activities, which is absolutely essential when
you are talking about policy issues. Unless, you get your feet
wet, unless you get your hands dirty, you really can't carry
any credibility even with policy & advocacy. That's why even
today, despite the fact we do have a debate on the subject,
whether we should continue it, we carry out a number of energy
audits & assist industrial units in improving their energy efficiency.
Now that's really a very routine kind of engineering function;
yet it's essential for us to provide these solutions & take
them to the field. There is no point in sitting in an air conditioned
office in Delhi & saying this is all we do, we would not go
down to the field at all. We are doing projects in various parts
of the country. This is something; I feel should grow in the
future.
You
are right, we are not a typical NGO, but we are doing as much
in the areas where NGOs are active in as any other NGO. But,
we are doing much more because after all we are a research organization;
we are at the cutting edge of research in biotechnology. We
have now developed technologies that are fetching us revenues
at significant scale.
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When
you took up biotechnology, a relatively unknown area for TERI,
what was the general reaction of the people?
They criticized this decision to go in for biotechnology, that
there was no connection between biotechnology & what TERI was
supposed to do. But I had enough faith in my colleagues & found
it worth doing. If TERI was not going to take this kind of step,
which institution would? In a short period of time, I must say,
despite the hundreds of crores of rupees that has gone into
the government institutions working on biotechnology, within
much lesser amount we have had some results, which we are proud
of.
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With
an impressive pool of scientific research, TERI can be termed
as CSIR ( Council of Scientific & Industrial Research) of civil
society.
Well, I hope you don't regard us as CSIR. I have some strong
views about CSIR. I think CSIR has outlived its utility.
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Over
the years, TERI has ventured into various areas. From energy,
sustainable development to biotechnology, microbial enhanced
oil recovery, mycorrhiza for growing Jatropha in Rajasthan;
TERI now encompasses research in areas including industry, agriculture,
rural & climate change. Is there some pattern to this evolution?
We started purely as an energy policy related research organization.
Then we went into environment, and later into climate change
because climate change is a direct off shoot of energy decisions.
We got into it in 1988 before any developing country institution
even knew what climate change was.
We
debate these things carefully within the institute & then decide
to go into an area, provided it's an offshoot of something we
are already doing.
It's
not as if we get into a completely new activity, which we know
nothing or with which we have no relationship, but yes, we have
grown into areas that you may say were not really anywhere in
our original vision. But then I think an organization has to
be dynamic. It has to look at the environment around & then
decide whether there is a justification of going into an area.
Recently
we have started some work on Nanotechnology.
This
is altogether a new area.
Well, this is where the future lies. You might say what does
TERI know about Nanotechnology. Well, we will learn, we will
find out. We have to be innovative.
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TERI
has taken several pioneering initiatives including breathtaking
researches, implementation of projects, TERI University & Delhi
Sustainable Development Summit. Looking back at it, what do
you consider as three milestones of twenty five years of TERI?
Well, that's a very difficult question, but let me try to answer.
One
major milestone, I would say was the fact that we have been
able to establish our credibility in the energy policy field.
Resultantly, we have made presentations to successive Prime
Ministers. We have been sought after by several ministries &
government departments & corporates to provide advice, and not
just in India but also internationally. I
would say, may be my joining the Advisory Board on Energy in
1983, which reported directly to the Prime Minister, was in
some sense a milestone because it brought TERI on a platform,
which certainly has helped us over a period of time.
Second
was the beginning of our biotechnology activities because that
has really given us a scientific character that I believe is
important for a research institution.
Another
major milestone which in some sense has yet to be proven as
such is the establishment of the TERI University, because I
believe a research organization, if it has to develop & grow
intellectually than it must be challenged by a group of students,
who ask you difficult questions & before whom you have to stand
& teach. A Lot of teaching is done by adjunct faculty from TERI.
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You
suggest that TERI University was set up to keep TERI on its
toes through regular questions & debates of students, affording
you an opportunity of introspection.
Well, there were two reasons. One is of course, we would be
able to give much better teaching, simply because we have a
huge fund of research & knowledge, which we are generating constantly.
There aren't too many universities, where you can get that kind
of input. You just go by text books & text book knowledge is
certainly not the knowledge of a practical professional. There
was this flow of benefits towards the TERI University.
But
in reverse, the TERI University would also offer a flow of benefits
to TERI itself in terms of what you just mentioned, being challenged
by academia & getting the inputs from academia, that would keep
our research at the cutting edge. Otherwise, over a period of
time, it could decay & could become like a consulting organization.
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I
have an observation relating to environment movement in India.
Within a span of ten years, from mid 70s to mid 80s, suddenly
from nowhere there emerged several environment movements & institutions
in the country. We had Project Tiger, Silent Valley, Chipko,
Centre of Science & Environment, Narmada Aandolan & of course
TERI. Was it a random emergence or was there some link, an invisible
but intrinsic thread running through all of these?
Well, there was an enormous explosion of interest globally in
the environment. This was also the period, when the leadership
of the country was getting much more sensitive to environmental
issues. I would give great credit to Mrs Indira Gandhi. She
certainly was very sensitive to the environmental issues. Globally,
the first Stockholm Conference in 1972 had a major impact. Then
Brundtland report came along, of course that was much later.
Much
of what happened in the developed countries certainly percolated
through to our society also. Then, we had indigenous movements,
which were really in response to some very faulty policies.
The whole Chipko movement for instance, as people had been cutting
trees indiscriminately. It takes a while for the damage & the
impact of these actions to show up. That was precisely, why
it took so long for us to wake up to some of these things.
All
of a sudden, we had so many voices coming up the surface.
That's right. That happens typically with a number of such movements.
They start very small & when they reach a certain size, they
snowball.
I
always refer this period as environment watershed of India,
a great environment divide.
You are absolutely right because that's when environmental issues
started getting into the consciousness of our society into a
big way.
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When
you replaced Dr Robert Watson, who was a passionate advocate
of policy change, as Chair of IPCC ( Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change), there were doubts whether you would be similarly
tough on climate issues. But, you proved skeptics wrong. What
was your agenda on day one, when you were elected as Chair of
IPCC?
My agenda on day one was to close the ranks & bring everybody
together. My predecessor was a remarkable individual, very fine
scientist. I have lot of warmth & regard for him, but I must
say in one respect, he probably did not succeed fully. That
was in creating a feeling of fairness & feeling of being included
on the part of all the countries in the world. Therefore, my
first task was to create a sense of belonging among all the
governments. I would listen to everyone. I gave everybody a
fair chance to express themselves. That was very important to
create an air of impartiality, a just approach to decision making
within the IPCC. Within a reasonable period of time, I was able
to achieve that.
Then
of course, during the decisions were taken, and all are decisions
have to be taken by consensus, there were several roadblocks.
I could easily have stepped back & said just forget it that
I would accept whatever people say. But, I had my own convictions
as to how to go ahead & what things were to be done. And I took
a stand on several issues. That also created confidence amongst
people that you could push this person so far, but once he takes
a stand, he is not going to resign easily. All of this, I imagine,
has been of some help for getting the IPCC to move ahead with
fourth assessment report.
That
showed the results as well.
Well, the results have been startling. I couldn't believe these
results would evoke so much interest all over the world. This
has turned out to be a remarkably good report in every respect
& the credit really goes to all the scientists who worked very
hard.
Are
you optimistic about this report on climate change in terms
of bringing far reaching policy changes?
Well, for the first time, I am feeling very optimistic. There
is a remarkable opportunity to do things. The amount of enthusiasm
& interest world wide gives us at least a platform, from which
we can initiate some action globally.
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Coming
to TERI, what is the secret of TERI's success ? What is its
model of governance?
It's a very flexible model. We are a very flat organization.
Of course, in any organization of our size, you got to have
people in positions of responsibility. But we have tried very
hard to create a culture, where everybody feels no hesitation
in going & talking to any other staff. For instance, all my
colleagues, irrespective of his or her position, can just knock
on my door & walk in; they don't need to take appointments.
I
have tried to see that this spirit pervades through the entire
organization. I also keep telling my colleagues,
don't call people in your office. Once in a while, go out, sit
at their desk & have a chat. That breaks down the barriers of
hierarchy. That's one reason, why TERI has a very positive &
healthy spirit.
Of
course, second reason is, everybody has to perform. All our
staff, including me are on a contract basis. If anybody doesn't
perform, we watch him for a while, we tell him, ask him to make
efforts to improve. Sometimes there is a mismatch & if a person
is not able to deliver, then you just have to tell him, you
better find another job.
No
room for complacency.
No. If you allow that in a few cases, then it becomes a norm,
a bad example, which everybody would feel tempted to emulate
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Nanotechnology
you just mentioned about, what is the vision of TERI for next
five years? Which areas, it is looking to spread into?
We have to consolidate. That is going to be one of our major
items of agenda. The other thing, I want to mention is we are
going to strengthen the TERI University in a big way. They will
be moving to our new campus in Vasant Kunj in three four months.
We want to project this as the University of the Future.
We
also need to consolidate on some of our research areas. We will
spend a lot more now in initiating blue sky research because
we have had some success in some of the technologies we developed;
there are several others we could develop. We also want to get
much more active globally because India is becoming a presence
on the global scene & I don't see why an Indian institution
like TERI should not. We already have presence in some parts
of the world. We need to build on that. We should start influencing
the governments & stakeholders in other countries as well. We
certainly want to go to Africa in a big way. We as Indians have
a responsibility to work in those countries, which are not quite
well endowed as we are. As an institution, TERI has something
to offer in these countries.
We are working out on these & I imagine,
by the end of this year, we should have some clear plans.
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-
Ashutosh Bhardwaj
IndianNGOs.com
May 08, 2007
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