NV Joshi - Session 05, 2023-01-08

(00:00:55) Last three years and early collaboration with faculty at CTS and CES Joshi shares that the three years since the last session, which coincided with the coronavirus pandemic, were most comfortable for him and he had no problems with being isolated. He speaks about how his collaboration with Raghavendra Gadagkar came about in the 1970s and how he was introduced to the Centre for Theoretical Studies (CTS) at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc). He talks about the work he did with Sulochana Gadgil involving principal component analysis (PCA) and rainfall patterns. He was also involved with Gadagkar’s work on the social behaviour of wasps and shares about the processes and computers used in those days. Collaboration with Sulochana Gadgil on crop modelling work continued at the Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES).

(00:07:05) Interest in the evolution of sex and the transition from CTS to CES For Joshi, it was discussions and work on dosage compensation and sex determination, along with Gadagkar, Hombe Gowda Sharat Chandra and Vidyanand Nanjundiah which sowed the seeds of interest in the evolution of sex. He adds that Sharat Chandra was most appreciative of his work. He talks about there just being a change in his formal association with CTS to CES and no other transition as such. A grant from the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) [Archivist’s note: at the time spoken about by the interviewee, it was called the ‘Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF)’, and this is retained in the summary, but the index term uses the current authority record name ‘Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC)’] was awarded to CES, and [interviewee addition post interview: being a faculty in CES,] a part of it was allotted to Joshi as well. With the availability of a personal computer, he was able to work independently given the nature of his work.

(00:11:20) Informal interactions for data analysis work and courses taught Joshi talks about being involved with the analyses of Raman Sukumar and RJ Ranjit Daniels’ work and the absence of a formal set up at any stage; those needing assistance with data analysis “automatically” came to him, even those from outside CTS and CES. Joshi shares about courses he was involved with teaching while at the Molecular Biophysics Unit (MBU), CTS and CES pertaining to FORTRAN programming, computer programming, population theory and statistics. He also mentions some professors in other departments who offered statistics courses at different stages of time. While he knows people would come to him for help in analysis their data, he is unsure if there were others in other departments who also played a role similar to him.

(00:19:38) Starting work with Madhav Gadgil, RJ Ranjit Daniels and others and involvement with others’ work He speaks about interactions with students of Madhav Gadgil- S Narendra Prasad, Sukumar and Daniels, and working on the computational part related to theoretical models of evolutionary biology with Madhav Gadgil, Sulochana Gadgil and Nanjundiah. Joshi narrates how it was upon learning about Daniels’ keenness for birds, due to an interaction between his brother and Daniels in Nagercoil, that he was able to connect him with Madhav Gadgil. Madhav Gadgil, Daniels and Joshi would discuss the analysis based on Daniels’ field work in Sirsi. Despite being invited by HS Suresh to visit the 50 ha plot, Joshi shares that he has never been to it. He names some people with whom after he had some initial interactions were able to continue subsequently with their work without inputs from his side. For example, Gadagkar and Milind Kolatkar. [Archivist’s note: David DW Daniels is Ranjit Daniels’ father whom the interviewee mentions in the interview; name obtained from interviewee post interview]

(00:25:28) Peopling of India project Joshi sheds light on the Peopling of India project, that he too was a part of, as well as others who were involved with it. He highlights the background of Kumar Suresh Singh, Director General of the Anthropological Survey of India, who played a key role in the project, and how he felt the post he held as Collector during a famine contributed to his understanding of certain communities. Joshi goes on to speak more about the data collected by the project and how using the matrix of communities and various traits upon which they had been surveyed, he was able to say which traits were similar to each other, which communities were similar, where there any groups one could speak of, etc. Apparently, the others involved with the project were extremely impressed by the points of view that Joshi brought to the table as it was something new for them. He talks about the roles played by Suresh Patil and him in the analysis of the project. He also speaks about a paper published in 1996 based on the findings and of findings such as economically well-off people having fewer children than those not that economically well off, irrespective of their religion.

(00:37:29) Current Science- association with it, changes over time and a few anecdotes Joshi mentions there being a special section of Current Science for the Peopling of India project, on the advice of P Balaram. In fact, it was due to Joshi’s interaction with Balaram that his involvement with Current Science began in the mid-1990s. Later, this led to him being inducted into the editorial board, a position he holds till date, despite making requests to SK Satheesh to relieve him from the role. He addresses how his role has changed over time and describes the process of reviewing submitted manuscripts as an associate editor. He mentions interacting extensively with MS Venugopal and Chandrika Ramesh. He observes that once online submission started, the number of submissions increased, but does not feel there was any other change as such or at least those he can comment on, based on the manuscripts that came his way. However, he adds that email submissions and manuscript management facilities have made things easier and speedier for authors in terms of uploading submissions and getting reviews. Completely enjoying his role at Current Science, Joshi feels he got a better understanding of the scientific situation in India and in particular cites an anecdote regarding authorship of papers submitted by PhD students. He also shares stories regarding two other papers that were submitted, one that had much of it copied from Wikipedia and another by a senior nuclear scientist on Pokhran. He uses the description of the latter to point out that Balaram and him would have opposing views on most issues. Even though he had an interest in statistics, unless Joshi himself was the reviewer of a certain paper, he would leave looking at statistics in it to the assigned reviewers.

(00:50:29) Collaborations and interactions with other scientists Joshi shares how it was that he first met and interacted with KN Ganeshaiah and R Uma Shaanker respectively, and that he found their work to be “most exciting” and so kept up interaction with them. Interaction with Kamaljit Singh Bawa came about when he was at CES and Joshi went through a paper of his [interviewee addition post interview: co-authored with Uma Shaanker and Ganeshaiah] on plant parent-offspring conflict that he found to be impressive and interesting. K Chandrashekara became a good friend via attending a weekly discussion group that he too was a part of. He regrets not being able to continue collaborations with Ganeshaiah and Uma Shaanker. Amongst PhD students with whom he collaborated, he mentions TR Shankar Raman and Cheryl D Nath and says he would discuss Kartik Shanker’s work with him.

(00:54:57) Chapters for National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) textbook Joshi says he was minimally involved with writing chapters on evolution in an NCERT textbook in the 1980s and names those who played a greater role and with whom he collaborated- Sharat Chandra, Nanjundiah, Gadagkar, Bharti Sarkar and Holenarasipur Yoganarasimham Mohan Ram. He specifically mentions finding interacting with Mohan Ram from the University of Delhi to be interesting.

(00:57:19) Credit on papers and collaboration with TV Ramachandra Joshi mentions spending a lot of time convincing others not to include his name on papers, feeling that he did not have an intellectual involvement and an acknowledgement should suffice. He cites collaborations with TV Ramachandra, V Sitaramam and Ganeshaiah and Uma Shaanker in this regard. It was in order to fulfil an administrative requirement that Joshi agreed to give his name as a guide for Ramachandra’s PhD degree and says that Ramachandra’s help to him was infinitely more than the help Joshi was able to offer him- a few discussions for Ramachandra’s thesis. Joshi speaks about offering encouragement to Ramachandra’s PhD students, HS Sudhira and Balasubramanian Karthick.

(01:01:24) Not taking on any PhD students, involvement in admission process and views on programmes and other recent developments at IISc He addresses the fact that his stance on not taking on any PhD students was not an issue with the IISc administration. He explains that the system was such that the CES faculty collectively had to take on a set quota of students, and so his not taking on any student would only help another faculty member who wanted to take on more students. While he was at times involved in the statistics part of interviewing students for admission to CES, Joshi had made it clear in his own interview for the lecturer’s post that he was not interested in taking on students. He shares that Rohini Balakrishnan put in the most effort when it came to admission of students to CES. He states being against the integrated PhD and undergraduate programmes and not knowing the details about recent developments such as the setting up of the medical college and hospital, but agreeing with Balaram that IISc would be in a position to contribute to clinical research in terms of collaborating, if there is such an opportunity.

(01:06:22) Other roles within and outside IISc Joshi talks about being a part of a committee interviewing nursery and garden staff giving him experience in knowing how other things functioned in IISC. Being the Chair of the National Centre for Science Information (NCSI) for a brief period in the 2000s, also, was a great experience for him and he mentions it being a pleasure interacting with Francis Jayakanth and others. He shares some details regarding NCSI, the administrative role he played and others involved with it, such as TB Rajashekar, AG Menon and KT Anuradha. Around the turn of the millennium, Joshi filled in for Gadagkar as Chairman of CES, although he was not keen to do so. During this time, he also served ex-officio on the Sálim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History (SACON) governing council, attending monitoring committee meetings. He shares how he knew the Vijayans from before. On a couple of occasions, Joshi was involved with the review of Masters theses at the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and faculty interviews and the working of the centre for mathematical modelling at Poona University [Archivist's note: Joshi refers to the institute as ‘Poona University’, and this is retained in the summary. However, the index term uses the authority record name, ‘Savitribai Phule Pune University’].

(01:13:00) Lack of interest in travelling, recent published work and other unpublished work

He shares that he has never really been interested in travelling, and so never pursued opportunities that came his way that would enable this. Moreover, with the coming of personal computers and the internet, in addition to feeling like existing collaborations he had were enough, he further did not see any reason for travelling. In terms of recently published work, Joshi speaks about collaborations with Balaram and his students, wherein he helped with statistical analysis. Joshi cites having to provide a write up for the annual reports as a trigger to come up on his own with some ideas for work that could be pursued at a later stage, stating, however, that this was not followed up with.

(01:17:16) Use of statistics in research over time Citing changes he has observed on the use of statistics in research over time, Joshi shares the availability of statistical packages and a shift in focus to Bayesian analysis and random forest algorithms. What has not changed, Joshi says, is the use of statistics in a mechanical or mandatory way, at times not even making sense in respect to the questions posed.

(01:20:29) Other interests and regrets He talks of being interested in cricket, old film songs and reading. Joshi talks about there being two things he feels very happy about, in terms of being able to figure them out given his exposure to different things, but at the same time regrets not having followed up on. One is to do with checking whether associations in mixed feeding flocks are significant or not. The second is to do with the species area curve and realising that the power law equation for it is inappropriate and one can prove it.

(01:26:59) Life in IISc over time Joshi feels he has been extraordinarily lucky in being where he has. In this regard, he refers to the opportunities he has had to interact with people from various places, for example, even a Nobel laureate, and also appreciation he received from seniors, such as Sharat Chandra. He also alludes to having had a background in various subjects and Current Science giving him great exposure to many things. He shares a quote by his neighbour from D quarters, JE Diwakar, about IISC having many things to make one both miserable as well as extremely happy. According to him, a personal decrease in interactions with others, more buildings and people and bigger hostels are changes in campus life over time, while greenery and ambience has been the same.