1. The Wise Don’t Compromise
Unfettered dreams
Of the tiniest chips and machines
Barely micro and nano-metres wide
A few uncompromising tinkerers had
But, in India, found themselves struggling without a lab
So they chose to build one anew
Not something that would merely do
But a Mecca for research,
nothing could outdo
Seeing which experts would exclaim, whew!
Despite the heaviest of odds, how did you?
2. Demoniacal Obstacles
You see, a nanofabrication lab this grand, doesn’t come up without difficulties
It requires features too many, some visible but most the eye doesn’t even see
Its builders must butt heads with the fiercest adversary
Nature’s demons – insidious, poisonous and incendiary
Goliaths, tamed with technical ingenuity
And flawless engineering else they wreak a calamity
Model-making at the nanoscale
If multifarious and novel, also entails
Raising an architectural bubble, the size of a whale!
Which ceaselessly inhales
The purest, primed air or things fail
Building it, necessarily, is an arduous tale
Add to this, difficulties third worldly
A scraggy chip making ecosystem and elusive money
To appreciate how the odds were stacked heavy
Against the tinkering dons of the IISc
As the Indian Institute of Science is known, abbreviatedly
3. But Les Miserables, Enablers Have!
But in their Bangalorean odyssey
They would also see
Support unwavering, from the country’s scientific brass
Who believed that the daring professors
If made the nucleus
Of emerging chip makers
Would help India turn into a research and manufacturing power
From electronic backwaters
A hair-width would fit in.
So what gifts did impish nanotechnology
Bear for the country and the common family?
A nanometer is so small
Eighty thousandth the width of a human hair, after all
What could machines with parts this tiny offer us all
And with that keep the dons enthralled?
The answers, rising like bubbles in champagne
In 2000 AD, launched the dons on this unlikely campaign.
4. Tiny Genies, Await Release
Horoscopes of the tech babe now in nascency
Measured nanometrically
Have scientific prophets agape with incredulity
With their beneficial potentialities
Among our dons, Navakant Bhat and Rudra Pratap, particularly
Are hatching chips that could incredibly
Smell, hear and see
Then analyze, report and store data instantly
With tiny hands, pump fluids, rev motors, run diagnostics
Improve healthcare, agriculture, space, aviation, you name it
But building them, even for test rides
Is a whole another cup of tea
In bare bones labs, too modestly equipped
Upgrading which, leaves them over-stressed and -stretched
Makes them even scrounge for instruments, chemicals untouched
They find that often
The only viable option
Is to rely on foundries, commercial but modern
To post their blueprints to shores Western
And wait months to a year for the prototype’s merciful return
But to do this by iteration
As researchers must, is to say the least, not fun
Restricts severely, the range and speed of innovation
So a lab at home is needed for research in futuristic nanofabrication
5. New Delhi Sees an Emergency
With the calendar flipped to 2000 AD
Let’s fly over to New Delhi
Where, not far from the tomb of Mughal poet Rahim
Who gave tininess, immortal esteem
Singing, the needle worked its wonders
Where coarse and useless, did the sword seem
A different set of visionaries
At the Department of Electronics & Information Technology
And in the Office of the Prime Minister’s Principal Scientific Advisory
See nanotechnology as a god sent second opportunity
To join the global electronics manufacturing economy
With the country’s booming middle class
Buying mobiles and smart gadgets insatiably – all imports alas
A foreign exchange tragedy is coming to pass
By 2020, the bill for electronics would even oil surpass
But with immediate steps
A cutting edge nano infrastructure could develop
Instead of plunging into a financial bog
To the winner’s summit, the country would leapfrog
Needed initially, is a research workshop
In astute ‘white papers’
Detailing steps taken by the US, UK, Japan and other nation leaders
They emphasize generating Intellectual Property
With investments in blue sky research, such as at a University
6. National Brainstorming
But destiny, waits until the year 2003
To orchestrate, a golden date
When the Indian PM’s Principal Scientific Adviser
Meets the struggling dons in Bangalore
And upon his return to the capital
Initiates a chain of events pivotal
To seed a national mission in nanoelectronics research
To give the brightest hopes a definite address and solid perch
He summons the best minds in the land
Including two of our dons, and experts of every concerned kind
To Vigyan Bhavan, to brainstorm and their opinions demand
Here, discussions make it obvious
That the pursuit of nanoelectronic excellence would best
In the hands of IISc Bangalore and IIT Bombay rest
With the lofty mandate
Suddenly changes our dons’ deprived fate
So inebriated is their mental state
That even before reaching the airport’s boarding gate
They start filling up the slate
With explorations their projects would undertake
In an enviable fabrication facility, of their own make
An adventure is to begin, over is the wait
So ambitious and overarching is to be their ambit exploratory
That not once in the 100 years of IISc’s awe-inspiring history
Has a project received such vote of confidence – scholarly and pecuniary
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