THE WORLD OF

DIGITAL ART
SHAASTRAMAG.ORG

VOLUME 01 | EDITION 03 | SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2021 | `199

SCIENCE | TECHNOLOGY | INNOVATION

Just
breathe
out
The study of exhaled breath
promises early diagnoses
of killer diseases.
Contents Volume 01 | Edition 03 | September-October 2021

20
shaastramag.org COVER STORY
Editorial
Editor Every
breath you
Hari Pulakkat
Executive Editor
Venky Vembu
Deputy Editor
T.V. Jayan
Contributing Editors
exhale
K.C. Krishnadas
Gauri Kamath Medical advances have put the exhaled breath at the frontlines of
T.V. Padma the effort to diagnose killer diseases, and Indian scientists and
Bishakha De Sarkar
companies have joined the global quest. Gauri Kamath reports
Special Correspondent
Manupriya
on the research and the implications for precision medicine.

Editorial Board
S. Vedantam
B.S. Murty
H.S.N. Murthy
J. Tripathy
R. Rengaswamy
K.M. Sivalingam
G. Jayaraman
H. Ramachandran
D.K. Chand
14
U. Dash
R. Rama
Time for India
Y. Shanthi Pavan
B. Santhanam
to chip in
N. Gupta The global chip shortage
Design provides India with an
Peali Dutta Gupta opportunity to fill the

18
Shamik Kundu vacuum in semiconductor
Karan Khanna
manufacturing. Guest Column

Published by IIT Madras and

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Cover Photo
Shutterstock
A ℞ for COVID-19 drugs by Harish Mysore. And K.C.
Krishnadas recounts the
The world needs to look beyond vaccines to fight COVID-19, history of false starts on
and Indian scientists are close to making a breakthrough with India’s fab journey.
repurposed drugs, notes T.V. Jayan.
28
Taking a gut check
As scientists turn the lens on
gastrointestinal microbes, a handful
of tests offers ways to assess one’s
gut and ward off disease. Manupriya
on the possibilities offered by the
gut microbiome test.

SHAASTRA | September-October 2021 1

 Contents
36
It pays to
capture carbon
Aditi Jain reports on Indian
companies and research
laboratories that are working
on innovative systems to
remove carbon dioxide from the
atmosphere. And T.V. Padma
interviews climate scientist
Govindasamy Bala on the benefits
and risks of geoengineering.
46
The rock star
Geophysicist Vinod
Gaur’s life’s work,
across disciplines,
is an illustration in
channelling science
for public good.
Srinath Perur profiles
the many-
splendoured
scientist.
Also...
03 Letter from the Editor
How we sniffed out our Cover Story.
04 News in Brief
A cheaper way to convert CO2 to
methane; How microalgae can help
with treatment of plastic waste; What
beehives can teach scientists about
acoustics; New insights into prostate
cancer; The discovery of a new
category of stars fills a gap in the stellar
transition from ‘childhood’ to ‘youth’.
10 A material finding
Fusing graphene with aluminium,
scientists have fashioned a composite
2 SHAASTRA | September-October 2021
Volume 01 | Edition 03 | September-October 2021
that is high on conductivity
and cheaper than copper,
reports Tazeen Qureshy.
12 Bright sparks
Profiles of three
entrepreneurial ideas in
various stages of evolution.
30 ‘Quality control’ in science
To improve the quality of science, we
need to bring rigour to the processes
that enable science. Guest Column by
Swami Subramaniam.
32 Electric vehicles on the fast lane
There’s a boom in production and
sales of electric vehicles, but batteries
hold the key to future growth.
45 Maintenance matters
Moonshots are flashy and may inspire
us to attempt the impossible. But
boring as it may be, maintenance
42
Waterworld
New research in India and
elsewhere is turning the lens on
the many avatars and possible
applications of ice and water.
Mywish Anand takes a deep dive
into the wondrous world of water.
High-tech art 50
Digital artists are using a palette
of emerging technologies such
as blockchain and NFTs to paint
a picture of success — and big
money. Jayadevan P.K. on the
state of the art.
is the unsung partner that
enables innovation. Guest
Column by Guru Madhavan.
54 Books
Reviews of Arthur Turrell’s The
Star Builders: Nuclear Fusion
and the Race to Power the
Planet; Tom Standage’s A Brief
History of Motion: From the Wheel to
the Car, to What Comes Next; and Kai
Kupferschmidt’s Blue: In Search of
Nature’s Rarest Color.
60 First Principles
The lowdown on geoengineering, the
world’s back-up plan to counter global
warming.
62 FunTech
Science/technology-themed puzzles.
64 TimeMachine
1971: Technology in the rear-view mirror.
 Letter from
the Editor
How we sniffed out
our Cover Story
S
HARI PULAKKAT haastra is a magazine on contem-
porary science and technology.
We report, analyse, and comment
on current events in those two
realms. Since science and tech-
nology shape the future, reading Shaastra
would also provide a glimpse into the fu-
ture. Occasionally, we take the long view
and look at a decadal horizon in technology
development. Our Cover Story on breath,
by Gauri Kamath, is one such instance.
The story grew out of her previous arti-
cle (in the July-August edition) on point-of-
care diagnostics. While researching that
story, she realised the power of breath as
a diagnostics tool. Interestingly, she found
At Shaastra, we research groups working in India are using
exhaled breath for early diagnosis of killer
will occasionally diseases. She was sceptical at first, but, tak-
look at technology
ing a long-term perspective, realised that
it could transform medical diagnosis and
development over treatment within a decade. As a magazine
that believes in the power of technology, we
a decadal time- were excited by the story’s potential.
scale. Our Cover There was more than one reason why
we made it our Cover Story. The first was
Story on breath is the potential of medical diagnosis using
breath to transform healthcare. Many
illustrative of this. diseases can be treated successfully if
detected early, but this is often difficult.
Clinical tests are also intrusive, which
forces people to avoid them. Blowing into
a device is non-intrusive and convenient
for patients. If scientists work this out,
patients are likely to cooperate. As a for-
ward-looking magazine, we try to pick up
significant trends early, even if there are
only a few people working on the problem.
There is another compelling reason
why we believe this story merits your at-
tention. It illustrates the recent change in
the Indian science and technology land-
scape. More and more Indian researchers
now work on contemporary problems,
and diagnosis using breath is a case in
point. However, since the Indian scientif-
ic and engineering ecosystem is relative-
ly small, the number of such researchers
is also small, and so India will still have
some dependence on other countries for
technology diffusion.
Elsewhere, we have stories on carbon
capture and storage, drugs for COVID-19,
and technology and digital art. Carbon cap-
ture and storage have assumed importance
in the last decade as scientists increasingly
accept that human beings may have to take
carbon out of the atmosphere and store
it away. It is expensive, and scientists are
only beginning to tackle the technologies.
Aditi Jain’s story on Page 36 describes ex-
amples of this research: one each for carbon
capture, utilisation, and storage. As the sto-
ry explains, these technologies have to im-
prove substantially to be cost-effective, but
a beginning is being made in the country.
Scientists now expect the COVID-19
virus to be endemic, and so finding good
drugs is considered important. So far,
most of our attention has been focused on
vaccines, but T.V. Jayan’s story on Page 18
shows that good drugs are a real possibili-
ty. Jayan reports on the state of drug dis-
covery programmes on COVID-19 in India
and elsewhere, and profiles the drug can-
didates that institutions and private com-
panies are developing. As his story shows,
several of these candidates hold promise.
On Page 50, Jayadevan P.K. reports on
the fascinating world of digital art. Digi-
tal artists have so far been languishing on
the margins because their work could be
easily copied. How do you know the dif-
ference between the original and a copy?
For an artist, the answer could make the
difference between a good career and a
life on the margins. The original fetches a
huge price while the copy is cheap. Till re-
cently, there was no easy way to establish
provenance. But as Jayadevan reports,
technology has come to the help of the
digital artist, and some Indian artists are
now becoming known around the world.
On Page 42, Mywish Anand explores the
mysterious world of water. This molecule
accounts for 70% of the Earth’s surface, and
is at once both simple and complex. It ex-
hibits a flexibility of behaviour that scien-
tists are still working hard to understand. It
exists in a bewildering variety of states, and
understanding the water molecule deeply
can develop important applications.
Beginning with this issue, we will peri-
odically look at the life and work of prom-
inent scientists in India. On Page 46, Sri-
nath Perur profiles Vinod Gaur, India’s
most celebrated geophysicist. Elsewhere,
our three Guest Columnists comment on
India’s planned semiconductor fab, on the
need to bring quality to science, and on
the value of maintenance in engineering.
In keeping with the theme of our Cover
Story, we hope that this edition of Shaas-
tra will take your breath away. 
SHAASTRA | September-October 2021 3
 NEWS IN BRIEF

Now, a cheaper way to

convert CO2 to methane
P
reventing carbon dioxide (CO2) from
escaping into the atmosphere by cap-
turing it is an effective way of fight-
ing climate change (see ‘Cleaning up their
act’, Page 36). This works well in thermal
power stations, where large amounts of
CO2 are produced. But carbon capture
is still not cost-effective for widespread
commercial use. Scientists have been try-
ing to reduce the cost of carbon capture. It
is estimated that the per tonne cost of car-
bon capture has to come down by half – to
$30 per metric tonne – to be cost-effective.
Coal-fired power plants use diverse car-
bon capture methods. They range from
water-rich solvents that douse exhaust
gas, or flue gas, before it is emitted from

plant chimneys to more energy-efficient
membranes that filter CO2 out.
A U.S. research team, which included
India-born chemist Jotheeswari Kothan-
daraman (pictured below), recently found
that a solvent it developed at the Pacific
Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) of
the U.S. Department of Energy could more
efficiently convert such captured CO2 into
methane, the primary component of nat-
ural gas. Kothandaraman, a chemist at
PNNL, studied in Chennai’s Stella Maris
College before moving to the U.S. for her
doctoral and post-doctoral studies.
The PNNL solvent EEMPA (N-[2-
ethoxyethyl]-3-morpholinopropan-1-
amine) can lower CO2 capture cost to
around $47.1 per tonne — from $58.3 a
tonne using traditional technologies.
The production of methane became pos-
sible because EEMPA overcame a serious
shortcoming that conventional solvents
suffered from. In a traditional solvent, the
relatively high water content made
methane conversion difficult.
The work by the scientists
appeared in August in Chem-
SusChem journal, published by
Chemistry Europe, an associ-
ation of 16 chemical societies
from 15 European countries.
What is significant about
the work is that it not only
captures CO2 but also finds
ways to effectively use it.
EEMPA reduces the ma-
terial needed to run the
When compared to the conventional
method of methane conversion, the new
process requires an initial investment
that is 32% lower. Operation and main-
tenance costs are 35% cheaper, bringing
the selling price of synthetic natural gas
down by 12%, the team claimed.
Even though different methods to con-
vert CO2 into methane have been known
for long, most of these processes rely on
high temperatures and, as a result, are too
expensive for widespread commercial use.
In addition to geologic production,
methane can be generated from renew-
able or recycled CO2 sources and can be
used as fuel or as a hydrogen ener-
gy carrier. Though it is a green-
house gas and requires careful
supply chain management,
The CO2 capture
cost using
traditional
technologies is
$58.3 a tonne;
the new method
ILLUSTRATION: SHUTTERSTOCK
methane has many applications, ranging
from household use to industrial process-
es, Kothandaraman, lead author of the
paper, said.
“Right now, a large fraction of the natu-
ral gas used in the U.S. has to be pumped
out of the ground, and demand is expected
to increase over time, even under climate
change mitigation pathways,” she said.
“The methane produced by this process —
using waste CO2 and renewably sourced
hydrogen — could offer an alternative for
utilities and consumers looking for natu-
ral gas with a renewable component and a
lower carbon footprint.”
Besides, the process offers additional
cost savings. According to the scientists,
CO2 captured by EEMPA can be convert-
ed to methane on site. Traditionally, CO2
is stripped from water-rich solvents and
sent offsite to be converted or stored under-
ground. Under the new method, captured
CO2 can be mixed with renewable hydro-
gen and a catalyst in a simple chamber,
then heated to half the pressure used in
conventional methods to produce methane.
The reaction is efficient, converting
over 90% of captured CO2 to methane, the
authors said. The ultimate greenhouse gas
footprint depends on what the methane is

can lower it to
reaction and the ener- used for. And EEMPA is capable of cap-
gy required to power turing over 95% of CO2 emitted in flue gas.
it, which lowers the
price of the methane
$47.1 a tonne. The new process gives off excess heat, too,
providing steam for power generation. 
produced. — T.V. Jayan
PHOTO: PNNL

4 SHAASTRA | September-October 2021


Enlisting microalgae in
plastic waste treatment
T
he littering of plastic
carry bags made of low
density polyethylene
(LDPE) is a serious environ-
mental concern. The annu-
al plastic waste in India is
estimated to be 5.6 million
tonnes, but only 60% of this
is recycled. Carry bags con-
stitute a good chunk of the
plastic waste left behind.
Such bags are often recovered
from animal guts and clogged
water canals, and even find
their way into the oceans in
the form of microplastics that
threaten marine life.
Conventionally, several
methods such as ultraviolet
radiation, incineration and
chemical oxidation are used to degrade
polyethylene. But these methods are cost-
ly, complicated and often not eco-friendly.
Several studies in the past, however,
have shown that microbes such as bacte-
ria and fungi could be an ally in fighting
the plastic menace.
Now, a team led by Elumalai Sanni-
yasi, Professor of Biotechnology at the
University of Madras, has shown that mi-
croalgae commonly found in water bodies
across the country can be harnessed for
biodegrading carry bags made of LDPE.
“As far as I know, this is the first study
that explores the potential of using green
microalgae for degrading polyethylene,”
said Sanniyasi, the main author of a pa-
per recently published in Scientific Re-
ports journal.
What’s the buzz?
C
an we learn a thing or two about
acoustics from honeybee
hives and implement
them in real-life solutions?
Perhaps, say researchers at the
Indian Institute of Technology Hyder-
abad, who have developed sound-ab-
sorbing panels mimicking beehives.
The team – led by B. Venkatesham
and S. Suryakumar, faculty in the Me-
chanical and Aerospace Engineering
Department – found that such sheets
fabricated with paper honeycomb and
polymer honeycomb are capable of dissi-
pating acoustic energy to low-frequency
6 SHAASTRA | September-October 2021
NEWS IN BRIEF
Microalgae commonly
found in water bodies
across the country can be
harnessed for biodegrading
LDPE carry bags.
“The microalga – Uronema africanum
Borge – that we found to degrade LDPE
carry bags is commonly found in waste-
water bodies in many parts of the coun-
try. Our laboratory studies showed that
the algae were able to break down poly-
mers in polyethylene into monomers in
30 to 45 days,” he said.
The researchers isolated the photo-
synthetic microalga from Kallukuttai
lake in Chennai. The scientists who
PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK
treated LDPE sheets with
the microalgae found that
the microorganism col-
onised the sheets within
30 days.
“With the naked eye,
we could see green hair-
like structures protruding
from the surface of the
sheets,” Sanniyasi said. On
examination, the research-
ers discovered occurrenc-
es of abrasions, erosion,
PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK
grooves and ridges on
the surface of the sheets,
which the scientists sub-
sequently confirmed using
sophisticated instruments.
“We found that the algae
were able to secrete some
sort of degrading exopolysaccharides
(complex carbohydrates, synthesised by
microbes), enzymes and toxins that break
down the polymer into monomers. While
some monomers become growth nutri-
ents for the algae, the rest evaporate,”
Sanniyasi said.
The scientists now hope to identify oth-
er species of algae that can cleave and de-
grade LDPE and are exploring the possibil-
ity of developing a collection of algae that
can do the job more efficiently.
According to Sanniyasi, a plastic in-
dustry firm from a local industrial estate
has come forward to support the team for
further investigations. “We are waiting
for the university’s approval (for this),”
he said. 
— T.V. Jayan
ranges. These, therefore, have potential
application in building acoustics and en-
vironmental noise control.
Many traditional materials are found to
be effective in controlling higher frequen-
cies of sound. But natural beehives con-
trol high as well as low fre-
quencies because of their
structure. This is because
of the beehive’s ability to convert
acoustic energy into vibration ener-
gy. Mimicking this property could
offer cost-effective engineering solu-
tions for controlling noise pollution.
According to Venkatesham, when
the researchers examined beehives in
the lab, they found that there was a 100%
absorption of sound in the 400-700 hertz
Continued on page 8
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IIT Kanpur scientists provide
insights into prostate cancer
R absorbing panels using
esearchers at the Indian Institute of
Technology Kanpur have established
that a gene associated with jaw devel-
opment in embryonic stages has a key role
in helping people with prostate cancer sur-
vive its severe form. Prostate cancer is the
world’s second most frequent cancer and
fifth leading cause of cancer death among
men. In India, too, the incidence of pros-
tate cancer is increasing.
The distal-less homeobox-1 (DLX1) gene
has a critical role in body patterning, par-
ticularly in the formation of the jaw, ner-
vous system and skeleton. The protein ex-
pressed by the DLX1 gene has ostensibly
no role to play once the organs are fully
developed. But scientists discovered high
levels of the protein in people who are suf-
fering from advanced and spreading stag-
es of prostate cancer. What role it plays in
the progression of prostate cancer, how-
ever, is still a mystery. In the West, DLX1
protein, which is detected through a urine
test, is in use as one of the biomarkers of
prostate cancer.
In a paper published in Nature Commu-
nications in September, the IIT Kanpur
scientists, led by Bushra Ateeq, Associate
Professor of Biological Sciences and Bio-
engineering, however, showed that the
DLX1 may have a greater role to play than
that of a simple biomarker.
“Some genes are highly expressed in
certain cancers but do not necessarily
have a role in the cancer development.
But we have found that’s not the case with
DLX1. Apart from being a good diagnostic
marker, it could also be used as a drug tar-
8 SHAASTRA | September-October 2021
NEWS IN BRIEF
A team of IIT Kanpur scientists has
found that the DLX1 gene may be used
as a drug target in prostate cancer.
PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK
get,” said Ateeq, who received the Shan-
ti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in Biological
Sciences in 2020.
For several years, Ateeq’s group has
been working on unravelling biomolecules
associated with prostate cancer in Indian
patients. “Our studies not only confirmed
the presence of DLX1 in prostate tissues
of cancer patients, but also showed that it
plays a significant role in the progression
of prostate cancer,” Ateeq said.
As part of their research, the scientists
probed the reason for this over-expression
of DLX1 in prostate cancer patients. They
found significantly higher levels of DLX1
in cancer tissues provided by their U.S.
collaborators – Nallasivam Palanisamy at
the Henry Ford Cancer Institute, and Colm
Morrissey at the University of Washington.
“We found that 60% of the prostate can-
cer patients harbour high levels of DLX1
protein, which drives tumour progres-
sion and facilitates metastases to bones
and other organs,” said Shakti Goel, a
PhD scholar in Ateeq’s lab and the first
author of the study.
A significant finding of the study is
that DLX1 can be a drug target. There are
drugs, currently in clinical trials, which
target molecular pathways that lead to a
higher production of DLX1 in prostate can-
cers. Ateeq has shown that these drugs,
when administered to mice, reduce DLX1
levels and the associated capacity to form
tumours. Thus, the use of such drugs can
lead to a better clinical outcome for about
60% of prostate cancer patients. 
— T.V. Jayan
Continued from page 6
range. Their hypothesis (which is yet to
be tested otherwise) is that this is because
these hives are designed in a manner to
provide a quieter environment for the
honeybee queen when worker bees are
buzzing around.
Mimicking this property of the bee-
hive, the researchers fabricated thinner
but strong acoustic panels of paper as well
as of polypropylene. The design method-
ology involved understanding the physics
of a beehive’s acoustic energy dissipation
and its structural design.
The tonal behaviour of most rotating
equipment such as air handling units in
buildings, pumps and blowers is in the
frequency range of 63 hertz to 1,000 hertz.
“We feel that this may become a comple-
mentary solution for the existing acoustic
materials which work at higher frequen-
cies,” Venkatesham said.
The team developed a mathematical mod-
el and calculated optimised parameters, and
then fabricated the test honeycomb panels.
Researchers have
developed sound-
paper honeycomb and
polymer honeycomb.
The polymer panels, for instance, were
made by slicing stacked extruded poly-
propylene straws. The slicing process is
done with the help of a hot wire, which
also bonds the straws together. The devel-
oped technology provides a mechanism of
acoustic energy dissipation with a lower
thickness and higher specific strength of
acoustic panels. As part of the project, Ven-
katesham’s team also established a test fa-
cility that measures the sound absorption
coefficient of large material samples.
The development of the technology
was supported by the Department of
Science and Technology through its Ad-
vanced Manufacturing Technologies pro-
gramme. The technology, which is in the
sixth stage of the nine-phase Technology
Readiness Level, has been transferred to
an industrial unit in Pune.
Venkatesham plans to scale up the tech-
nology demonstration, develop a batch
production machine for polymer mate-
rials, fabricate with newer, alternative
self-damping materials, and test compli-
ance with other safety requirements such
as flame retarding and weathering tests.
He is hopeful that such materials can cor-
ner 15% of the traditional sound-absorb-
ing acoustic material market for low-fre-
quency applications. 
— T.V. Jayan

Indian astronomers identify new
category of stars in transition
S
ix Indian astronomers from Bengalu-
ru have identified a new category of
stars that fills a gap in the stellar tran-
sition from childhood to youth. Astrono-
mers so far have not had a complete picture
of this evolution cycle, primarily because
of lack of adequate detecting methods.
Stars that have not yet lit up are called
pre-main sequence stars, and those that
shine brightly are main sequence stars.
After analysing 15 months of data on 225
pre-main sequence stars and 2,167 main
sequence stars, PhD student Suman
Bhattacharyya and his team at CHRIST
(Deemed to be University), Bengaluru, de-
veloped a predictive model to find transi-
tion phases between these two categories.
So far, they have identified 98 such
transition phase stars. The team’s re-
search was published in the Monthly
Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
journal in August.
“Star formation of massive stars pro-
ceeds through well-studied, definitive
stages before reaching the youth. Our own
Sun is now passing through this youth
stage,” Bhattacharyya says. Stars pass
through infancy (known as protostar),
then the so-called child stage (known as
pre-main sequence or PMS) and gradual-
ly move to the youth stage, which is when
hydrogen burns at their cores to produce
helium and thus releases energy.
NEWS IN BRIEF
Is there an intermediate phase between
childhood and youth in the stellar life
cycle? The question had been haunting
astronomers. Research wasn’t producing
evidence that stars might possess such an
unseen phase.
Bhattacharyya – who “fell in love” with
astronomy after attending a lecture series
by astrophysicist Somak Raychaudhury
at Presidency University, Kolkata – start-
ed working with some of his professors
and fellow students on the subject during
his MPhil when his supervisor, Blesson
Mathew, tasked him to search for those
rare stars in transition. He used a machine
learning algorithm that he had developed
for an unrelated and yet behaviourally
connected sector: market crash prediction.
“The randomness of the market is sim-
ilar to the randomness of the star-forma-
tion process from the dust cloud,” Bhat-
tacharyya says.
During the protostar and PMS phases, a
star is usually surrounded by thick discs
of dust and gas. This makes it difficult to
observe such stars using ground-based fa-
The discovery of the new
category of stars fills a
gap in the stellar transition
from childhood to youth.
cilities, says Gourav Banerjee, co-author
of the paper. However, an understanding
of the transition from PMS to main se-
quence phase is vital for addressing the
astrophysical aspects connected to disc dy-
namics and the evolution of a star’s rota-
tion rate. Few studies exist in scientific lit-
erature that examine and attempt to better
understand stars in the transition phase.
After the protostar phase of the stellar
evolution cycle, when the star gathers all
of its mass, it starts contracting and tem-
peratures rise up to millions of degrees
Celsius, causing hydrogen atoms to fuse
with each other and turn into helium.
This contraction stage of the stellar evo-
lution process is the PMS phase.
In the main sequence phase, a star starts
producing energy from fusion. It was the-
oretically predicted that the evolution
from PMS to the main sequence must pass
through an intermediate phase because
this is not a sudden jump. Contraction due
to gravity stops at some point and then
stars slowly evolve towards the fusion pro-
cess. This phase has been defined as the
transition phase by the Bengaluru team.
This discovery will help astronomers
fill a gap in stellar evolution. The study of
the properties of these may reveal some
unknown facts about stellar physics in the
near future. 
— Pallab Roygupta
PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK
SHAASTRA | September-October 2021 9

A matrix-shifting material
Fusing graphene with aluminium, scientists at IIT Bhubaneswar have fashioned a
composite that is high on thermal and electrical conductivity and cheaper than copper.
TAZEEN QURESHY
S
aroj Nayak was working as a Profes-
sor at Rensselaer Polytechnic in New
York State when the wonder materi-
al graphene was made for the first time.
The carbon allotrope – different physical
forms of an element – was the world’s thin-
nest and strongest material, and a study of
its properties convinced him that it might
offer a solution to several unanswered
questions in physics. It took him a decade
and a half to make a material with useful
properties: graphene in an aluminium ma-
trix that can be a substitute for copper.
Around the year 2000, the semi-conduc-
tor industry had started shifting from alu-
minium to copper owing to the degradation
of electrical conductivity in small alumina
wires. Copper was an adequate substitute
for aluminium due to its conductivity, but
it cost more. The engineering challenge was
to modify aluminium and give it properties
comparable to those of copper, but also
make it economically viable. Nayak, now
the Dean of the School of Basic Sciences
in IIT Bhubaneswar, started working with
graphene-incorporated aluminium (Al-Gr)
to find if it could replace copper.
The high tensile strength and electrical
conductivity of graphene have in the past
prompted several experiments around the
world. Soon after its discovery, graphene
was incorporated with iron and copper
to get a new and improved material, with
better properties than the matrix metal.
There has also been research on the me-
chanical strength of Al-Gr, but IIT Bhu-
baneswar is among the first to study its
thermal and electrical properties.
“When you study the nanotechnology of
aluminium, you see a lot of wonderful prop-
erties not found in normal aluminium. The
purpose of the research was to use alumin-
ium in nanoscale with graphene and study
its emerging properties. We wanted to see if
we can make aluminium as good as copper
at less or the same price,” says Nayak.
Initially, Nayak and his colleagues took
0.1-0.5% of two to five layers of nanosize
graphene and incorporated it into the body
of aluminium by milling it in a high-ener-
gy ball mill for about 10 hours in an inert
atmospheric set-up. Over time, the team
devised new methods that are scalable and
take less time. They found that the electri-
cal conductivity of the modified alumini-
um increased marginally, but the thermal
10 SHAASTRA | September-October 2021
IN FOCUS
Prof. Saroj Nayak in his lab at IIT Bhubaneswar.
Al-Gr can replace copper
wires in automobiles,
laptops, and LED lights.
conductivity increased dramatically.
The Al-Gr (5% weight of graphene) com-
posite has a thermal conductivity of approx-
imately 410 W/mK, higher than the thermal
conductivity of copper (approximately 402
W/mK). However, beyond a certain concen-
tration of graphene (over 5%), the electrical
conductivity of the material degraded, while
the thermal conductivity kept increasing.
Graphene has an exceptional thermal
conductivity, but it is quite expensive
and difficult for large-scale commercial
production. Copper, on the other hand,
has better conductivity and is stronger
than aluminium, but is three times more
expensive than aluminium.
So, IIT Bhubaneswar has demonstrat-
ed a suitable replacement for copper for
primarily application in heat sinks, elec-
trical devices and heat exchangers. Since
only a fraction of graphene is mixed with
aluminium, the modified Al-Gr composite
is also cost-effective.
“A lot of deep physics and application of
graphene has already been explored. But
this study has found that the Al-Gr com-
posite increases the electrical and thermal
conductivity of aluminium, making it bet-
ter than copper. It is really exciting. If Al-
Gr can replace copper, it will have a huge
commercial impact,” says Prof. Abhishek
Singh at the Indian Institute of Science,
Bengaluru, who has worked on graphene
PHOTO: TAZEEN QURESHY
and graphene-derived materials since 2004,
but is not connected with Nayak’s work.
Nayak’s research has opened up several
avenues on the application of the modified
aluminium. Al-Gr can replace copper wires
for some products in automobiles, laptops
or LED lights. It can also be used in several
thermal and electrical devices to produce
high-quality, low-cost products.
For example, high tension wires, mostly
made of aluminium, can get degraded over
time due to quantum effects. Al-Gr can be
used as a substitute to increase the lifes-
pan of the wires. In air-conditioners, Al-Gr
can substitute copper as a heat exchanger.
“Initially, we didn’t anticipate the ap-
plications. But after our paper got pub-
lished in 2019, some national and interna-
tional companies approached us seeking
help on scaling up our technology for dif-
ferent applications,” says Nayak.
While Nayak’s group is looking at fur-
ther applications of Al-Gr, the challenge
now is to scale up the technology and make
it commercially viable. “The challenge is to
take it from the lab to the industrial plant.
We are looking to collaborate with indus-
tries to produce and market goods that
can be used by common people,” says Prof.
Bijoy Satpathy, visiting Scientist, IIT Bhu-
baneswar, also a part of the project.
The National Aluminium Company
Limited (NALCO) has provided `2.5 crore
for the project and jointly owns the Intel-
lectual Property Rights for the technology
along with IIT Bhubaneswar. Nayak had
received grants from the Ministry of Hu-
man Resource Development as well. 
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Bright sparks
Three start-ups zoom in on water, motor and antibodies.
ImmunitoAI
Founders: Trisha Chatterjee, Aridni Shah
Year: 2020
Big idea: Using AI to identify and evolve
antibodies
Chara Technologies
Founders: Ravi Prasad, Bhaktha
Keshavachar, Mahalingam
Koushik
Year: 2019
Big idea: Efficient, rare-earth-free motor
I
n a two-bedroom flat in Bengaluru, three
men are developing a motor. And not
just any motor. Bhaktha Keshavachar,
Ravi Prasad, Mahalingam Koushik, all
with a background in developing technol-
ogy products in India, have zeroed in on
an efficient, rare-earth-free motor to be
used in air conditioners, drones, electric
vehicles and other machines.
Currently, two types of motors are large-
ly in commercial use: the induction motor,
which is poor in efficiency, and the high-ef-
ficiency Brushless DC (BLDC) motor. BLDC
motors, however, require rare-earth mag-
nets such as neodymium. At present, neo-
dymium is mined and processed mostly in
China, which means its price fluctuates with
changing geopolitical conditions. Mining
these rare-earth elements also causes envi-
ronmental damage. These factors prompted
the three men to start Chara Technologies
in 2019. The start-up is focused on creating
an electric motor that is efficient, rare-earth
free and entirely made in India.
12 SHAASTRA | September-October 2021
IGNITION
T
risha Chatterjee and Aridni Shah
met when they joined the Bengalu-
ru cohort of Entrepreneur First (EF)
in 2019. The two had different ideas about
what they wanted to do at the accelerator:
Shah was a molecular biologist and Chat-
terjee’s expertise was in machine learning
and artificial intelligence. Chatterjee was
drawn to logistics but increasingly interest-
ed in Shah’s core area — antibodies. Several
brainstorming sessions later, the two found
a problem they wanted to solve — the lack
of antibody-based therapeutics in India.
And that was how ImmunitoAI
was launched in November 2020 with
pre-seed funding from EF. They have
since raised a seed round of $1 million
from pi Ventures and other investors.
Shah was exposed to the world of
antibodies as a PhD student at the Na-
tional Centre for Biological Sciences,
Bengaluru. She worked with honeybees,
which meant she had to develop antibod-
ies for many of her experiments. Shah
Chara’s motor is an upgrade of the
Switched Reluctance Motor (SRM), patent-
ed by W.H. Taylor in the U.S. in 1838. SRMs
are not much in commercial use, possibly
because the output torque in these motors
is hard to control. The motor’s design is
such that the output torque tends to rise or
fall. Researchers call this the high torque
ripple. Conventional SRMs are also noisy.
But these problems have largely been re-
solved in Chara’s SRM 2.2 motor.
To minimise the torque ripple, Chara
ILLUSTRATION: SHUTTERSTOCK
realised how difficult it was to discover
antibodies, yet how much of potential
they had in targeted drug delivery.
Antibodies are proteins with two spe-
cial attributes: they are specific about
the targets they bind to, and they bind
very tightly. Scientists harness these at-
tributes to deliver drugs to specific tar-
gets in the body. For example, in cancer
treatment, instead of chemotherapy that
affects all cells, antibodies can be used to
deliver a drug exclusively to malignant
cells. For this, artificial antibodies need
to be designed that target the cancer cells.
Globally, pharmaceutical companies
are working on targeted drug delivery.
ImmunitoAI, too, wants to create anti-
body-based targeted therapies. Right now,
though, it is putting in place systems that
will allow it to efficiently identify rele-
vant antibodies from a vast pool.
Their first tool is called imRANK, an AI-
based platform that can scan through thou-
sands of antibodies to find the ones best
uses electronic controls to deliver current
to the motor. Current delivery should be
precise and continuously adjusted. An al-
gorithm calculates the right amount of cur-
rent in real-time and pushes it out. Recent
advancements have led to the easy avail-
ability of high-powered electronics that can
be used in these motors. That is why these
are also called “software motors”, Chara
Technologies CEO Keshavachar says.
The SRM 2.2 has innovations in motor
design, motor controller hardware and
suited to bind a target antigen. Shortlisted
antibodies are then ranked in their order of
“binding affinity”, Chatterjee says. To make
its predictions, imRANK uses the sequence
as well as the 3D structure of the interacting
antigen and antibody. These predictions are
validated through experiments and the re-
sults are fed back into the AI tool to train it.
Currently, identifying antibodies is
time-consuming and requires consider-
able experimental work. Shah says that
imRANK can help reduce time spent in
screening and identifying appropriate an-
tibodies. Also, the antibodies identified by
imRANK are likely to perform better. The
tool is expected to be ready by 2022-end.
Their second product, imEVOLVE, will
improve the functionality or binding af-
finity of existing antibodies. For example,
if an antibody is performing sub-optimal-
ly, imEVOLVE will introduce mutations
in its sequence, analyse how binding af-
finity gets affected due to the mutation,
and then predict an evolved version of the
original antibody.
Companies looking to develop targeted
drugs could use such tools. ImmunitoAI is
open to having others use their tools but
eventually wants to use them to develop
targeted antibody-based therapeutics for
diseases prevalent in tropical countries. 
— Manupriya
the algorithm used to control the motor.
Conventional SRMs are “25-30% poorer in
torque density than BLDC motors,” Cha-
ra Technologies CTO Koushik says. Cha-
ra has narrowed this to 5-10%, he adds.
The team is now in the process of patent-
ing its innovations.
Chara wants to make a range of high
efficiency, rare-earth-free, motors. It is
developing another type of motor called
synchronous reluctance motors and is
interested in induction motors, which are
low in efficiency but rare-earth-free.
Some buyers have shown an interest
in Chara’s motors. The team says an In-
dia-based HVAC company, whose name
it did not want to divulge, would soon de-
ploy Chara’s motors in its products. Cha-
ra is also designing motors for Bengalu-
ru-based E.V. scooter fleet Bounce.
Chara’s focus is on making motors as
per customer requirements. There is a one-
time design fee and Chara owns the IP. The
controlling algorithm is provided in the
form of a software package, for which it
charges royalty on a per use basis. For now,
Chara has no plans for large-scale manufac-
ture. It wants to be known as a technology
company specialising in designing high-ef-
ficiency, rare-earth-free motors. 
— Manupriya
Kritsnam Technologies
Founders: K. Sri Harsha, Prudhvi
Sagar, Vinay Chataraju,
Neeraj Kumar Rai
Year: 2015
Big idea: Counting every drop of water
T
echnology, quite like water, is om-
nipresent. But has it been put to
effective use in managing water
resources in India? This question led K.
Sri Harsha and three of his friends from
the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)
Kanpur to set up Kritsnam Technologies
six years ago.
As part of his M.Tech thesis, Harsha
needed real-time water level data from
different spots along the Ganga. As some
data was missing, Harsha, who did his
B.Tech and M.Tech from IIT Kanpur,
visited some stations where hourly read-
ings were collected.
At one station he visited in 2015, he
found an elderly man taking the read-
ings. “He was so old that he couldn’t read
the gauge,” Harsha recalls. The man also
confessed he checked the readings only
twice a day; he filled in the rest as he said
he knew how the water level fluctuated
in the river. At another station, a small
boy took the readings once or twice a
day, and then passed on the information
to his father, who had possibly been as-
signed to do the job.
“This is the quality of the data that we
are building sophisticated models on.
Unless the data is good, these models are
of no use,” Harsha adds.
His subsequent probe into how water
data is collected in different departments
convinced him that water management
was built on nothing but guesswork.
Sensing a business opportunity in re-
liable water data collection, he teamed
up with Prudhvi Sagar, Vinay Chataraju
and Neeraj Kumar Rai to found Krits-
nam Technologies in November 2015.
Kritsnam focused on building tam-
perproof instruments for monitoring
water quality and quantity. “Measuring
level and flow is the core of
water management. If you
can measure that, you can
almost budget any water
resource, from rivers to ca-
nals to ponds. So we
decided we would
take robust in-
struments that
… would em-
power water
managers with
hardware and
software tools,”
Harsha says.
This provider of IoT (Internet of
Things) solutions for water management
recently raised `6 crore in Pre Series A
funding from IIT Kanpur alumni, includ-
ing BVR Mohan Reddy, Founder Chair-
man of the Hyderabad-based Cyient Ltd.
With grants worth `2.3 crore received
from various ministries and depart-
ments including the Ministry of Human
Resource Development and Departments
of Biotechnology and Science and Tech-
nology, it demonstrated how artificial
intelligence and machine learning could
be harnessed for efficient drinking wa-
ter and irrigation projects. Irrigation
efficiency is as low as 38%, reveal official
records, indicating the need for a wider
adoption of technology in managing wa-
ter for irrigation.
Kritsnam recently ventured into the
commercial market by developing re-
motely-monitored water flow meters.
New norms brought in by the Central
Groundwater Authority have also
helped the start-up. Under these norms,
commercial entities, including
residential blocks, which
withdraw more than 100 kilo-
litres per day of groundwater,
should bring down extraction
by 20% over the next three
years. There are over
30 lakh establish-
ments that need to
install such flow
meters.
For the start-
up, clearly, ev-
ery little drop
matters.
— T.V. Jayan
SHAASTRA | September-October 2021 13

Time to chip in
After decades of delays, the reality of the marketplace is
likely shaping India’s effort to establish a semiconductor
manufacturing base.
F
K.C. KRISHNADAS
or nearly three decades, every
announcement in India of a
stated intention – by the gov-
ernment or by private players
– to invest in semiconductor
fabs signalled the triumph of
hope over bitter experience. That’s be-
cause every such ‘big bang’ announce-
ment has typically tended to end with a
whimper when the realities of infrastruc-
tural shortcomings, the absence of a deep-
enough market for semiconductor chips,
and just the overall cost inefficiencies
that abound in the system hit home.
And yet, when Tata Sons Chairman N.
Chandrasekaran announced, on August
10, that the Group was planning to invest
in a fab, the overwhelming sentiment
with which industry experts and observ-
ers greeted it was not of weary cynicism.
To many, this time, it felt different.
What accounted for this turnaround
in sentiments? For starters, this was the
first time a major Indian company had got
behind the project to establish a semicon-
ductor manufacturing facility. Second,
some of the other recent business forays
by the Tata Group indicated that its fab
enterprise was part of a larger ecosystem
it was building for itself. Indicatively, the
Group had recently ventured into 5G and
into electronics manufacturing, and semi-
conductor chips are a vital component in
both those businesses.
And unlike in the past, when ‘big bang’
fab announcements by prospective players
had not been followed up, the Tata Group
moved with great alacrity. It had even
identified a few potential locations to set
up an Outsourced Semiconductor Assem-
bly and Test (OSAT) facility, a third-party
service offering of semiconductor assem-
bly and testing of integrated circuits or
chips. The final choice of location is ex-
pected to be announced soon; and the plant
itself will likely be in place in a year.
Even before the August 10 announce-
ment by Chandrasekaran, the Tatas had
been lining up key players for the project.
The Group has brought in P. Rajamanick-
am, who had in 2003 co-founded Tessolve,
a semiconductor and solutions company,
to head the new OSAT business. Raja-
manickam, an IIT Kharagpur alumnus, is
14 SHAASTRA | September-October 2021
ON OUR RADAR
an industry veteran with nearly four de-
cades’ experience in semiconductors. “He
single-handedly built Tessolve, India’s
first semiconductor testing company,”
says Muthukrishnan Chinnasamy, CEO,
Semiconductor Fabless Accelerator Lab
(SFAL), Bengaluru. The Tatas had also in-
ducted Randhir Thakur, President of Intel
Foundry Services, as a Director of Tata
Electronics. Industry watchers see these
two high-profile appointments as an indi-
cation that the Tata Group is backing up
its stated intentions on the semiconductor
manufacturing space with concrete action.
A COMPELLING NEED
For the Tatas, as for India, a foray into
the semiconductor business is now con-
sidered a necessity. Early this year, the
Group set up Tata Electronics as a sub-
sidiary to manufacture electronics com-
ponents. It signed an agreement with the
Tamil Nadu government for manufactur-
ing mobile components, with the factory
to be built near Hosur, about 60 kilometres
from Bengaluru. Last year, the Group had
set up a medical and diagnostics division,
which licensed the COVID-19 test Feluda
from the Institute of Genomics and Inte-
grative Biology in Delhi. The Group had
also invested in Tejas Networks, a telecom
equipment manufacturer in Bengaluru.
All of these devices require semicon-
ductor chips in volumes, and the manu-
facture of the devices will be affected by
the current global shortage. The demand
for electronics devices has been increas-
ing steadily in India. According to the
Directorate General of Commercial Intel-
ligence and Statistics, India’s electronics
imports in 2020 were worth about $60 bil-
lion, and are expected to rise rapidly over
the next decade. “It is imperative that pol-
icymakers consider electronics as a pri-
ority sector,” says K. Krishna Moorthy,
CEO and President, India Electronics and
Semiconductor Association (IESA), who
There have been several
false starts on the road to
establishing a semiconductor
chip manufacturing facility
in India.
was previously with Rambus Chip Tech-
nologies and National Semiconductor.
HISTORY OF FALST STARTS
Industry insiders had foreseen this sup-
ply-constrained situation at least three
decades ago, and had made repeated at-
tempts to persuade successive Indian
governments of the merits of setting up
semiconductor manufacturing in In-
dia. For instance, in the early 1990s, ex-
patriate Indian engineers led by Arya
Bhattacherjee – the founder of Arcus
Technology (later acquired by Cypress
Semiconductor) – proposed a fab under
the government-owned Indian Telephone
Industries. It was called off – supposedly
because of bureaucratic indecision.
There were several other false starts
on the road to establishing a semiconduc-
tor chip manufacturing facility in India.
In the mid-1990s, Texas Instruments had
agreed to finance half the cost of setting
up a fab if the government put in the oth-
er half, but that offer was not accepted. A
few years later, the government sought
partners in design and fabrication for
what was known as the Semiconductor
Complex Limited (SCL) in Chandigarh,
which started operations in 1983. Motoro-
la, STMicroelectronics and Matsushita
had expressed interest, but they with-
drew because of the government’s delay
in choosing a joint venture partner and
the perceived lack of a domestic market.
Later, a fire forced the Semiconductor
Complex to be shut down.

PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK
In 2000, Teamasia Semiconductors pro-
posed a fab and design centre in Hyder-
abad, but the plan never came to fruition.
In 2004, the Indian government said it was
willing to fund part of the costs to set up
a fab, and held talks with Intel and oth-
er semiconductor firms. Again, nothing
came of them. Around the same time, Intel-
lect Inc., a South Korean company, had ap-
proached the Andhra Pradesh government
with a plan to build a $1.6 billion fab, but
the project failed to win approval. In 2005,
a plan for a fab to make memory chips for
mobile handsets and consumer electronics
products was proposed in Kochi in Kera-
la by the locally based NeST Group along
with an unidentified Japanese company.
The Andhra Pradesh government pro-
posed a Fab City (to be located in Hyder-
abad) to attract chip firms to set up fabs,
pitching to IBM and Applied Materials in
2005 without success. Intel, which had ex-
pressed interest in setting up a fab in the
country, called off plans for an assembly
and test facility – evidently because the
Central government declined to grant it
the concessions it had sought. Later, a
$3 billion fab was proposed to be set up
in Fab City by SemIndia in partnership
with AMD, in which the government was
ready to take 26% equity.
Over the years, there have been many
other reports – and, in some cases, idle
speculation – of efforts to establish a fab
in India. STMicroelectronics was report-
ed to be planning a fab near New Delhi,
although the company denied this report.
A proposal by the India Semiconductor
Association (now the India Electronics
and Semiconductor Association or IESA)
to the government to set up a $1.5 billion
fund to expressly encourage chip manu-
facturing in India by enabling it (ISA) to
take equity was not approved.
In 2006, the foundation stone for a fab
proposed by SemIndia was laid near Hy-
derabad, but the project never really ad-
vanced beyond that. That same year, IBM
and Atmel were reportedly the main bid-
ders for a new government initiative to
upgrade the Semiconductor Complex, but
that too fizzled out – in the same way that
the proposal made a decade earlier had.
All along, the framing of India’s national
semiconductor policy was repeatedly de-
PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK
Industry experts reckon
that with the right policies,
India can become a critical
link in the global supply
chain, currently dominated
by China.
layed, ostensibly on account of differences
between the Finance and the Information
Technology ministries. Understandably,
these delays left stakeholders and poten-
tial investors frustrated in the extreme.
In 2012, Accenture said it had been tasked
by the government to review investment
proposals from global technology providers
and investors interested in building semi-
conductor fabs in India. In 2014, the govern-
ment approved plans for two fabs, one by
Jaiprakash Associates (together with Tow-
er Semiconductor and IBM) and another by
Hindustan Semiconductor Manufacturing
Company (HSMC) in partnership with ST-
Microelectronics and SilTerra.
Fund manager Next Orbit is working
on a $3 billion fab in Gujarat: four years
ago, it had said it was planning as many
as three fabs in India. The failure of these
plans has been attributed to a combina-
tion of factors: lack of serious intent on
the part of promotors; the failure at the
top levels of government and bureaucracy
to act on investment proposals; the lack
of a strong electronics production eco-
system in the country; high capital costs
and long gestation periods; inadequate lo-
gistics; and the lack of a strong materials
science and semiconductor research and
development ecosystem in the country.
Over the past three decades, there have
been some improvements in many of
these areas.
One additional factor has compelled
governments around the world to secure
their semiconductor supply chains. The
COVID-19-induced supply constraints,
particularly originating in China, have
provided an impetus to these efforts. In
India’s case, those problems have been
compounded by a deterioration in rela-
tions with China following the outbreak of
hostilities in the Himalayan border areas.
OPPORTUNITY FOR INDIA
The ongoing effort to redraw supply
chains to reduce dependence on China
will likely play out over a longer time-
frame. Base-level materials are available
in India, but they need to be upgraded to
a sufficient level of purity if they are to
be used in semiconductor manufactur-
ing, says Moorthy. However, he reckons,
when that is done, the extent of value ad-
dition will be significant, and India can
export many of these items and become
a critical link in the global supply chain,
which is currently dominated by China.
India’s semiconductor ecosystem is
gradually evolving: it now comprises a
few dozen fabless chip firms, nearly a hun-
dred captive research and development
centres of global chip firms, chip design
services offered by Indian companies such
as Wipro and HCL, and one or two fabless
chip incubators. The Tata Group’s OSAT
business alone can be scaled up to $150 bil-
lion by 2025, according to IESA estimates.
The global semiconductor industry has
several Indian-origin engineers in top lev-
els of leadership. “There is a need to lever-
age the expertise of top executives of Indi-
an origin in the upper echelons of global
semiconductor firms and outline a strat-
egy to develop the overall semiconductor
ecosystem in India,” says Satya Gupta,
former Chairman of IESA. It appears that
after decades of delays, the harsh reality
of the marketplace may stir policymakers
to act on this front. 
Also read: A fab roadmap for India, Page 16
SHAASTRA | September-October 2021 15
 GUEST COLUMN
A fab roadmap for India
The global chip shortage provides India an opportunity to fill the vacuum in
semiconductor manufacturing.
T
here is much merit in the ‘commandment’
that one should never waste a good crisis. The
world is in the midst of just such a crisis, with
the semiconductor chip shortage disrupting
electronics production and automobile manufactur-
ing worldwide. This is more acutely felt because the
global demand for semiconductors has increased
consistently over the years, with the advent of 5G,
Internet of Things, autonomous systems, medical
devices, and so on. The automobile industry, which,
according to market intelligence firm IDC, accounts
for 9% of the $430-billion semiconductor market, uses
mature chip process technology, not less than 40 nm
and 200 mm wafer. Fabs around the world have not
invested much in the older process for a long time.
Industry experts reckon that the semiconduc-
tor shortage may continue even into 2023. As a lead-
ing consumer of electronics and a major automobile
market with a large manufacturing base, India is de-
pendent on imports for semiconductor components,
and is vulnerable to global shortages. India has had
a presence in semiconductor design and verification
for over three decades. Almost all the leading semi-
conductor design and product companies have estab-
lished a strong engineering workforce in the country
for chip design and EDA tools for the global markets.
Along with this, there has been a significant growth
in the VLSI design services industry in India. And yet
there is no commercial semiconductor manufacturing
in India. The Mohali-based Semi-Conductor Laborato-
ry, now part of the Department of Space, is a lab-fab
facility and is not involved in volume manufacturing.
SEIZE THE MOMENT
India’s import of electronics will continue to grow
with the economy. But the current crisis provides it
an opportunity as well. Given the country’s long-term
semiconductor needs and its potential to create a global
electronics manufacturing base, it is never too late for
India to consider becoming a semiconductor manufac-
turing destination. The investment needed can run into
billions of dollars, but the benefits far outweigh that.
Investing in silicon fabs can start with established
technology to ensure that the facility will
not be outdated quickly – and can generate
a high return on investment. Since the bulk
of the world demand is for chips
with mature process technology,
many types of electronic fabrication can
be undertaken with minimal invest-
ment. Among them are the manufac-
ture of MEMS devices; sensors, ex-
tensively used in IoT and automotive
sectors; and power electronics, which
can help in the transition to electric
vehicles and in power generation and
distribution. Compound semicon-
ductor chips also provide a good op-
16 SHAASTRA | September-October 2021
ILLUSTRATION: SHUTTERSTOCK
portunity; investing in gallium nitride (GaN), gallium
arsenide (GaAs) and graphene will ensure India’s po-
sition as a leading technology destination.
The state has a role to play a role in creating a
semiconductor ecosystem, both in terms of invest-
ment and in creating a regulatory framework. This
is perhaps the right time to make the investments.
In any case, it will take about three years to ramp
HARISH MYSORE up production lines. India has good infrastructure,
efficient supply chain logistics, and is a signatory to
Harish Mysore is
Senior Director many global trade treaties.
of IEEE India India can additionally leverage its engineering
Operations. workforce. Indian engineers now work at every lev-
el of the global semiconductor industry, and many
of them could be persuaded to return to India if fabs
are established here.
A good roadmap is to start with fabs of 300 mm
wafer size and above, capable of producing chips
with 180 nm and 130 nm or even 90 nm technologies,
and progress towards advanced nodes. Several Ra-
dio Frequency devices are built using these tech-
nology nodes today, and there is a sizeable market
for them. They can support the market for the long
haul, providing parts to automotive, consumer and
industrial electronics. They can also satisfy the bulk
of the need for defence, space, and certain special-
ised and complex hi-tech leading-edge products.
A WORLD OF OPPORTUNITIES
The Pure silicon semiconductor fabs are still the domi-
semiconductor nant area, and India’s strides in the compound semi-
chip shortage conductor world also allow it to compete in the world
is acutely felt market. A couple of smaller fabs of this kind – pri-
around the marily under government control, but with commer-
cial capability and accountability – could be used to
world because build capability in tomorrow’s technologies. MEMS
global demand facilities can be set up alongside the bigger wafer fabs
has increased to cater to this special need. Overall, there is a strong
call to set up a few facilities with all these options.
over the years. Without having a semiconductor manufacturing
base of global standards, it will be difficult for India
to attain “atmanirbharta” in the technology domain.
Besides the large domestic market, India is
midway between East Asia and Europe, both large
markets for electronics products. India has
access to maritime routes. The costs of in-
dustrial products and support services
in India are a fraction of what
they are in high-cost econo-
mies. Assured market and ac-
cess to major electronics manufacturing
clusters around the world provide the
right conditions for the success of semi-
conductor fabs in India. 
(With inputs from Dr Pradeep Jana, currently with Sky-
line Semiconductor Services and working as Principal
Integration Specialist at the Semi-Conductor Laboratory.)
 LAB JOURNAL
Old drugs,
new hope
The world needs effective drugs to
fight COVID-19, and Indian scientists are
close to making a breakthrough with
repurposed drugs.
M
T.V. JAYAN
edicinal chemist Ram Vishwakarma has his fingers
crossed. For more than a year now, the former Direc-
tor of the Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine, the
Jammu-based laboratory of the Council of Scientific
& Industrial Research (CSIR-IIIM), has been on a mis-
sion. He seeks to help develop drugs that can save the country
from a further onslaught of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which has
so far caused over 234 million infections and 4.8 million deaths
across the world.
Like many in the scientific community, he firmly believes that
vaccines alone cannot help battle the pandemic. The world needs
effective drugs that can bring down the severity of the illness, if
not cure the infection completely.
Vishwakarma has pinned his hopes on Niclosamide, an an-
thelmintic drug first developed in the 1950s. An Aspirin deriv-
ative, Niclosamide was among the two dozen drug molecules
that a COVID-19 strategy group at the CSIR had identified for
screening and synthesised afresh in various CSIR labs as poten-
tial drugs early last year. “It came up on top during the screening
along with a few other molecules,” says Vishwa-
karma, who has been among those spearheading
the CSIR initiative which was launched soon af-
Niclosamide
ter the pandemic spread in the country last year. was among the
His confidence in Niclosamide stems from
two startling discoveries made in recent two dozen drug
months by two groups of scientists – one in In-
dia and the other in the U.K. While researchers
molecules that a
at the National Centre for Biological Sciences COVID-19 strategy
(NCBS) in Bengaluru for the first time showed
that the drug could inhibit the virus’s entry
group at the CSIR
into the cells, their counterparts at King’s Col- had identified and
synthesised afresh.
lege London found it could tackle inflammation
and damage in lung cells. But both were labora-
tory studies.
Apart from Niclosamide, there are at least three other repur-
posed drugs that are in clinical trials in India. These include
antivirals Umifenovir and Molnupiravir and psychiatric drug
Chlorpromazine.
EARLY MOVER
Much before the first wave of the pandemic hit India, CSIR had
set up a COVID-19 strategy group to develop diagnostic kits and
therapeutics for the infection as well to evolve a genomic sur-
veillance mechanism to detect newly emerging mutants of the
SARS-CoV-2 virus. While the other verticals found success early
on, identifying drugs that are effective against the viral infection
was understandably a relatively slow process.
18 SHAASTRA | September-October 2021
Convinced that vaccines alone will not be able to beat COVID-19, many in
the scientific community are working on suitable drugs.
To begin with, CSIR, which has a sound synthetic chemistry lega-
cy, pulled together teams from its different constituent laboratories
to synthesise drug molecules that could be potentially useful.
“As we realised that it was not possible to discover and develop
new drugs, we decided to repurpose drugs based on the science that is
available and also keeping the pathology of COVID-19 in mind. Based
on our interactions with clinicians as well as scientists working on
drug molecules, we identified around 25 molecules for synthesis,”
says Vishwakarma, who retired from CSIR-IIIM in June last year.
The molecules thus chosen were either approved the world over
for other viruses or found to be useful in treating
viral diseases in one way or the other, Vishwakar-
ma explains. “Since we (CSIR) are very good in syn-
thetic chemistry, we synthesised these drugs and
kept them ready so that we had the drugs available
to carry out clinical trials or if any of these drugs
got approval elsewhere. If you remember, the sup-
ply chains were completely broken at that time as
the world was in a shutdown mode,” he adds.
As these molecules were prepared, they scouted
around to find researchers to test them in labs as
well as in animal models. Among the labs that were
put into use were NCBS and the Bengaluru-based
Institute for Stem Cell Science and Regenerative
Medicine (inStem). Their rich experience in cell
biology helped the researchers figure out that Niclosamide had the
ability to block the entry of the virus into the cytoplasm of the cells
and thus would arrest its propensity to replicate.
“From our studies over two decades, we know that the cell acid-
ifies the materials that it takes in and this acidic environment is
what many viruses use to promote a fusion process which allows
them to dump their ‘payload’ to the cytoplasm,” says NCBS Di-
rector Satyajit Mayor, who led the research effort. “Among the
bunch of molecules we screened we found that Niclosamide has
the ability to short-circuit this acidification process. Nobody had
identified it as an acidification inhibitor earlier.”
Apart from Mayor’s team, among those who significantly
contributed to the study were research teams led by Varad-

PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK
Medicinal chemist Ram Vishwakarma, and CSIR-IICT Director Srivari
Chandrasekhar. PHOTOS: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
harajan Sundaramurthy of the NCBS, Arjun Guha of inStem,
and Vishwakarma.
Their study was first published in preprint server bioRxiv in
December last year and subsequently in PLOS Pathogens in July
this year. The first authors of these studies were doctoral students
Chaitra Prabhakara, Rashmi Godbole, Parijat Sil and Shah-e-Jahan
Gulzar, and post-doctoral fellow Sowmya Jahnavi from the NCBS.
“Our scientists were able to capitalise on their years of train-
ing and expertise and pivot to address the need of the hour. With-
out this investment over the years and the collaborative spirit,
such an effort would have taken a lifetime to put together from
scratch,” Mayor stresses.
FINDINGS ELSEWHERE
Around the time the Bengaluru scientists cracked this, a team at
King’s College London led by eminent clinical microbiologist Mau-
ro Giacca identified some unusual features in the lungs of people
who had died of COVID-19. Autopsies carried out by them on 41 de-
ceased patients found that, in many of them, cells that line the lungs
were fused, leading to fluid accumulation, which had hampered
breathing. They found that this fusion process was mediated by the
spike protein that the virus used to gain entry into human cells. Gi-
acca’s team then found in lab studies that the Niclosamide molecule
had the ability to prevent this cell fusion process called syncytia.
“Giacca got in touch with us subsequently, and while these
studies are progressing we roped in a Hyderabad-based pharma-
ceutical firm, Laxai Life Sciences, which, jointly with the CSIR
lab in Hyderabad – the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology
(CSIR-IICT) – launched Phase 2 clinical trials of Niclosamide. The
trials launched in June are progressing well,” Vishwakarma, who
is currently an advisor to the CSIR Director General, says.
CSIR-IICT is also carrying out trials on an old antipsychotic
drug called Chlorpromazine, which is seen to be prophylactic
against the infection, says Director Srivari Chandrasekhar, who
heads the COVID-19 therapeutics vertical of the CSIR strategy
group. “The clue about Chlorpromazine came from French re-
searchers who had found that patients taking the drug were not
getting COVID-19 even though the doctors treating them were
COVID-19-positive,” he says. “But as no one there was following
this up, we thought we would,” he adds.
Meanwhile, a consortium of a few Indian pharmaceutical firms,
including Cipla, Dr Reddy’s Laboratories, Sun Pharma, Natco
Pharma and Hetero, are conducting clinical trials of Molnupira-
vir, an influenza drug originally developed by the U.S. pharma
giant Merck. Merck already has a voluntary licensing agreement
with a few Indian generic drug manufacturers to make the drug
widely available if it is found to be effective against COVID-19.
“Molnupiravir has cleared Phase 2 trials in the U.S. But a con-
sortium of Indian companies has done Phase 3 trials and recently
submitted the data to the drug regulator,” Chandrasekhar says.
“The drug is meant for mild and asymptomatic cases. But we
are pushing it because if an asymptomatic person starts it the
moment he or she is positive and prevents the infection from pro-
gressing to the moderate or severe stage, there is nothing like
that,” he observes. Molnupiravir was among the drugs for which
novel synthetic processes were developed by the CSIR labs.
Another drug for which Phase 3 clinical trials are already over in
the country is Umifenovir, also called Arbidol. The Lucknow-based
CSIR lab Central Drug Research Institute (CSIR-CDRI), together
with another CSIR lab, not only developed the process technology
for the drug but also took it through clinical trials. “This could be
one of the cheapest drugs available for treating mild and asymptom-
atic cases,” CSIR-CDRI Director Tapas Kundu says.
The drug is being manufactured and marketed in India by the
Goa-based Medizest Pharmaceuticals. “We have got very signif-
icant data. And we have already submitted it to the Drugs Con-
troller General of India for approval,” Kundu says.
Vishwakarma says that progress is also being seen in a drug
called Colchicine. This is particularly beneficial for those who have
cardiac problems. Used to treat gout and extracted from a plant
called flame lily (Gloriosa superba), which farmers in Tamil Nadu
commercially cultivate, Colchicine has been around for a long time.
“India along with an African country is the biggest supplier of Col-
chicine, indicating its easy availability,” Vishwakarma says.
The scientist foresees the use of a cocktail of drugs for COVID-19
management, similar to the one used for treating HIV. “We will
need three or four molecules together that can slow down the
growth of the virus and thus let the immune system clear it. Vac-
cines are there, but there is an uncertainty around them. Vaccines
can save you from developing severe disease, but if you develop a
severe disease you need a drug that can protect you,” he says.
Also in the works is an ambitious antiviral therapeutics pro-
gramme that the Central government is planning to launch. It is
expected to be like a consortium, with those working on antivirals
in any institute or university in the country coming together to de-
velop new drugs for diseases caused by viruses. The scope of the
programme is expected to go beyond SARS-CoV-2 but the details are
still being worked out. It may be very similar to a $3-billion antivi-
ral development strategy launched by the U.S. Administration in
June even though the quantum of funding may vary, according to
an expert who is privy to the development. 
SHAASTRA | September-October 2021 19
 Just
COVER STORY

breathe
out Medical advances have put the
exhaled breath at the frontlines
of efforts to diagnose killer
diseases, and Indian scientists
have joined the global quest.

A
GAURI KAMATH

few years ago, a team of professors

and research scholars at the Indian
Institute of Technology Roorkee
(IITR) deliberated over a few crucial
questions. Could they create an af-
fordable early warning sign for cancer? What
if it alerted only users with a high probability
of having cancer to seek medical advice be-
fore it was too late? What if it needed neither
technicians nor machines?
There was clearly a felt need. Late detec-
tion compounds many common cancers.
Consider lung cancer, globally the most com-
monly diagnosed type of cancer. A screening
method for early detection, known as low-
dose computed tomography (LDCT),
needs expensive imaging equipment
and trained staff to run it. In India,
it usually costs at least `3,000
per test. In developing coun-
tries, issues of cost and ac-
cess, and the danger of
overdiagnosis, make
mass screenings
ILLUSTRATION: SHUTTERSTOCK

using LDCT a
non-starter.

20 SHAASTRA | September-October 2021

W
hat if instead, the IITR team
wondered, all that a screening
test needed was a good long
exhale?
Their queries — and the search for
answers — led to the BLO detector, an
unassuming, pocket-sized prototype that
uses neither blood nor tissue but exhaled
breath as a sample. A user blows into it
and observes the resulting colour change
in the material inside. This is matched to
a colour sheet to detect the probability of
three common cancers — breast, lung and
oral. The device showed over 90% specific-
ity and sensitivity in an initial study at a
leading cancer hospital in Dehradun. The
inventors envisage a cost of `100-200 per
test though it is not yet final. “This should
ideally be an over-the-counter test,” says
Siddharth Sharma, PhD scholar, Centre of
Nanotechnology, IITR, and a co-inventor.
In New Delhi, Ranjan Nanda, Group
Leader, Translational Health Group at
the International Centre for Genetic Engi-
neering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), has
reached a turning point in a decade-long
quest to identify a set of chemicals in the
breath to detect tuberculosis (TB). He has
finally identified 10 chemicals capable of
discriminating between active TB and
non-TB subjects (who may have some oth-
er respiratory disease) with roughly 90%
accuracy. The ultimate goal, he says, is to
Co-inventors of the BLO detector, (from left) IIT Roorkee Associate Professor Indranil Lahiri,
put the science to work in a device that Associate Professor Debrupa Lahiri, and Professor Partha Roy, say the device detects the
can even screen people at home. probability of breast, lung and oral cancer from exhaled breath. PHOTO: DILEEP PRAKASH

WHIFF OF POSSIBILITIES
In the past decade or so, a growing num-
ber of researchers and companies glob-
ally have begun pushing hard to shape a
future where exhaled breath leads to the
early detection of diseases from infec-
tions to malignancies. It is a long haul,
but their efforts are beginning to bear
fruit, encouraging others. “The promise
of being able to mine information from
breath is massive,” says Chandrasekhar
Nair, Chief Technology Officer at the
Goa-based Molbio Diagnostics, which has
thrown its hat in the ring, too. “It can po-
tentially help pick up disease early and
fairly accurately, so it’s exciting.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has added an-
other lens, through which breath-testing
turns even more appealing. It is a rare op-
portunity for early movers to engage with
regulators and quickly deploy breath
tests. Companies working on breath anal-
ysis for cancer have smartly pivoted to
COVID-19. A few tests have reached reg-
ulatory authorities for approval in Asia,
Europe and the U.S.
“The lack of an easy, fast and affordable
way to screen people at airports, arenas and
social events has highlighted the need for
rapid and real-time breath-based sensing,”
The BLO detector is an
unassuming, pocket-sized
prototype that uses neither
blood nor tissue but exhaled
breath as a sample.
says Perena Gouma, Edward Orton, Jr.,
Chair in Ceramic Engineering at The Ohio
State University (OSU), who has developed
and published papers on breath sensors
and devices over the past two decades. Her
portable breath-testing device for COVID-19
is pending emergency approval in the U.S.
Given the potential of breath analy-
sis, “it’s important to be in this field and
have the capacity to do this,” says Anurag
Agrawal, director of the New Delhi-based
Council of Scientific & Industrial Re-
search-run Institute of Genomics and In-
tegrative Biology (CSIR-IGIB). “It is now a
question of effort and funding.” CSIR-IG-
IB is a collaborator in a recent centre of
excellence in breathomics funded by the
Indian government at the All India Insti-
tute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi.
The world over, scientists and doc-
tors are collaborating — collecting and
sifting through breath sample data and
published studies to understand the rela-
tionship between exhaled breath and dis-
eases. In parallel, researchers and com-
panies are trying a range of approaches
to convert the science into actual breath
tests. From using sophisticated analyti-
cal instruments to chemical nanosensors
that mimic the human nose, disparate
systems are being explored, and machine
learning and artificial intelligence (AI)
are being leveraged.
With huge advances in instrumenta-
tion, sensing and AI, it is now possible
to imagine a future where the mysteries
of breath are unravelled to positively im-
pact disease and healthcare. “In the next
few years, things are going to be good for
the breath diagnostics development com-
munity,” Nanda says. “There is a lot of
activity, and I am quite hopeful.”
Mass-produced, regulator-approved
breath tests for a range of diseases are
only five to six years away, says Hossam
Haick, an expert in nanomaterial sensors
and Full Professor in the Department of
Chemical Engineering at the Technion
— Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa.
Breath analysis is now “mature” enough
to begin that journey, says Haick, who has

SHAASTRA | September-October 2021 21


developed an AI-enabled electronic nose
that is being tested in a range of diseases.
Significant challenges, of course, re-
main. But, first, why breath?
THE PROMISE
In the 1970s, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry
Linus Pauling showed that human breath
was a complex gas made up of hundreds
of chemicals known as volatile organic
compounds (VOCs). VOCs are the result
of the body’s biological processes, which
can be altered by disease. Over the years,
researchers have studied the presence
and abundance of VOCs in exhaled breath
as potential biomarkers — measurable in-
dicators of disease. Some accepted ones
are nitric oxide for asthma and carbon
monoxide for neonatal jaundice. Exhaled
breath also contains aerosolised droplets
from the lungs’ lining and particles that
have non-volatile compounds such as pro-
teins, which can also serve as biomarkers.
Breath analysis has several inherent
advantages over other methods. One, it is
non-invasive. This could improve patient
compliance. “Obviously, it is easier to ex-
hale than to suffer a pin-prick to provide a
blood sample or having to provide a urine
sample for testing,” Gouma says.
Two, it has wide applicability.
Breath-testing can be potentially used to
detect a range of diseases from the infec-
tious TB and COVID-19 to non-communi-
cable ones such as cancers. Researchers
have also analysed the breath of patients
– with success – in an intensive care set-
ting to detect ventilator-associated pneu-
monia and organ rejection.
Three, disease-linked changes in breath
occur before symptoms appear, thus al-
lowing early diagnosis. For instance, in
studies, Haick’s breath analyser could de-
tect people with pre-cancerous lesions in
gastric cancer.
Four, breath-testing lends itself to the
creation of lab-independent, rapid tests. For
instance, Singapore start-up Breathonix got
a provisional regulatory nod in May to place
its breath-testing equipment for COVID-19
at a checkpoint bordering Malaysia.
NOSEY MARKER
Different gases are composed of
molecules of diverse structures. In
humans, these are matched to receptors
in the nose that send a print to the brain,
enabling it to identify a smell. However,
unlike a dog’s nose, which has many
more receptors and, therefore, a wider
olfactory range, the human nose has
its limitations. E-noses were created
to overcome these shortcomings of
human olfaction using various types
22 SHAASTRA | September-October 2021
COVER STORY
The world over, scientists
and doctors are collecting
and sifting through breath
sample data and published
studies to understand the
relationship between exhaled
breath and diseases.
Five, it can potentially aid precision med-
icine (see accompanying story: To the point).
This is particularly useful for doctors treat-
ing complex diseases such as asthma where
there are differences in how patient groups
respond to the same therapy.
In the foreseeable future, established
testing technologies will continue to pro-
vide the gold standard for diagnosis. The
value of breath analysis will lie in ad-
dressing the unmet need to screen large
volumes of people rapidly, using mini-
mally trained or untrained hands, and at
an affordable cost.
But if there is promise, there are im-
pediments, too.
TREASURE HUNT
The first stumbling block is finding the
right biomarkers. At ICGEB, Nanda’s re-
search has involved collecting exhaled
breath samples of TB patients and con-
trols (the healthy and those with other
respiratory diseases) from different hos-
pitals in the country in specialised steel
tubes and running them through so-
phisticated Gas Chromatography-Mass
Spectrometry (GC-MS) equipment in
his New Delhi lab. Nanda says there are
“critical challenges to capturing and an-
alysing breath”.
Human breath is a complex gas contain-
ing thousands of compounds in very min-
ute quantities. These are known to be influ-
enced by a range of factors such as diet and
lifestyle. For instance, eating raw onions
or drinking alcohol could lead to a higher
concentration of sulphur and ethanol re-
spectively in the breath. Pollutants in the
of nanomaterial-based sensors in a
wide range of applications. Broadly,
the sensors used could be acoustic,
colorimetric or chemiresistors. These
are capable of refined sensing in parts
per billion, for instance. An e-nose
typically has multiple sensors grouped
in a specific way with the
machine reading and
recognising patterns.
E-noses have been
used to smell out
A portable breath-testing device for COVID-19,
developed by Perena Gouma of The Ohio State
University, is pending emergency approval in
the U.S. PHOTO: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
environment, temperature and humidity
also make a difference. Toluene in breath,
for instance, may be from widely-used co-
lour products such as paint or hair dye.
These variables confound researchers
looking for true biomarkers. The “com-
plexity and the large variations in people”
mean that exhaled gas markers for most
diseases remain “obscure”, says Yangong
Zheng, Associate Professor of Electri-
cal Engineering and Computer Science
Faculty in Ningbo University, China.
His work with sensitive gas sensors and
sensing algorithms that could potentially
be used in an electronic nose for testing
exhaled breath has made him an ‘impact
creator’ at the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers, a global technical
body (see box: Nosey marker).
There are ways to reduce some of these
explosives, detect poisonous gases in
the air or toxins in sewer systems and
even in judging the quality of tea. When
it comes to breath analysis, the e-nose
has some advantages over conventional
lab testing instruments: it is portable
and relatively cheap. However, e-noses
for breath analysis are still being
developed. Efforts are on to
improve sensors and pair
them with AI for better speed
and accuracy of detection.

interferences. Subjects are asked to fast
and stay away from alcohol or tobacco
for a few hours before a sample is drawn.
They may be asked to rinse their mouths
with tap water. Taking a sample of the air
in the room to establish a control data set
also helps. Researchers use special bags
or tubes to collect and transport samples.
Nanda used tubes from European compa-
nies. During analysis, he discarded peaks
on the MS graph formed by known envi-
ronment contaminants, hospital indoor
chemicals, plasticisers etc.
In some cases, researchers have
combed through published studies to
identify a single biomarker for a disease.
For instance, the BLO detector contains
chemicals that react with a single VOC
in breath that is a product of malignant
cells in specifically breast, lung and oral
cancer, says co-inventor Indranil Lahi-
ri, Associate Professor, Department of
Metallurgical and Materials Engineer-
ing, IITR. Lahiri, who is on the faculty of
IITR’s Centre of Nanotechnology, did not
name the VOC, citing confidentiality. He
admits that there are “difficulties” in this
approach as the published literature may
often be contradictory.
A preferred approach is to look, like Nan-
da did, for breath prints or signatures. Nan-
da likens using a single marker to judging
a student solely on math scores. A signa-
ture approach ensures that “if one marker
underperforms, the others compensate for
it.” Nanda identified a panel of 10 biomark-
ers after collecting and analysing samples
of patients with active TB, non-TB and
healthy subjects from New Delhi, Manipur,
West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Tripura. He
is preparing to publish his results.
With validated biomarkers or breath
prints, the specificity of a test improves
dramatically, Nair says. The higher the
specificity, the lower is the rate of false
positives. “You really don’t want to alarm
people (without cause).”
The difficulty in finding and validating
biomarkers is one reason why there is
still a large gap between the information
available and actual tests, says T.S. Balga-
nesh, a veteran Bengaluru-based scientist
with experience driving innovation in
government and industry labs. Geogra-
phy and culture may be important factors
in breath biomarkers, requiring longitu-
dinal cohort studies in specific groups.
“Given the diversity of populations, with-
out Big Data analysis, we will be doing
thousands of (biomarker) validations and
shooting in the dark,” he says.
MANY ROADS
Equally important is how the science will
reach the patient.
It’s open season right now. “Any technol-
ogy that can selectively identify the metab-
olite of choice can be used,” says Nair. “Till
we do a lot more work on this we will not
know what the best method is.” As Gouma
says, the creation of a new breath test calls
for concerted effort by clinicians, scientists,
sensor and devices experts, and breath
analysis visionaries. “You have to identify
and validate biomarkers, create selective
sensors for them, validate the sensors with
clinical studies and demonstrate a device
that works in a reliable manner,” she says.
This is how the COVID-19 breathalyser at
OSU was developed, she adds.
Consider Nanda’s example. His lab has
expensive GC-MS equipment, an effective
method to separate and analyse VOCs. But
his goal is a point-of-care (PoC) e-nose for
TB. For this, he needs to collaborate with
experts in material sciences, sensor de-
sign and algorithms. “Initially we thought
it would be easy… But while it looks rosy
from a distance, once we get into the intri-
cacies, we realise this is a different world
altogether.” Nanda says he is in talks with
the Kolkata-based Centre for Development
of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) to design
a prototype. C-DAC has an e-nose to assess
tea quality.
A PoC testing device must be small and
portable with sensing elements that are
effective and disposable, says Nair, whose
company deals with PoC solutions. “This
puts a lot more technological constraints
on the problem.” He explains that lab-based
MS, while naturally suited for breath-test-
ing, is not rugged and needs trained staff
and a power source.
Rapid breath tests for
COVID-19 that offer hope
for mass screening
Breathonix
(spin-off from the National University
of Singapore)
HOW IT WORKS
• Breath is collected and fed* via
sampler into a portable mass
spectrometer
• Machine learning algorithm analyses
sample and generates result
STATUS
Provisional approval to test alongside
rapid antigen tests (RATs) at
checkpoints
PHOTO: BREATHOMIX.COM
Breathomix
(formed by a research group from the
Amsterdam University Medical Center)
HOW IT WORKS
• Breath is fed* into the SpiroNose**
• Nose has 7 metal oxide
semiconductor sensors for detection
• Cloud-based AI gives real-time result
STATUS
Deployed commercially
NaNose Medical
(Technology developed by Technion-
Israel Institute of Technology)
HOW IT WORKS
• Breath is fed* into breathalyser
• Proprietary smart sensor array
measures VOCs***
• AI algorithm analyses pattern
STATUS
Exploratory study in Wuhan in March
2020 showed high accuracy. Further
validation needed
The Ohio State University
HOW IT WORKS
• Breath is fed* into a breathalyser
• Ceramic sensors specific to
biomarkers generate change in
electrical resistance
• Sensor output is a breath print
specific to COVID-19
Source: Company/researcher websites
• Change is measured for a reading
STATUS
Pending Emergency Use
Authorisation by the U.S. FDA
*Exhaled breath via disposable mouthpieces.
** Integrates routine spirometry with electronic
nose technology.
***Volatile organic compounds in exhaled breath.
SHAASTRA | September-October 2021 23
 COVER STORY
After years of research, Ranjan Nanda, Group Leader, Translational Health, ICGEB, New Delhi,
says he has identified a biomarker signature for tuberculosis in exhaled breath. His ultimate goal
is a point-of-care breath test for TB that can be used in low-resource settings. PHOTO: AMIT VERMA
Molbio is considering amplifying fluo- specific circuitry to support sensing, per-
rescent polymers (AFPs), or sensors with haps quantification of results in values on
enhanced sensitivity, in an e-nose. An off- a reader and so on. This would increase
shoot of this research is Beaglez, Molbio’s the cost and the time to develop and defeat
handheld detector for explosives such as the purpose of an ‘anyone, anywhere’ test.
RDX and TNT developed in collabora-
tion with IIT Bombay. The question, says LOOKING AHEAD
Nair, is how to make the sensors selective Despite the hurdles, a future for breath-
for different compounds so as to increase based testing is within sight. The use of
the breadth of detection. Big Data and machine learning to speed up
At Technion, Haick has added an AI biomarker discovery and pattern recogni-
layer to the e-nose sensors. The AI Na- tion is on the rise. Some COVID-19 breath
noarray has been able to detect more than tests such as one by the Netherlands-based
23 disease states such as cancers, liver Breathomix use AI and cloud computing for
and kidney ailments and pulmonary hy- a real-time analysis; breath profiles are com-
pertension through exhaled breath in pared to an online reference database and
various studies. The AI nanosensors and analysed by machine learning algorithms.
algorithms were trained to recognise pat- Agrawal of CSIR-IGIB says that there is
terns or breath prints on samples of dis- agreement that Big Data and AI are critical
eased and healthy patients. for success. “But we are not at the phase
For the IITR team, a simple colorimetric where datasets are large or diverse enough
test seemed the most likely solution. Lahi- to come out with a reliable solution yet.” Ef-
ri explains that an e-nose would require forts such as the centre of excellence should
multiple inputs such as a sensing element, help generate more India-specific data.
Components of breath analysis devices in development
MOUTHPIECE COLLECTION ANALYTIC
User exhales DEVICE/ TOOLS
into this. To be SAMPLER Methods such
discarded after Exhaled breath as mass spec-
a single use. Key features is fed into this. May be trometry and chemical
could include one-way flow engineered for efficient sensors made of nanoma-
and a trap for saliva. breath collection. terials are used.
24 SHAASTRA | September-October 2021
For scientists and
companies in India, there
are challenges such as the
relatively weak academia-
industry linkages and
inadequate risk funding.
Big Data of exhaled breath gas compo-
sition would be needed to fulfil the “ulti-
mate goal” of testing exhaled breath for
several diseases on one set of equipment,
Zheng says. He adds that a “big leap” on
such testing is possible if scientists from
materials science, neural networks and
respiratory medicine work together. Ha-
ick, whose AI Nanoarray has also been
tested in COVID-19, says that with some
modification to the AI, it can potentially
serve as a diagnostic tool in case of a new
disease outbreak.
As more companies get interested in
the commercial potential of breath anal-
ysis, they will look for ways to monetise
the technology. In the U.K., Owlstone
Medical, an early mover in breath test de-
velopment, is earning revenues from its
breath collection and analysis products;
customers include biomarker research-
ers and pharmaceutical companies pur-
suing precision medicine. “We are at an
interesting cusp,” Owlstone founder Bil-
ly Boyle had said in a 2019 podcast. “The
technology platform now exists, and we
are asking where it can be applied.”
At IITR, Lahiri says that the team is in
contact with industry partners – of whom
one is keen to take this technology to mar-
ket after clinical trials and regulatory cer-
tification. For scientists and companies in
India, there are additional challenges such
as the relatively weaker academia-indus-
try linkages and inadequate risk funding.
While the last decade or more has seen
an innovation ecosystem emerge, it is
still a work in progress. Government
funding for diagnostics start-ups is com-
petitive and likely to go to solutions that
can make a big impact with a relatively
short gestation.
But it is important that the purveyors
of breath analysis stay the course. Given
the diverse factors that influence breath,
a breath test may have to be specific to
a population and/or geography. “You
may not be able to take something stan-
dardised in (another country) and expect
it to work,” Balganesh says. If India has to
benefit from a solution that checks many
boxes at the same time, it will have to in-
vest in building it. 
(Overseas researchers were interviewed over e-mail.)

To the point
The study of exhaled breath could aid the cause of precision medicine.
GAURI KAMATH
W
hy do some people
respond better than
others to a given
treatment, and why do some
experience more severe side
effects? Modern medicine con-
tinues to grapple with such
questions, especially for com-
plex diseases. Precision medi-
cine is an emerging approach
that looks into factors such as
genomics, environment and
lifestyle that could impact a
patient’s response to treat-
ment. It seeks to refine and
customise therapy for smaller
sub-groups rather than look
for treatments that work for
the average patient.
Research suggests that
studying exhaled breath could Progress in breath-sensing methods could help in personalised diagnoses
and treatment, reckons Prof. Hossam Haick. PHOTO: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
aid the cause of precision med-
icine. In 2017, in a study in
the Journal of Translational Medicine, a
team at the All India Institute of Medical
Sciences (AIIMS) and the Council of Sci-
entific & Industrial Research-run Insti-
tute of Genomics and Integrative Biology
(CSIR-IGIB) could group asthma patients
into three types based on the metabolites
identified in their exhaled breath conden-
sate (aerosols in exhaled breath from the
lungs’ lining fluids that are condensed for
analysis). These groups were found to dif-
fer clinically as well.
Studies such as this prompted the Indi-
an Council of Medical Research (ICMR) to
fund a centre of excellence for breathomics
just before the pandemic. The focus is on
respiratory diseases such as asthma and
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder
(COPD). The centre will experiment with
various techniques for breath analysis.
It has two objectives, says Anurag
Agrawal, Director, CSIR-IGIB, and a
co-investigator. One is breath-based diag-
nostics. The other is precision medicine
or gauging “who is likely to respond well
to a therapy, and who is not.”
Breath analysis that could reliably
identify sub-types and help match patients
and treatment would be a game-changer.
For instance, while elevated nitric oxide
level is globally an accepted biomarker
for asthma, a study in an Indian paedi-
atric cohort by researchers including
Agrawal found it had little clinical value
26 SHAASTRA | September-October 2021
COVER STORY
Breath analysis that could
reliably identify sub-types
and help match patients
and treatment would be a
game-changer.
in diagnosing or predicting severity in a
cohort of children with asthma.
Going forward, research needs to be
scaled up. “You need large numbers to be
followed regularly,” Agrawal says. That
is a key reason why the centre is located
in AIIMS, a public tertiary care hospital.
At IIT Madras, fluid dynamics experts
are studying the flow velocity of exhaled
breath to identify so-called turbulence sig-
natures that could indirectly help improve
the effectiveness of inhaled drugs. Exhaled
breath is pushed out by the lungs through
the extra-thoracic region (ETR) – the por-
tion between the nose and lungs, including
the nasal and oral passages, pharynx and
larynx. The physical characteristics (so-
called morphological structures) of the
ETR vary from person to person.
Researchers at the IIT Madras hypoth-
esised that these physical differences
could impact breath ‘turbulence’ or how
exhaled breath moved through the ETR.
And, further, that it is possible to identify
unique turbulence signatures that could
help classify humans. A pre-
liminary study, which also
employed machine learning,
on 94 volunteers showed this
approach to be promising,
according to Mahesh Pancha-
gnula, Professor of Applied
Mechanics, IIT Madras, and
a co-author of the study being
prepared for publication.
The finding can have two
possible uses: one, exhaled
breath turbulence signature
as a unique ID like the finger-
print or iris. Two, it may be
used to infer the geometry of
the ETR. The latter may make
inhalation therapy for diseas-
es such as asthma more effec-
tive. “In the case of inhaled
drugs, not all of it is delivered
to the lungs,” explains Pan-
chagnula. A portion is trapped
in the ETR, impacting drug
effectiveness. If doctors could
measure this loss, they could recalibrate
dosing to make up for it. But it differs
from patient to patient, he points out.
Panchagnula’s department is collabo-
rating with the Sri Venkateswara Insti-
tute of Medical Sciences, Tirupati, to bet-
ter understand interpersonal variations
in pulmonological functions. In joint ex-
periments, they have demonstrated how
the presence of radio-labelled inhaled
aerosols in the lungs of volunteers dif-
fered from one subject to another. This
is where inferring the geometry of the
ETR helps. This knowledge could be used
to classify patients into smaller groups
and their inhalation therapy dosage opti-
mised accordingly.
Progress in breath-sensing methods
too could aid precision medicine. For in-
stance, at the Technion — Israel Institute
of Technology, an AI-enabled breathaly-
ser was able to classify three sub-types of
gastric cancer patients in a large screen-
ing population of healthy and diseased,
with 100% sensitivity and 87% specifici-
ty, says its inventor Hossam Haick, Full
Professor, Department of Chemical Engi-
neering. It was also able to discriminate
between volatile organic compounds
associated with genetic mutations in
certain diseases such as the K-RAS and
EGFR genes in cancers. This could help
in personalised diagnoses and treatment,
Haick says. 
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What’s
your gut
feeling?
As scientists turn the
lens on gastrointestinal
microbes, a handful of tests
offers ways to assess one’s
gut and ward off disease.
T
MANUPRIYA
he frequent flyer couldn’t under-
stand why she faced persistent
gastric problems despite follow-
ing a healthy diet. She thought
the irritable bowel syndrome-like
disorder plaguing her was related to her ex-
tensive travels abroad, but when it persist-
ed, she got a gut microbiome test done.
It turned out she was eating too much
broccoli.
The test showed an unusually high con-
centration of microbes that thrived on
cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli
in the gut. She was advised to eliminate
these vegetables from her diet. She did so
— and the symptoms subsided.
Like her, many are testing their gut
microbes in search of a healthier life.
The traveller, for one, underwent her mi-
crobiome profile test at Leucine Rich Bio
(LRB), a Bengaluru-based start-up found-
ed in 2014 by Kumar Sankaran, Debojyoti
Dhar and Prabhath Manjappa, all three
of whom have backgrounds in healthcare
research and delivery.
LRB focuses on microbes, their genomes
and the insights one can glean from poring
over microbial genomes. Four years af-
ter it was set up, the company launched a
test that the founders claim is the first of
its kind in Asia. Called BugSpeaks, it can
tell you the names of the many microbes
housed in your gut and highlight imbal-
ances, if any, in the gut microbiome.
If a particular type of microbe, for in-
stance, is present in unusually high or
low numbers, the test will tell you if it is
linked to a certain disease, or can lead to
one. Health experts at LRB will then sug-
gest ways to fix the imbalance with diet
28 SHAASTRA | September-October 2021
MICROBIOLOGY
recommendations and the inclusion of
probiotics and prebiotics in your meals.
The advice is “hyper-personalised”, tai-
lored to the person’s specific needs, says
LRB chief executive officer Sankaran.
Sankaran was the first to test his
own gut microbes when BugSpeaks was
launched, and others at LRB soon fol-
lowed suit. His test results indicated he
could develop rheumatoid arthritis. He
modified his diet, which reduced the
number of gut microbes that could in-
crease his risk for rheumatoid arthritis.
By mid-2018, the test was available to
the public. The process of testing is sim-
ple: a stool sample is collected and tested,
the microbial composition in the sample
is analysed via sequencing, and finally
gut health is measured based on the di-
versity of microbes present in the sample.
The test results contain a gut health
score that can range from -5 to +5. The more
positive the score, the better is a person’s
gut health. The test results also provide a
risk prediction for 16 diseases, including
diabetes, hypertension, inflammatory bow-
els, rheumatoid arthritis and depression.
The BugSpeaks team has filed a patent
for its gut health scoring system and for
the process used in analysing microbial
diversity. It claims to have information
on 200,000 species of microbes in its da-
tabase, which includes not just bacteria
but also viruses and fungi. Sankaran
The gut microbiome test
results provide a risk
prediction for 16 diseases.
ILLUSTRATION: SHUTTERSTOCK
describes the gut health measurement
system as “technically robust”, “trained
on Indian populations”, and reliant on a
“huge microbiome dataset”.
Gut microbiome is the sum total of the ge-
nomes of all the bacteria, viruses and fungi
living in one’s gut. The gut has trillions of
tiny microbes; according to a 2016 estimate,
an average human gut hosts some 3.8x1013
bacteria. Their number is roughly equal to
the number of cells in a human body, and
their total mass is about 0.2 kg.
Studies have also shown that the mi-
crobes together harbour several times
more genes than the human genome and
play an important role in maintaining a
person’s physical and mental health.
THE INDIAN GUT
Research on the gut microbiome of Indi-
ans has been growing in the last decade
or so, with studies focusing on the type of
microbes, how they affect people’s health,
and how different they are from those in
the gut of people from other regions. For
example, researchers from the Transla-
tional Health Science and Technology
Institute (THSTI), Faridabad, and their
colleagues found that the types of bacte-
ria and fungus found in Indians vastly
differed from those seen in people from
Japan. The Indian gut showed an abun-
dance of the bacterium Prevotella and fun-
gus Candida; the gut of Japanese people
was abundant in the Bacteroides bacteria
and the Saccharomyces fungus.
Several other studies have reported the
dominance of Prevotella in Indians. A 2016
meta-analysis by researchers from Pune
and Delhi said the “distinctive feature” of
the Indian gut microbiome was the abun-
dance of “Prevotella and Megasphaera”.
The 2018 study Landscape Of Gut Micro-
biome – Pan-India Exploration found 993
unique micro-organisms across the In-
dian microbiome and the dominance of
Prevotella followed by Faecalibacterium.
Diets clearly have an impact on the kind
of microbes that thrive in one’s gut. The
dominance of Prevotella is most likely be-
cause Indian diets are rich in plant-based
carbohydrates, points out Bhabatosh Das,
Associate Professor, THSTI. Studies also
found clusters of potentially pathogen-
ic microbes in the gut of severely mal-
nourished children in India.
Scientists are looking at how
the information about the mi-
crobes may be used to probe gut
health. Researchers at Life Sci-
ences R&D, TCS Research, Tata
Consultancy Services (TCS),
recently came up with an in sil-
ico tool named GutFeel, which
looks not at the composition of
microbes in the gut but at their
functions. The TCS scientists believe that
different microbes can perform the same
functions in different individuals. So,
instead of looking for just differences in
types of microbes, GutFeel focuses on the
diversity in the functional potential of the
microbes and uses that information to as-
sess gut health.
Even though understanding of the In-
dian microbiome has improved in the
last decade, there is a lot that is still not
known, largely because of the diversity in
diets and environment in India. Take, for
example, people from Assam’s Mishing
tribe. The dominant gut microbe among
them is the Succinivibrio bacteria.
“This is highly unusual,” says Mojibur
Khan, Associate Professor at the Institute
of Advanced Study in Science and Technol-
ogy (IASST), Guwahati, who has
been studying gut microbes in
different ethnic populations
across the north-eastern re-
gion in India.
Globally, scientists recog-
nise three different gut cate-
gories called enterotypes. Each
category is dominated by a
specific type of bacteria:
Prevotella, Bacteroides, or
Ruminococcus. But the
Mishing tribespeople
do not fall in any of the
three categories. Khan
says the most domi-
nant microbe in their
gut, constituting more
than 30% of the total gut
microbial population, is
the Succinivibrio bacteria.
In 2014, Prabhath Manjappa, Debojyoti Dhar and Kumar Sankaran founded Leucine Rich Bio, a
Bengaluru-based start-up that focuses on microbes and their genomes. PHOTOS: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
Some scientists think
that microbiome
research is still in
its nascent stages
in India and there
is not enough data
for the production of
diagnostic tests.
“Though we have a long way to go be-
fore we can say that we understand the
baseline gut microbiome of Indians, I am
optimistic about the potential of microbi-
ome research,” Khan adds.
Khan is working on another area of
microbiome research where he and his
colleagues are trying to develop a micro-
biome-based diagnostic test for fatty liver
disease. They have observed that the pres-
ence of two types of gut bacteria – Klebsiella
and Enterococcus – indicates the initiation
of liver disease and are using this informa-
tion and other findings to develop a diag-
nostic kit for early detection of fatty liver
disease. They have filed a patent for their
diagnostic technology and once the pat-
ent comes through, they plan to bring out
the diagnostic kit through GUTVicinta, a
start-up incubated at IASST Social Ven-
ture & Entrepreneurship Consortium.
However, a key step before that
would be to get an approval from the
Indian Council of Medical Research or
the Drugs Controller General of In-
dia, Khan points out. He stresses
that all microbial diagnostic
tests should be approved by
a regulatory body and only
be prescribed by a doctor
who can also provide ac-
tionable solutions after
looking at the test report.
Some scientists also
think that microbiome
Mojibur Khan has been
studying gut microbes in
ethnic populations in the
North-East.
PHOTO: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
LRC claims that its microbiome profile test
BugSpeaks, which identifies microbes in the
gut and highlights imbalances, is the first test
of its kind in Asia. PHOTO: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
research is still in its nascent stages in
India and there is not enough data for the
production of diagnostic tests. “It is not
the right time to introduce such tests as
data are not substantial (enough) to ex-
trapolate it for commercial applications,”
says Rupjyoti Talukdar, Head, Pancreas
Research Group and Division of Gut Mi-
crobiome Research, Asian Healthcare
Foundation, Hyderabad. “Just taking a
healthy, traditional and balanced diet
could potentially maintain a good micro-
biome, even without testing,” he adds.
Despite the reservations researchers
might have, direct-to-consumer micro-
biome-based tests are becoming more
accessible. In 2019, Bione, a Bengalu-
ru-based start-up, began selling a di-
rect-to-consumer microbiome test called
MyMicroBiome. The test, as well as Bug-
Speaks, can be ordered online from their
respective websites.
“Roughly 2,000 people have taken the
BugSpeaks test,” Sankaran says. He cites
the case of the frequent traveller as among
those who have benefited from it, and also
gives the example of a person who was
prone to depression. The microbiome
profile showed an excess of fungal popu-
lation — double the usual quantity, which
is 10% of the total microbiome in an aver-
age Indian gut. The person was then put
on a dietary correction programme, after
which the episodes of depression reduced.
The tests are priced at around `10,000, but
curiosity about what lies in the gut — along
with easy access to such tests — is likely to
ramp up the demand for microbiome profil-
ing. It is, indeed, the inside story. 
SHAASTRA | September-October 2021 29
 GUEST COLUMN
Towards Six Sigma science
To improve the quality of science, we need to bring rigour to the
processes that enable science.
R
ejection rates for research papers submitted
to top science journals are as high as 80-95%,
according to a 2018 analysis of 400 papers sub-
mitted to the Journal of Obstetrics and Gyne-
cology of India. The top three reasons cited for rejec-
tion were “poor methodology”, “no new information”
and “poor scientific content”. This may suggest that
the effort to keep published content pristine is work-
ing well. But it could also point to poor quality of sci-
ence research. This is a problem.
Global spending on R&D is at a record $1.7 trillion.
In India, taxpayers fund R&D to the tune of $30 billion.
If much of this spending results in output that jour-
nals find unacceptable, it is a matter of concern. That
is compounded by the lack of reproducibility of pub-
lished science: as a 2018 paper in the National Science
Review notes, in cancer biology, almost 90% of results
published were not reproducible. It is disturbing that
even science that has been through the gauntlet of
peer review can be so unreliable. Self-corrective mech-
anisms in science may fix this problem sooner or later.
But there is a period during which the findings
of a flawed study can cascade through
the scientific community, spawning
generations of research studies that
are congenitally flawed.
One measure of evaluating science
quality is the number of citations a
published paper receives. A high
citation score reflects the con-
temporary relevance of the work
– and peers’ opinion on the signif-
icance and reliability of the report-
ed results. It is a subjective metric
that is heavily influenced by the
gloss of the author’s seniority
and popular standing. Further-
more, a citation score is generat-
ed post-hoc: it does nothing to ensure the
quality of research.
THE ‘SCIENTIFIC METHOD’
To improve science research output, we must inter-
vene in the manner of its production: the scientific
process itself. The ‘scientific method’ has defined
the principles to be followed in scientific research,
but this is mostly a folksy, cottage industry-style ap-
proach that has remained untouched by quality con-
trol developments in other sectors. Quality became
an aspirational standard for the manufacturing sec-
tor in the latter half of the 20th century. The efforts
of people like W. Edwards Deming elevated quality to
totemic levels for the global automobile sector. Tools
for process improvement, such as the Six Sigma stan-
dard, have been widely adopted.
Some scientists may recoil in horror at the men-
tion of process improvement and science, perhaps
owing to a misperception that toning up the process
30 SHAASTRA | September-October 2021
of science will abridge freedom and creativity. At one
level, science is not a commodity; scientific research
is about charting a course with no prior knowledge
of the destination. But the process of science is a
well-understood commodity, with good experimental
design, proper controls, robust statistics, and logical
reasoning. The journey of science may be unpredict-
able, but that is all the more reason why the ship on
SWAMI which scientists embark on this journey, and the
SUBRAMANIAM tools of navigation they use (the scientific method),
A clinical should be certifiably sea-worthy.
pharmacologist To improve the quality of science, we need to bring
and neuroscientist, rigour to the processes that enable science. As with the
Dr Swami
Subramaniam is
industrial process, the scientific process can be broken
CEO of Ignite Life down into its components and each component studied
Science Foundation. for ways to ensure better quality. The backbone of this
will continue to be the peer review, where senior scien-
tists with proven track records sit in judgement over
the quality of science. But the peer review process can
be systematised. For example, checking and validating
the experimental design and the use of controls must
be made mandatory for all reviews. Likewise, the
statistical analysis proposed must be
appropriate. Just as companies run
simulations on processes before de-
ployment, outcomes of experiments
can be anticipated so that the analysis
and interpretation can be tested for ro-
bustness before the real experiment gets
under way. The funding process can be
improved by shifting the focus from the
bureaucratic accounting and financial
aspects of the project to an evaluation
of the quality of ideation and experimen-
tal approach proposed.
One of the bugbears of the peer review
process is the scarcity of scientists will-
ing to commit time and effort to the
review process, given that reviewers
are not adequately compensated. But if we are to get
leading scientists to give quality attention to peer re-
ILLUSTRATION: SHUTTERSTOCK
views, some system of compensation – in cash or kind
– must be worked out. Peer reviewers should also be
trained and certified in the review process so that they
The ‘scientific can give balanced attention to all aspects of the propos-
method’, which al rather than being influenced by their own biases.
has defined HARNESSING ‘METASCIENCE’
the principles It is time to put metascience – the use of scientific
to be followed methodology to study science in order to improve its
in scientific quality – to good use. Given the pivotal role that sci-
ence has to play in the success of nations, the scientif-
research, will ic enterprise must be improved. As the physician-sci-
be improved by entist John Ioannidis put it, “Science is the best thing
the infusion of that has happened to human beings... but we can do it
better.” India does not have a choice. As an emerging
‘quality control’ nation aspiring to be a leader in science, we have to
parameters. do science better.
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howindialives.com is a database and search engine for public data

The Context
Global sales of electric 8
Global electric vehicle sales (million)

vehicles are tipped to

grow 5-fold in 5 years 6
E.V. sales have boomed in the past 10 years globally,
from 125,000 units in 2012 to 3.24 million in 2020.
Sales are expected to almost double in 2021. 4
While China leads the E.V. market, Europe and
the U.S. have seen significant growth. India’s E.V.
prospects look bright across categories, especially
in two-wheelers. When ride-sharing company Ola 2
announced in July it was launching an electric two-
wheeler, it received 100,000 bookings in 24 hours.
Government data shows that about 120,000 electric 0
vehicles were registered in 2020. 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
Note: 2021 figures are estimates; Source: ev-volume.com

India’s battery capacity requirement by 2035 (Gigawatt hours)

India could need
3,400 GWh of
batteries for
electric vehicles
by 2035
With the growth in E.Vs, the demand
for batteries is set to grow. Analysts
from the International Council on
Clean Transportation, in a working
paper, estimate that if E.V. adoption
takes off, India will need about
3,400-4,100 Gigawatt hour batteries
for its E.Vs by 2035. While E.V. plants
2020

2021

2022

2023

2024

2025

2026

2027

2028

2029

2030

2031

2032

2033

2034

2035

are coming up across the country,

30 @ 30 scenario* Ambitious scenario*
* EV30@30 global initiative targets a 30% new sales share for electric vehicles by 2030. Under the ambitious scenario, the targets are
India is heavily dependent on imports
higher in select segments, notably 75% for two-wheelers and three-wheelers. Source: International Council On Clean Transportation for battery supplies.

32 SHAASTRA | September-October 2021

The Challenges
Batteries account for 40% of the cost of an electric vehicle
Many experts believe India should set up giga factories for batteries because they are the critical component in E.Vs, accounting
for about 40% of total costs. To win the E.V. game, India has to win the battery game too. And given the centrality of the battery in
the cost equation, the prime question is: how to lower the cost of a battery?

Non- Vehicle
powertrain interface
components control Power
39.9% 3% electronics
7%
Electric
drive
Battery
40.2% 10%

Source: Status Quo Analysis of Various Segments of Electric Mobility and Low Carbon Passenger Road Transport in India, GIZ

Battery prices have dropped to a fifth of Driving range of

2013 prices, but need to fall further electric vehicles is
Right now, investments into giga factories for batteries are concentrated in China.
Beyond China, manufacturing capacity is spreading to Europe and the U.S. Heavy lower than desired
investments made in China have already brought down battery prices, bringing the
total cost of ownership of E.Vs closer to vehicles running on conventional fuels. This
needs to come down further for mass adoption.

Battery prices (cell+pack) ($/kWh)

800

600

400
Source: International Council On Clean Transportation

200

0
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 100 200 300 400

Source: BloombergNEF Variable Current 2020 Desired range

SHAASTRA | September-October 2021 33

 BIG DATA

The Next Frontiers

Batteries: Next-generation batteries
will cost less and last longer
To address the range issue, battery technology has to progress: both in im-
proving Lithium-Ion batteries, and in developing new materials and approach-
es. Rocky Mountain Institute projects that costs of Li-ion batteries could
Charging points:
drop to $87/kWh by 2025 driven by innovations. It puts battery technologies 55 million charging
stations may be
in three buckets: a) Solid-state batteries such as rechargeable zinc alkaline,
Li-metal, and Li-sulfur for heavier mobility applications. b) low-cost and
long-duration batteries such as zinc-based, flow, and high-temperature tech-
nologies for grid balancing in a high-renewable and future E.V. applications. c) needed by 2030
High-power batteries for high penetration and fast charging of E.Vs. The growth in E.Vs and batteries should
be matched by growth in battery charging
Technology Specific energy cost ($/kWh) Shelflife (years) infrastructure, which calls for significant
investments. According to McKinsey: “An
Li-ion estimated $110 billion to $180 billion must be
Li-ion 2019 237 10 invested from 2020 to 2030 to satisfy global
Li-ion 2025 (NMC) 176 10 demand for EV charging stations, both in
Li-ion 2030 (NMC) 176 10 public spaces and within homes.” China, the
E.U., the U.K., and the U.S. will need 22 mil-
Advanced Li-ion 2030 90 10
lion to 27 million charge-point units by 2025,
Flow and at least 55 million by 2030. This is the
Flow 2019 350 20 lower end of the demand. At the upper end,
the demand is estimated at 77 million.
Flow 2025 173 20
Flow 2030 50 20 Charging points in buildings (million)
60
Source: Breakthrough Batteries, Rocky Mountain Institute

50

40

30

20

10

0
2022 2025 2030
U.S. E.U. + U.K. China
Source: McKinsey

Recycling: Battery recyling processes have varying performance

Recyling process (effectiveness on a scale of 0 to 100)
Pyrometallurgical Hydrometallurgical Physical
Dimension
(heat-based) (chemical-based) (mechanical separation)
Technology readiness and industrial scale deployment 100 66 25
Range and complexity of recovered materials
33 66 100
Simplicity of input criteria and required pre-treatment 90 66 25
Future economic viability 25 66 90
Environmental friendliness 33 55 50
Efficiency
33 90 90
Source: Batteries on wheels. Element Energy

34 SHAASTRA | September-October 2021

Healing the feet that carry our nation

The farmer shoe

YAAR
 CARBON CAPTURE

Cleaning up their act

Indian companies and research laboratories are working on innovative systems to
remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
ADITI JAIN

T
he research team at Breathe Ap-
plied Sciences Private Limited was
looking forward to travelling to
the U.S., all ready to demonstrate
its carbon utilisation technology for the
international Carbon XPRIZE. The compe-
tition required participants to showcase a
material or technology that could capture
carbon dioxide — the heat-trapping gas
that contributes to global warming — and
convert it into useful products.
Then COVID-19 struck.
“We were lucky to get support from an
angel investor who was ready to fund this
expensive trip that required instruments
to be taken along. We were all set,” says
Sebastian C. Peter, Professor at the Jawa-
harlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scien-
tific Research (JNCASR), Bengaluru.
Peter had founded the start-up in 2016
on the JNCASR campus since only private
companies could participate in the presti-
gious global competition. The company was Breathe Applied Sciences Private Limited, set up by Sebastian C. Peter, has developed an efficient
among the top ten finalists and the only In- and cost-effective catalyst for converting carbon dioxide to methanol. PHOTO: NAMAS BHOJANI

At the heart of the technology developed by Peter’s team is

dian company to reach the finals.
With the pandemic, flights and events
came to a halt. “We waited, waited and wait-
ed but travel did not resume,” says Peter.
The competition organisers then asked
the start-up, which works in the area of
carbon capture and utilisation, for data
that would show the efficacy of its tech-
nology in India. In the last stage of the
competition, the company was asked to
demonstrate that its technology had the
potential to convert at least 2 tonnes of
carbon dioxide per day.
With factories and industries closed be-
cause of COVID-19, the company struggled
to set up a plant. When it was time for the
submission, it was able to demonstrate data
for only 89 hours – against the required 720
hours. “We continued to capture data after
the deadline and realised that, in terms of
fuel production, we were number one,”
Peter says. “We could not win because the
volume of data was not sufficient.”
UTILISING CARBON
At the heart of the technology developed by
the team is a catalyst that can convert car-
bon dioxide to methanol, a clean fuel that
is considered an alternative to diesel and
petrol. While similar technologies exist,
the method developed by Peter’s group has
a catalyst that can convert carbon dioxide to methanol, a
clean fuel seen as an alternative to diesel and petrol.
more than 70% efficiency (against the oth-
ers’ 25%). For the conversion to methanol,
the carbon dioxide received from carbon
capture plants, together with hydrogen in a
particular combination, is fed over the cat-
alyst at a high temperature and pressure.
While the catalyst patented by the start-
up has an efficiency of 35-38%, the addition-
al efficiency of about 35% is achieved by
recycling the residual carbon dioxide and
hydrogen for the same process again. The
technology not only reduces the carbon in
the atmosphere, but a cost analysis shows
that the methanol produced is `10-15 cheap-
er than that manufactured in other ways.
This technology has a readiness level of
7 on a scale of 0-9, which means that a tech-
nology prototype demonstration has been
conducted in an operational environment.
The company is now in talks with various
companies to commercialise the technol-
ogy. The team has also found ways to pro-
duce other fuels such as dimethyl ether; the
tests for those are in the laboratory stage.
Across the country, companies such as
Breathe Applied Sciences are trying to de-
velop catalysts that can produce methane,
ethanol, ethylene, dimethyl ether, plas-
tics and other fuels from captured carbon
dioxide. However, carbon capture and
utilisation (CCU) wasn’t considered lu-
crative when it first came up in the 1990s.
CCU is an energy-intensive and costly
affair because the process takes place at
a given pressure and temperature and in
the presence of a catalyst, points out Dr
Malti Goel, chief executive at the Climate
Change Research Institute, New Delhi.
“Therefore, the initial focus of the en-
ergy-constrained world was on carbon
capture and storage (CCS),” adds Goel,
formerly a scientist at the Department of
Science and Technology and a member of
the Indian CO2 Sequestration Applied Re-
search (ICOSAR) Network. Since then, In-
dia and other countries have made strides
in energy production technologies. Addi-
tionally, if this energy comes from renew-
ables, it will make carbon utilisation in-
dustrial processes more sustainable.

36 SHAASTRA | September-October 2021

CAPTURING CARBON
Before carbon dioxide is used to make other
chemicals or sent for long-term storage, it
has to be captured. Carbon Clean Solutions,
a company started up in 2009 by two engi-
neers from IIT Kharagpur and currently
headquartered in London, has established
38 carbon capture plants across the globe,
including one in India. Its plant in Thoothu-
kudi in Tamil Nadu, set up with Tuticorin
Alkali Chemicals and Fertilizers Limited,
captures close to 60,000 tonnes of carbon
dioxide a year from a nearby coal plant to
produce soda ash, used in detergent, paper
production, the glass industry and so on.
To capture the carbon dioxide, flue gas
arising from the industrial plant is sent
to a pre-treatment unit where nitrous
oxides, heavy metals and other undesir-
able materials are removed. Next, this
pre-treated gas enters a vertical absorber
column. The gases are injected from the
bottom and the chamber is showered with
a patented solvent that absorbs carbon di-
oxide from above. When the solvent and
carbon dioxide meet midway, the solvent
reacts with carbon dioxide, which flows
along with the solvent to the bottom,
while other gases evaporate from the top.
The solvent with absorbed carbon di-
oxide is then taken to a second chamber,
where it is heated at 120° Celsius, a tem-
perature at which the carbon dioxide is
released from the solvent. This purified At IIT Madras, Rajnish Kumar’s research group is looking to mimic the natural process of carbon
sequestration in oceans for commercial use. PHOTO: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
carbon dioxide is then ready to be ei-
ther stored or utilised. The company has
around 55 patents that are related to the
Rajnish Kumar’s laboratory is trying to find a way to
solvent, its use, process design and the replace the methane in hydrates under the sea with
size of the instrument.
While there is no dearth of materials carbon dioxide.
known to capture carbon dioxide from in-
dustrial sources, the bottleneck in the use Although the technology developed by SEQUESTERING CARBON
of carbon capture technologies is the need Carbon Clean Solutions is a good way to While many believe that capturing carbon
for large-sized equipment. This makes it limit the entry of carbon dioxide into the and utilising it to make fuels is the way for-
cost-effective only for large industries. atmosphere, it is restricted to steel, ce- ward for carbon abatement, some feel that
The company’s R&D team has, therefore, ment, chemical and power plants. Many there are better, long-term methods.
been working on smaller equipment that believe that direct air capture, in which “We may have a process where we can
can be used by small industries as well. carbon dioxide is captured straight from convert carbon dioxide into some usable
“We have developed the technology the air, is the technology for the future. chemical, but if the chemical itself is so us-
that is reducing the size of the equipment An economically viable technology de- able and so valuable, why would one like to
to a tenth of what it was and reducing the veloped on these lines can help push for reduce the value of the chemical,” argues
footprint of the carbon capture equip- a net-carbon-zero world. However, devel- Dr Rajnish Kumar, Professor in the Chemi-
ment to a fifth of what it was. This makes oping such technology is an expensive cal Engineering Department at IIT Madras.
the whole unit modular and skid-mount- proposition. Hydrogen, he explains, is one such
ed so that it can be taken to any industrial “Imagine capturing 400 molecules of car- chemical. Hydrogen fuel is itself green,
site,” says Aniruddha Sharma, CEO, Car- bon dioxide from one million air molecules. and thus its use in producing methanol in
bon Clean Solutions. It is a tricky task and hence costly. But if we an effort to utilise carbon dioxide does not
While small industries are the new fo- get a really good absorber or absorber mate- seem reasonable, he holds.
cus, the company is working with estab- rial, we can succeed in this task,” Goel says. Kumar believes that carbon sequestra-
lished players such as Dalmia Cement and A recent breakthrough in this area was tion is the way forward, given the high
was recently awarded a project by NTPC the launch of the world’s largest direct air rate of carbon emissions. Carbon diox-
to demonstrate carbon capture and utilisa- capture plant developed by Climeworks ide can be sequestered at oil wells, saline
tion at its power plant. It is also working in Iceland. The plant can capture 4,000 aquifers, basalt rocks, abandoned coal
with Tata Steel to set up a carbon capture tonnes of carbon dioxide a year; this is mines, oceans, plants and soil.
plant at Jamshedpur Works to capture 5 then injected into nearby basaltic rock His research group at IIT Madras has
tonnes of carbon dioxide per day. formations and turned into stone. taken inspiration from the natural process

SHAASTRA | September-October 2021 37


Decarbonisation is the only option for big industries at present, holds Aniruddha Sharma, CEO, Carbon Clean Solutions, which has set up 38 carbon
capture plants across the globe, including one in India. PHOTO: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
of carbon sequestration in oceans and is
working to mimic this process so that it can
be used at a commercial scale. Essentially,
carbon dioxide can exist as gas, liquid and
solid depending on the temperature and
pressure. Deep down in the ocean, at around
300 metres, the temperature and pressure
are just right for carbon dioxide and water
molecules to combine and form hydrates.
These hydrates can stay in the oceans for
millions of years without dissociating, lock-
ing up this greenhouse gas for a long time.
At a commercial level, the flue gas (which
contains plenty of other gases along with
carbon dioxide) from power plants and in-
dustries can be transported to the seabed
via pipelines. When this flue gas reaches a
depth of 300 metres, it will get the right con-
ditions to form hydrates of carbon dioxide
by reacting with water molecules.
This process of carbon dioxide hydrate
formation may itself be slow or may be im-
pacted by the presence of other gases in the
flue gas mixture. Kumar’s research work
involves finding out additives that can has-
ten the process of hydrate formation and
ensure that carbon dioxide molecules react
with water to form hydrates and not with
the other gases such as nitrogen, hydrogen
and sulphur in the flue gas mixture.
In its laboratory, the team also studies
if these hydrate structures stay stable to
ensure that the carbon remains seques-
tered for a longer period under the sea.
His group’s research is being funded
by GAIL India Limited. The laboratory is
also trying to find a way through which it
can replace the methane in hydrates un-
der the sea with carbon dioxide. This will
have twin benefits: carbon sequestration,
and recovery of methane fuel.
38 SHAASTRA | September-October 2021
CARBON CAPTURE
ALL FOR CLEAN AIR
•C
•C
•A
A Carbon Clean Solutions plant in Thoothukudi captures
about 60,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year from a
nearby coal plant to produce soda ash.
While sequestration looks like a good
way to permanently store carbon dioxide,
its transport from the point of its genera-
tion and capture to the place of sequestra-
tion may pose problems. “Carbon capture
storage, which was once considered fea-
sible, could not be pursued due to fewer
potential storage sites in India. Geograph-
ically it is not feasible if source and stor-
age sites are far apart,” Goel states. Ku-
mar, however, feels that carbon dioxide
gas can also be transported the way LPG
is being moved in pipelines.
INDIAN SCENARIO
India has three CCS plants, with negligible
capturing capacity, that have been operat-
ing for decades and a CCUS (Carbon Cap-
ture, Utilisation and Storage) plant in Thoo-
thukudi, and has plans for more. ONGC
and Indian Oil Corporation have signed an
MoU to evaluate the feasibility of India’s
largest CCUS project at the Koyali refinery
in Gujarat. Other public sector companies,
such as NTPC, BHEL and NALCO, are part-
nering with consultancies, companies and
researchers to explore the feasibility of
CCUS at their respective sites.
Private players such as Dalmia Ce-
ment, Tata Steel and Reliance Industries
are working towards becoming car-
bon-neutral. On the R&D front, the coun-
try is part of Mission Innovation, a global
initiative to accelerate the development
of climate-friendly technology.
 CUS (Carbon Capture, Utilisation
and Storage) encompasses methods
and technologies that remove carbon
dioxide from its source or atmosphere
and then either utilises it or stores it
for the long term.
 CUS technologies are a way to meet
Paris Agreement goals for countries
that are still heavily dependent on
fossil fuels for power generation and
cannot slow down high carbon dioxide-
emitting industries such as cement,
steel and fertilisers.
 ccording to the International Energy
Agency’s 2020 report, 20 major
commercial CCUS plants are operating
around the world and can capture up
to 40 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide
every year.
India was also an active member of the
ICOSAR Network, set up in 2007 to initiate
talks on carbon storage technologies. De-
spite these efforts, the country still lacks
technologies that can be adopted by a com-
pany eager to reduce its carbon emissions.
While India remains committed to cut-
ting down emissions, the recent report of
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) underlines the need for
urgency, pointing to extreme weather
events. As the pressure to abide by envi-
ronmental agreements mounts, India is
redrawing its strategy to cut down emis-
sions. The country’s renewable energy
policy may be on track, but it does not
have policies that push for the adoption of
CCUS technology.
“While one can switch off coal-based
power plants and shift to solar, hydro, wind
and nuclear energy in a few years, if you
think about industry – steel, cement, refin-
ing, chemicals – there is no option, and the
only way, for now, is to decarbonise them,”
says Sharma of Carbon Clean Solutions.
However, the policies that give incen-
tives to companies that capture carbon di-
oxide or penalise those that don’t are not
yet in place.
With various countries having already
announced their timelines to achieve net-ze-
ro emission, all eyes are on India. It seems
self-evident that the strategy to realise that
green goal hinges critically on the adoption
of CCUS technologies in the country. 
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 INTERVIEW
‘Geoengineering
masks climate
change problem’
Climate scientist G. Bala on the pros and
cons of geoengineering, and why we need
to treat this emerging area with caution
despite the possibilities it offers.
T
he most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) addresses a contentious issue:
carbon dioxide removal (CDR) from the atmosphere to
limit global warming. However, the IPCC’s Sixth Assess-
ment Report, released in August, largely ignores another related
but contentious issue: solar geoengineering. It states that solar
geoengineering has the potential to offset global warming, but it
does not say much more. In fact, IPCC didn’t even call the tech-
nique geoengineering; it preferred the phrase ‘solar radiation
modification’. In spite of the IPCC’s reluctance to discuss geoen-
gineering thoroughly, scientists have been researching the top-
ic for some time now. Solar geoengineering, or reducing global
temperatures by reducing the solar radiation that comes to the
Earth, is accepted by scientists as an effective way to curb glob-
al warming. But the method comes with a variety of side effects
that are not easy to understand. Govindasamy Bala, Professor at
the Centre for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, at the Indian
Institute of Science, Bengaluru, and a contributor to the IPCC re-
port, explains the potential of solar geoengineering and its risks.
Excerpts from an interview he gave T.V. Padma:
The IPCC Working Group (WG) I report mentions geoengineer-
ing as a potential option for mitigating climate change. At what
stage do you think we will need to use geoengineering?
The recent IPCC WG1 report highlights the recent unprecedent-
ed rapid changes in the climate system caused by human activ-
ities such as fossil fuel burning and land-use changes. It also
cautions that the magnitude of these changes will amplify with
additional emissions and the consequent additional warming in
the future. Originally, geoengineering was envisioned as an op-
tion to cool the planet rapidly in case of a planetary emergency
such as the breaking of ice sheets or successive crop failures due
to heat stress. However, geoengineering in recent years is being
suggested as a short-term option to avoid the overshoot of warm-
ing above thresholds such as 1.5° or 2° Celsius.
Interestingly, as per its mandate, the IPCC does not give any
policy prescription regarding what governments should do to ad-
dress climate change. In a similar manner, the IPCC WG1 makes
only a scientific assessment of the effectiveness and side effects
“Solar geoengineering has the potential
to cool the planet in a few years by about
1-4˚C, while conventional mitigation
(emission reduction) would take decades
to cool the system by similar amounts.”
40 SHAASTRA | September-October 2021
The current unknowns about the benefits and risks of geoengineering
are too large, reckons Prof Govindasamy Bala. PHOTO: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
of solar geoengineering to the various components of the climate
system. It does not give any prescription on if, when and how
geoengineering should be deployed. I believe that is for govern-
ments to negotiate and reach an agreement.
What are the geoengineering options available, in theory?
The main idea is to reflect sunlight to space by an amount equal
to the infrared (IR) radiation trapped by greenhouse gases. In the-
ory, there are several options: placing mirrors in space; injecting
highly reflective aerosol particles into the stratosphere; injecting
sea salt aerosols into low-level marine stratocumulus clouds to
enhance their reflectivity; painting roofs of buildings in urban
areas white; bioengineering to make crop leaves more reflective;
creating microbubbles at the ocean surface to reflect more sun-
light; adding reflective material to increase the reflectivity of the
world’s desert regions, and so on. Dissipation of high-level cirrus
clouds to allow more IR radiation to escape to space has also been
proposed. Although the last option is strictly not a solar geoen-
gineering option, recent IPCC reports have included this in the
portfolio of solar geoengineering options. Among all the proposed
options, stratospheric aerosol geoengineering is the most studied
approach. The effectiveness and side effects of these various op-
tions have been studied using climate models in the past 20 years.
However, the technology needed for any of these options to work
at the required planetary scale has not been developed.
What are the potential benefits and risks of geoengineering?
The immediate benefit is the rapid reduction in global warming.
Solar geoengineering has the potential to cool the planet in a few
years by about 1-4° C, while conventional mitigation (emission
reduction) would take decades to cool the system by similar
amounts. The associated benefits are the reduction in the inten-
sity and frequency of heatwaves, extreme rainfall, tropical cy-
clones, floods and droughts. A reversal in the decline of the Arc-
tic Sea ice extent is also expected. However, reversing the rise in
sea levels and the retreat of glaciers and ice sheets will take time.
Ocean acidification will not be reversed as it is caused by elevat-
ed levels of CO2 in the atmosphere and not by global warming.
The offset of climate change by geoengineering would be
imperfect: climate change in every region and every season on
 “(With geoengineering) there will always
Earth would not be offset when global warming is fully offset.
One of the potential risks from all geoengineering options is the
reduction or shift in rainfall patterns. This could be particularly
severe in the case of more localised options such as increasing
be some winners and some losers, which
the reflectivity of marine clouds and ocean and land surface. could cause tension among nations.”
Thus, there would be some winners and some losers. Injecting
aerosols into the stratosphere could cause depletion of strato- ogy for lifting the aerosols to a height of 20-25km does not exist
spheric ozone, which could lead to more lethal UV radiation today. Note that we are talking about injecting millions of tonnes
reaching the Earth’s surface. This could be detrimental to hu- of aerosols into the stratosphere using thousands of aircraft each
man health and crop productivity. The recovery of the Antarctic year. Cost estimates are available. It is estimated that the technol-
ozone hole may be delayed. ogy for aircraft specifically built for this purpose could be devel-
We should also note that geoengineering is a “mask” to the oped in 10-20 years, and the cost of operating a large-scale deploy-
climate change problem. Geoengineering does not address the ment would be in the order of $10 billion per year. This is much
root cause of the problem, which is the increase in greenhouse cheaper when compared to the hundreds of billions of dollars per
gases. If the mask is ever removed abruptly for some reason, we year that are required for conventional mitigation options.
would suddenly be exposed to a world with very large amounts
of greenhouse gases. Such an abrupt and sustained termination What are the implications for India if other countries imple-
of geoengineering would result in an extremely rapid rate of in- ment some form of geoengineering?
crease in temperature that would far exceed the rate of climate It is likely that the severe impacts of climate change such as
change without SRM (solar radiation manage-
ment). Water cycle changes could also be abrupt.
Such an extremely rapid rate of climate change
caused by a “termination shock” could put se-
vere stress on human and natural systems.

What is the status of research worldwide?

How much of it do we understand?
Advance in geoengineering research is at pres-
ent limited mostly to indoor climate modelling
activity. This activity is at a very advanced
stage now because scientists at major climate
modelling centres around the world have spent
more than a decade on this simulation science,
and models have also become more sophisti-
cated. Field experiments have been proposed
in the past, but they have not taken off on a big
scale because of resistance from environmental
groups. Without large-scale field experiments,
it would be challenging to assess the benefits
and risks of geoengineering.
Major volcanic eruptions provide natural analogues for stratospheric aerosol
Interestingly, in the case of stratospher- geoengineering. Such eruptions inject SO2 into the stratosphere; the gas gets oxidised to
ic aerosol geoengineering and marine cloud form highly reflective sulfate aerosols. ILLUSTRATION: SHUTTERSTOCK
brightening, there are natural analogues, and
we can learn a lot from them. Major volcanic eruptions provide heatwaves, intense cyclones, extreme rainfall, floods, droughts
natural analogues for stratospheric aerosol geoengineering, and and a sea-level rise in vulnerable tropical countries such as In-
ship tracks seen in satellite images in the marine cloud regimes dia could be reduced or averted if solar geoengineering is de-
provide the analogue for marine cloud brightening. Major volca- ployed. However, as discussed earlier, geoengineering could al-
nic eruptions inject the gas SO2 into the stratosphere, which gets ter the regional precipitation patterns and cause a reduction in
oxidised to form highly reflective sulfate aerosols. The most re- the Indian monsoon rainfall – with severe consequences for wa-
cent major volcanic eruption, at Mount Pinatubo in 1991, caused ter resources and agriculture in India. Plant productivity and
a global mean cooling of about 0.5° C in 1992. Coordinated obser- crop yields could also be reduced because of a slight decrease in
vations of major volcanic eruptions in the future could help us the sunlight that reaches the surface. Indeed, some studies have
understand the benefits and risks of stratospheric aerosol geoen- shown a likely decrease in crop productivity in India if geoengi-
gineering. Similarly, studying ship tracks in the marine environ- neering is implemented.
ment would help us gain insights into the marine cloud bright- Further, climate modelling studies have shown that if aerosols
ening option. Most of the current scientific uncertainty about are injected into the stratosphere in the northern hemisphere,
the effectiveness of geoengineering stems from our incomplete Indian and North African monsoon rainfall would decrease, but
understanding of aerosol-cloud-radiation interactions. These in- these monsoon regions would see an increase in rainfall if the
teractions are also the major sources of uncertainty in our quan- same aerosols are injected in the southern hemisphere. The oppo-
tification of global warming using models. site response is simulated by models for monsoon regions in the
southern hemisphere. Thus, there would always be some winners
How long do you think it will take to scale up geoengineering and some losers, which could cause tension among nations. To
technology to planetary-level intervention if shown to be useful? sum up, I would say that the current unknowns are too large. For
Most research has focused on the injection of stratospheric aero- now, I would suggest more research to understand the benefits
sols. This option has the potential to offset the global mean warm- and risks of geoengineering for India as there has been little in-
ing either fully or partially in the future. However, the technol- vestment in this emerging research area in the country. 

SHAASTRA | September-October 2021 41


The wondrous
world of water
New research in India and elsewhere is turning the lens on the many
avatars and possible applications of ice and water.
MYWISH ANAND
A
lchemists have for long sought to
turn lesser metals into gold. Pavel
Jungwirth of the Institute of Or-
ganic Chemistry and Biochemis-
try, Prague, has no such plans. He’d rath-
er create gold out of water.
Here’s how. Water is an insulator in
its pure state because its electrons are
tightly bound to the atom. Metals, on the
other hand, have electrons that move
around freely. Creating a metal out of
an insulator requires squeezing the elec-
trons under intense high pressures, only
available in the cores of large planets
such as Jupiter.
But Jungwirth has found a way to do
so on Earth. Alkali metals such as sodi-
um and potassium shed their outermost
electrons easily, making the reaction
between water and an alkali metal ex-
plosive. Jungwirth put a tiny bit of water
on an alkali metal drop, from which the
water molecules borrowed electrons and
became metallic.
“I think that’s a nice trick we did,” he
says.
He amalgamated sodium and potassi-
um into an alloy that flows like mercury
at room temperature. He introduced wa-
ter vapour in an experimental chamber
while dripping drops of this silver-co-
loured alloy from a nozzle. The vapour
mixed with the alloy droplet as the latter
grew. The water vapour formed a thin lay-
er on the droplet surface, giving it a gold-
en sheen. “It is water, and it has metallic
properties, and you don’t have to go to Ju-
piter for that,” Jungwirth says.
Water, scientists stress, is full of sur-
prises. It can be made into metal. It can so-
lidify into ice at room temperature or re-
main in a liquid form even at -40° Celsius.
Normally, compounds become heavier in
their solid-state. But ice floats on water.
Such anomalous properties are unique
to liquid water and scientists have so far
42 SHAASTRA | September-October 2021
SPECIAL FEATURE
counted over 70 such traits. It
is, for instance, the only com-
pound that exists in all its three states
— solid, liquid and gas — at normal ter-
restrial conditions. Not surprisingly, sci-
entists are fascinated by water. They are
also finding useful applications to these
properties.
Take Hans Jakob Wörner, who studies
the ‘social life’ of water molecules at ETH
Zürich. He has developed sophisticated
instruments and lasers that can mea-
sure a water molecule’s motion within a
billionth of a billionth of a second, or an
attosecond. At such time-scales, only elec-
trons can be observed moving.
To observe the motion, Wörner with
his attosecond laser knocked off an elec-
tron from a molecule in distilled water
and did the same with a water molecule
in a gaseous phase.
The light emitted by the knocked elec-
tron in liquid water reached the detector
50-70 attoseconds later than that emit-
ted by an electron in the gaseous phase.
Photons emitted in liquid water mix and
dissolve in the water, thereby struggling
to reach the detector. “This shows us a di-
rect picture of the chemical environment
in liquid water,” Wörner says.
He used these time delays of the solvat-
ed electron to probe into the life of water
molecules and found that water exhibits
a very lively social life. Water molecules
are the happiest when they are connected
to four other water molecules. He mea-
sured the attosecond signal for many wa-
ter groups and found it increasing from a
single molecule to a four-molecule clus-
ter, which is the most stable configura-
tion of water.
Water exhibits a very lively
social life. Water molecules
are the happiest when they
are connected to four other
water molecules.
A tetrahedral structure of water molecules and
hydrogen bonds, liquid water’s most stable
structure. IMAGE: WIKIMEDIA
MYSTERIOUS BOND
Then there is the hydrogen bond.
A topic very close to Arunan Elangan-
nan’s heart, hydrogen bonding is a feeble
attraction between a hydrogen atom of
one molecule and a highly electronega-
tive atom like oxygen, fluorine, sulphur
etc. in the other.
Oxygen in a water molecule attracts
the shared electrons of the two hydro-
gens covalently bonded with it. This
unequal sharing makes these two hy-
drogens attain a slight positive charge
and oxygen a slight negative charge. The
partial positive charge of one molecule
attracts the partially negative site of
another molecule, creating a bond that
is called the hydrogen bond. It is ubiqui-
tous in nature and yet scientists do not
always understand it. Arunan sought
to catch the deeper mysteries of these
bonds. Because of its highly jumbled up
picture in water, he looked to hydrogen
bonding in other molecules and chemical
systems for a clearer image.
He found the bond playing mischief
in hydrogen sulphide gas. Hydrogen sul-
phide is a molecule similar to water, with
sulphur replacing oxygen. The Professor
at the Indian Institute of Science, Benga-
luru, confirmed that hydrogen sulphide
molecules exhibit hydrogen bonding.
Such a feeble bonding is rare in a gas.
Arunan says that a single molecule of this
gas forms 12 hydrogen bonds with its sur-
rounding hydrogen sulphide molecules.
 PHOTO: KANNAN KRISHNAMURTY
PHOTO: DEEPAK PAWAR
Above: Hydrogen bonding is a topic close to scientist Arunan Elangannan’s heart; Right: Clathrate hydrates can form in an ultra-cold environment
where pressure is one-tenth of a trillionth of a bar, says Thalappil Pradeep, Professor of Chemistry at IIT Madras.

“Physicists like to unify things. Chem-
ists like to classify them,” says Arunan,
who chairs a task group formed by the
CLATHRATE HYDRATES
Water at -123°C and lower Scientists are also fascinated by clathrate
exists in a ‘glassy state’, hydrates, ice-like natural compounds in

where it looks like liquid

International Union of Pure and Applied
Chemistry to redefine hydrogen bonding.
“Directionality is very important for a hy-
drogen bond,” Arunan says.
For its many anomalies, ice has been
which different guest molecules are trapped
in hydrogen-bonded water cages. These
but behaves like a solid guest molecules can be methane, carbon di-
oxide, hydrogen and so on. Deep ocean floors
object. To top it, there are abundant with methane clathrates.

are two forms of ‘glassy

at the centre of research, too. The most
common form of ice seen on Earth — such
as a glacier — floats on water, defying the
norm that matter becomes solid upon in-
creasing its mass. There would have been
no life if ice sank in water, for ice forms a
blanket over a water body in colder tem-
peratures, protecting life underneath.
It has several fascinating avatars. Sci-
entists estimate that ice can exist in over
74,000 different structural forms. Till now,
scientists have discovered only 18 crys-
talline and two amorphous forms of ice.
They name the crystalline polymorphs
with Roman numerals. The ordinary ice
abundant in our biosphere is Ice Ih. Not
all ice structures float on water; Ice III, V
and VI sink.
Ice is a complex of numerous water
families and their tetrahedron homes.
These homes may be spacious or packed.
In many, a tetrahedral network enters
into the empty space of another, making
it denser than the liquid water.
In superionic ice, oxygen lets go off its
hydrogens completely. Called Ice XVIII, it
is black, extremely hot and can only ex-
ist at extraordinarily high pressures. It is
thought to exist in the mantle of Uranus
and Neptune.
states’, distinguished by
their densities.
moons of the gas giants to comets. Chris-
toph Salzmann of University College Lon-
don is excited about the moons of Jupiter
and Saturn. With space missions planned
to these planets, he hopes to investigate
the unique geysers of ice jets on Saturn’s
moon Enceladus as well as the icy crust of
Europa and the subsurface oceans of wa-
ter ice on Callisto, both moons of Jupiter.
Salzmann creates extreme pressure
and temperature conditions in his labo-
ratory to study how ice configures itself
into a new outlook. He experimentally
discovered the structures of Ices XIII,
XIV, XV and is at present investigating a
new form, Ice XIX.
Ice doesn’t exist alone in nature but
is found mixed with other elements. Ice
VII, for instance, is seen in diamonds.
Amorphous ice is ubiquitous in space.
Salzmann has now started mixing ice
with other matter. He made a comet’s ma-
terial by mixing buckyballs — 60-mem-
bered rings of carbon atoms — in disor-
The energy content of methane trapped
in these clathrates is higher than that in
petroleum, points out Thalappil Pradeep,
Professor at IIT Madras. Their extraction
from the bed of the Indian Ocean can take
care of India’s major requirements for
clean energy.
After separating methane, he finds
that the leftover hydrate is a cage of cu-
bic crystalline ice or Ice Ic. “Ice Ic is a
high-density ice. It can solve many of our
pure water woes,” Pradeep says.
Different compounds of ice can be ob-
tained from these clathrate hydrates, he
adds. But these demand high pressure. Such
conditions are readily available in continen-
tal shelves, deep ocean floors and perma-
frost of Earth and other moons and planets.
Pradeep’s lab recently made clathrate
hydrates mimicking conditions prevail-
ing in an interstellar medium. Clathrate
hydrates, he explains, can form in an ul-
tra-cold environment where pressure is
one-tenth of a trillionth of a bar. “This
discovery can help us understand how
chemistry happens in such adverse astro-
nomical conditions,” he says.
Water, indeed, is an unusual liquid. It
is heaviest at 4°C. If cooled below that, it
starts to expand. Pure water can be cooled
PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

Ice is found everywhere in the solar sys- dered ice. to crystallise to -41°C. Water thriving in
tem — from the poles of inner planets and this metastable liquid state is known
as ‘supercooled water’.

SHAASTRA | September-October 2021 43


Sudip Chakraborty of Central University of Punjab, Bathinda, is exploring the fundamental
science underlying confined water. PHOTO: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
Water at -123°C and lower exists in a
‘glassy state’, where it looks like liquid
but behaves like a solid object. To top it,
there are two forms of ‘glassy states’, dis-
tinguished by their densities. The -123°C
to -41°C range is seen as an unchartered
territory.
CHANGING FORMS
How water becomes ice or ice becomes
water is the region of maximum anoma-
lies, an area once considered ‘No Man’s
Land’. “We have (now) conquered this
territory,” says scientist Anders Nilsson.
He prepared amorphous ice samples in
his laboratory at Stockholm University
and heated them by shooting an infra-
red laser into them. As the ice melted,
it rapidly passed through many of its
‘supercooled’ phases, in just a matter of
nanoseconds. Nilsson shot unimaginably
fast X-ray pulses to probe how ice became
liquid water.
What he found was baffling.
“Water exists in two different ‘wa-
ters’,” Nilsson says. Water under these
high pressures and very low tempera-
tures develops into two macroscopic liq-
uids. These two ‘waters’ themselves are
two states of matter. One of them is about
20% denser than the other. In a glass, they
would seem like oil in water. “No other
substance can do this,” he says.
Further, at normal room temperature
and pressure conditions, water shows an
ice-like ordering when paraded through
44 SHAASTRA | September-October 2021
SPECIAL FEATURE
Wörner’s experiment will tell
us how many chemical and
biochem­ical reactions can
occur in liquid water.
a carbon nanotube. Physical conditions
don’t allow the entry of water in carbon
nanotubes. But water finds a way in by
aligning its hydrogens and wagging its
oxygen atoms. It enters the nanotubes in
a single file, like soldiers entering a nar-
row burrow.
How water diffuses into a nanotube is
still not clear. Sudip Chakraborty of Cen-
tral University of Punjab, Bathinda, says
that water molecules show mixed diffu-
sive properties — those of bulk water as
well as of the single-file chain.
Chakraborty is exploring the funda-
mental science underlying confined wa-
ter. In his computational laboratory, he
traps water molecules in nanometre-sized
water droplets made with organic sol-
vents — reverse micelles — and simu-
lates them to understand how water’s
behaviour changes as he increases the
number of water molecules.
Water in the smallest reverse micelle,
he says, is completely trapped and shows
an ice-like solid structure. As he added a
few molecules of water in the nano-sized
droplet, it started to relax. Water mole-
cules then attempted to move. Increasing
water molecules showed a tetrahedral
connectivity in the largest droplet, depict-
ing how confined water approaches bulk
behaviour.
The Professor says that water mole-
cules in these nanoconfined reverse mi-
celles fall short of forming four hydrogen
bonds. As their number increases, they
get more options for bonding and try their
best to stabilise themselves in a network
of four hydrogen bonds. Water in its bulk
tetrahedral structure shows the fastest
hydrogen bond dynamics.
“A minute signature of such water is
observed in the largest reverse micelle,”
Chakraborty says.
THE FUTURE
What is the long-term outcome of these
observations? Wörner’s experiment will
tell us how many chemical and biochem-
ical reactions can occur in liquid water.
Water, being a very good solvent, is the
template for all these reactions to happen,
adds Salzmann.
The research tells us that nanoconfined
drops can have potential applications in
many future technologies. They can act
as bioreactors for biochemical and nan-
otechnological reactions. Chakraborty
plans to tailor these reverse micelles into
drug delivery agents for future biomedi-
cal applications.
Water in many biological systems is
of a confined nature. Water molecules
playing around the hydrophilic sites of
proteins show a unique behaviour, bind-
ing their active sites with other proteins,
DNA and biomolecules.
Such research can throw light on forms
of life, too. The current understanding of
life is that wherever there is liquid wa-
ter, there will be life. “Life can be possi-
ble on Enceladus, Europa and Callisto,”
Salzmann says. It can be in the oceans
underneath ice beds.
“Water is the molecule of evolution.
That’s why life happened in it,” Arunan
adds. The greenhouse effect tailored life
around water. If there was no greenhouse
effect and temperatures dropped below
-60°C, hydrogen sulphide may then have
been a good liquid for hosting life. “It is
our closed-mindedness and limited expe-
rience that we can’t think of life beyond
water,” Arunan holds.
There’s no dearth of mystery — or mag-
ic — in the study of water. European re-
searchers have joined forces to form a con-
sortium, the Centre for Molecular Water
Science (CMWS), which hopes to achieve
a detailed molecular understanding of
water. Nilsson says that it will attract and
train younger talent in this field. For them,
the glass will always be half full. 
 GUEST COLUMN
The marvels of maintenance
Moonshots are flashy and may inspire us to attempt the impossible. But boring as it
may be, maintenance is the unsung partner that enables innovation.
T
he 1853 World’s Fair, at the shimmering New
York Crystal Palace, showcased many tech-
nological wonders of the age. One that still
resonates today can be traced to a demon-
stration by engineer Elisha Graves Otis, who made
bedframes. In his trim Victorian suit, lush beard, and
silk stovepipe hat, Otis mounted a wooden platform
secured by notched guide rails. His assistant hoisted
the platform some fifty feet above the ground, grab-
bing the crowd’s attention.
Otis was there to correct a fault of his own mak-
ing. Although he had developed an elegant solution to
the problem of cable failure in platform elevators that
made use of a hoist with a passive automatic brak-
ing system, none had sold. It wasn’t because people
didn’t need them: Elevators often catastrophically
broke down in granaries and warehouses, killing and
maiming their passengers. Otis realised that his de-
sign, though superior and straightforward, needed
showmanship. The World’s Fair was his moment to
flaunt his vertical flight of fancy and function.
When the assistant dramatically used an
axe to cut the suspension cable holding the
platform, the crowd gasped in shock. It
appeared to be an act of lunacy—and sui-
cide for Otis, who stood on the platform.
However, the platform stopped with a
jerk as the braking system arrested
the freefall. “All safe,” Otis reas-
sured the viewers, “all safe.”
And thus, the crucial safety
innovation that led to the launch
of the modern vertical city was en-
abled by a now-legendary stunt. It’s
impossible to imagine life without it.
SHOWMANSHIP SELLS…
Otis’s demonstration exemplifies
a time-honoured formula that mixes technology and
design with entertainment. In some fields, “demo or
die” has come to supplant “publish or perish”—high-
lighting the fact that products or people, no matter
how deserving, will not advance unless they are first
noticed. From Thomas Edison’s electric theatrics to
Steve Jobs’s turtle-necked stage flair, the demo cul-
ture has thrived on symbolism, spotlight, and special
effects in which pomp is the essence of persuasion.
Still, magicians will tell you that a trick will fail if it
lacks meaning, no matter how incredible. There must
be a link between the magic and its purpose.
While showmanship is frowned upon when it is
pursued too overtly, it is sometimes unavoidable.
Consider the rousing words of President Kennedy
in 1962. “We choose to go to the moon in this decade
and do the other things, not because they are easy,
but because they are hard.” The showmanship in his
words is apparent, and it got us to the moon. But what
of “the other things?” If we are to take up Kennedy’s
bold challenge, it’s time to elevate showmanship to
“do the other things” that he gestured at, perhaps the
necessary things that are less sexy and more vexy.
Showmanship for prosocial needs could move people
to action if the emphasis is on mindful mending rather
than blank boosterism. Just imagine a prime-time com-
mercial for public works and sanitation that inspires
infrastructure improvements rather than promoting
GURU MADHAVAN the latest new feature or flavour. Or a modern-day Eli-
Guru Madhavan is the
sha Otis demo that captures the public’s attention about
Norman R. Augustine the powers of safety standards, quality management,
Senior Scholar and and preventive maintenance in elevators?
senior director of
programs at the
National Academy of
…BUT MAINTENANCE MATTERS
Engineering. But when the dazzling prominence of innovation
overshadows the subtler, kinder, and attentive acts
@BioengineerGM
that characterise maintenance, it leads to the col-
lapse of everyday expectations. And these minor
maintenance misfortunes may ultimately put a stop
to the legitimate big-picture innovations. Why, after
all, build a system if there is no ethic to maintain
it well? Maintenance is not a static process; it
builds on change, and just like innovation,
it fuels change. Innovators often claim to
make history, but maintainers start
from and sustain the necessary conti-
nuities of history. There can be no
helpful innovation without a vast,
invisible infrastructure of mainte-
nance activity that keeps civilisa-
tion running.
Nestled between the duties of innova-
tion and maintenance is a responsibility
for cultural engineering that does not end
when a commission or contract comes to com-
pletion. It is a perpetual effort to be attentive to
future neglect and decay in our shared dependen-
cies. Very few subjects are as relevant, and neglected,
ILLUSTRATION: SHUTTERSTOCK as care and maintenance — acts integral to our survival
and progress and as crucial as the creation itself. Main-
tenance over a system’s life cycle may consume more
than it took to make a new system. But the result is
When the often a catastrophe avoided. Engineers are full of such
dazzling half-jokes: today’s innovations are tomorrow’s vulnera-
prominence bilities. Without maintenance, failures flourish.
of innovation Moonshots may inspire us to attempt the impos-
sible. Still, far more practical value has come from
overshadows suitcase wheels than Ferris wheels, no matter how
the attentive flashy the latter are. Maintenance is the unsung part-
acts that ner that enables innovation. It is both life and—in its
characterise connection to history, present, and the future—larg-
er than any single life. And, it needs showmanship to
maintenance, attract the attention it requires to assume its proper
it leads to place in our civic priorities.
the collapse Otis never thought he would become a showman
at the Crystal Palace, but the brisk ballyhooer P.T.
of everyday Barnum did. Otis received a hundred dollars for his
expectations. stunt. There was no need for an elevator pitch. 
SHAASTRA | September-October 2021 45
 PROFILE

Rock of Ages
Meet geophysicist Vinod Gaur, a Renaissance man whose life’s work, across
disciplines, is an illustration in channelling science for public good.

I
SRINATH PERUR
n the winter of 1955, Vinod Gaur, all
of 20 and fresh from a master’s in geo-
physics from Banaras Hindu Univer-
sity, set off to Bengal on his first re-
search project.
At the time, it was beginning to be un-
derstood that the Earth’s magnetic poles
flipped from time to time, that these
changes were recorded in rocks, and that
such records from across the world could
help reconstruct the Earth’s history. The
first such study in India had just begun
at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Re-
search (TIFR) in Bombay, where they
were collecting rock samples from the
nearby Deccan Traps. Inspired by this,
Gaur decided to do the same from the Ra-
jmahal Traps in the east.
Gaur did not have access to a magne-
tometer to check the direction in which
rocks were magnetised. So he impro-
vised, using a twig to separate two halves
of a magnetised razor blade, suspending
the assemblage in a bottle with a length
of hair he had persuaded a ghodawalla
to pluck from a horse’s tail. He camped
in the waiting room of Tin Pahar railway
a life-time of working among them. Gaur
often brings up symmetry and parsimony
as organising principles underlying the
universe. In philosophy, he has an affin-
ity for the fairness of Kant’s categorical
imperative and the unifying tendencies of
Shankara’s advaita.
This broad embrace of life may have
subtly shaped Gaur’s work. In London,
Gaur’s PhD problem came from a com-
pany that wanted to prospect for mineral
deposits by flying a plane with an electro-
magnetic transmitter and detector. The
assumption at the time was that since
these deposits were more than a thousand
times more conductive than the earth
around them, the surrounding material
could simply be ignored. Gaur says his
discomfort with this assumption was
mainly aesthetic. It was a reductive ap-
proach, and if all the literature and books
about art and architecture he had read
in the BHU library had taught him any-
thing, “the world is not reductive”. Gaur
followed up with experiments that proved
his hunch right, and revealed what is now
called the host rock effect.
When Inverse Theory
After stints at the Sorbonne in Paris
and the National Physical Laboratory in
England, Gaur returned to India in 1962
to join Roorkee University (now IIT Ro-
orkee), where a new position equivalent
to Associate Professor of Geophysics had
been created. He would stay at Roorkee
for 21 years, rising to become Dean of
Research. His wife Eryl worked in the
humanities department for a while and
staged plays with students on campus.
Gaur remembers his time from Roorkee as
a particularly vibrant one, surrounded by
students, frequently visited by scientists
from abroad who would stay at his house.
Pravin Gupta began working as a re-
search fellow with Gaur at Roorkee Uni-
versity in 1976. He went on to retire as a
professor there. He credits Gaur with sin-
gle-handedly setting up Roorkee’s geophys-
ics programme, later taken up by other uni-
versities. He says that at the time geophysics
was a niche area taught only in Banaras and
Waltair (now Visakhapatnam), but Gaur’s
efforts saw it spread to something like a doz-
en universities across the country.
The centre of the Earth is around 6,400
kilometres from its surface; the deepest
hole dug by humans is only about 12 ki-

was becoming popular

station. Over the next few weeks of field
work, he had his belongings stolen and al-
most lost his life in a ravine, but when he
returned to Banaras, it was with a crate of
internationally in the 1970s
rock samples. for geophysical analyses,
Soon after, Gaur left for a PhD at Im-
perial College, London, on a scholarship Gaur ensured it spread to
and nothing came of those samples. Since
then, Gaur’s contributions over more
geophysics departments
than six decades as an Earth Scientist, across the country.
administrator and educator have been
wide-ranging and foundational. But that
initial foray into research showed traits
that would recur in his work: tenacity,
the vision to contribute to larger scien-
tific endeavours, and the ingenuity to
transcend local constraints.
Gaur’s house in Bengaluru reflects
the wide range of interests of its occu-
pants: books, plants, paintings by art-
ist friends, a piano that his wife Eryl
plays, figurines, rocks collected from

Vinod Gaur on the terrace of his house

in Bengaluru. The dark rock to his right
is basalt from the Deccan Traps. The
bench he is sitting on, he says, was made
from granite from around Bengaluru,
among the oldest rock in the Indian
subcontinent. PHOTO: SRINATH PERUR

46 SHAASTRA | September-October 2021

lometres deep. So, a little like shaking a
box to guess what’s in it, scientists rely on
indirect observations – such as how fast
waves from earthquakes travel – to arrive
at possible models for the Earth’s interi-
or. Inverse Theory consists of mathemat-
ical tools to go from such observations
to likely models, and takes into account
errors or incompleteness in data. Ac-
cording to Gupta, when Inverse Theory
was becoming popular internationally in
the 1970s for geophysical analyses, Gaur
assembled a core team for it at Roorkee.
Then, through seminars and workshops,
he ensured it spread to other geophysics
departments in the country.
Similarly, Gupta says, Gaur’s empha-
sis on numerical modelling and the use
of computers meant that they were able
to do 3D modelling in the early 1980s, con-
sidered frontline research at the time. Ac-
cording to him, the seismic zoning maps
we have today, which warn of the vulner-
ability of a place to earthquakes, are built
on the foundations that Gaur laid.
Gupta admires Gaur for his vision and Gaur at the snout of Milam Glacier, Uttarakhand. PHOTO: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

his knack for finding good people. He

says, “His biggest quality was that by na- Gaur oversaw a project that geophysics and with colleagues produced

used British-era survey data

ture he was a scientist, but he was also an
excellent administrator. Generally, good
scientists are not good administrators.”
In 1983, Gaur was offered the director-
ship of the National Geophysical Research
Institute (NGRI) – without his having ap-
plied for the position – with a mandate to
shake things up. Somewhat grudgingly,
he left his students and the mountains and
a significant finding about a sea-mount in
the Indian Ocean. He says, “The import-
and modern GPS technology ant thing was that this was the first time
we applied elastic fracture theory to any
to measure the rate at geophysical problem in the country.”
which the Indian tectonic Similarly, the first work in India that
used waves from earthquakes to ‘look’
plate was advancing into the Earth – seismic tomography –
happened at NGRI during this time. They
towards the Eurasian plate.

T
went to Hyderabad.
he April 12, 1984 issue of Nature
carried a special feature on sci-
ence in India, including a visit
to NGRI. Nature’s correspondent
finds an “energetic youngish
man” who has taken up a “deliberately
subversive spell” as Director. “Gaur’s
arrival at Hyderabad will be long remem-
bered,” the article says. “He began by tell-
ing the 180 scientist members of the staff
that they should spend the following three
months in the library, reading the recent
literature in their fields, deciding what
they should be doing.”
Gaur’s early years were spent in East-
ern Uttar Pradesh. He recalls: “I grew up
in a feudal society, but was never able
to accept its tenets or its culture. So I re-
belled.” In Gaur’s experience, government
institutions too tended to develop stiff and
hierarchical cultures – and NGRI was no
exception. He did not want people to stand
at attention when the Director passed, or
find routine leave applications on his desk
“only so that I would have the privilege to
say no”. In such an environment, “young-
er people, even if they have bright ideas,
will never talk about them.” He put an end
to several practices of the sort.
The changes Gaur brought in inevitably
faced a backlash from some quarters of the
institute. But in the meanwhile, he was ac-
cruing goodwill from Eryl’s work on cam-
pus. She started a school for the children
of less well-off workers, organised medical
camps. Once, when Gaur asked his office
why he was expected to meet a group of
gardeners who had a grievance with their
contractor, he was told, “Mrs Gaur is the
head of the delegation.”
Then there were those who responded
positively to the changes, like Rishi Nara-
in Singh, a scientist at NGRI then and now
Visiting Professor at IIT Gandhinagar.
He describes how at the time there was
an international research focus on the
lithosphere – the rigid outer layer of the
Earth, divided into tectonic plates that
move over a less rigid layer below. Singh
says the institute’s research too turned
towards the Indian lithosphere, making
observations, modelling it and explaining
earthquakes. Singh himself, until then a
theoretician, became involved in marine
found that the lithosphere under the Dec-
can Traps was thicker than expected. Gaur
says, “It was more about the historical sig-
nificance than the details of the result. We
attempted it for the first time in India. You
do a thing like that, and other people start
thinking, and that’s how it multiplies.”
Reliable dating of rock samples had
proved to be a problem in India. Gaur bat-
tled red tape and spent his entire year’s
budget of `35 lakh on a commercial mass
spectrometer. He also recruited, despite
stiff resistance from within the institu-
tion, the geochronologist K. Gopalan,
who had in the United States worked on
meteorites and lunar rocks. As Gopalan
writes in an e-mail, “I can take credit for
the first precise dating of Indian rocks in
NGRI to tough international standards.”
He went on to help several other Indian
institutions make effective use of their
spectrometers.
Singh brings up what he believes is an-
other far-reaching contribution by Gaur.
Put in charge of the CSIR-UGC NET ex-
amination for Earth Sciences, Gaur com-
bined the various branches into a single
paper. Singh says that while the tenden-
cy in Earth Sciences now is increasingly

SHAASTRA | September-October 2021 47

 PROFILE

holistic, it was not the case then. Gaur,

he feels, was ahead of his time in this re-
spect, and since the NET exam is a prereq-
uisite for fellowships and for becoming a
college lecturer, he has deeply influenced
the study of Earth Sciences in India. In a
similar vein, Gaur contributed to NCERT
textbooks by integrating lessons in phys-

I
ics, chemistry and biology.

n 1989, Gaur was invited to meet the

then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. He
recalls the venue being a flight from
Delhi to Nagpur. Gandhi told Gaur that
he wanted him to take charge of the De-
partment of Ocean Development, adding
that there had been many objections to
his name. “Then you must heed those ob-
jections,” Gaur says he told him. Gandhi
laughed, and by the time the flight landed
in Nagpur, he had persuaded Gaur to take
the offer seriously.
A week later, Gaur moved to Delhi and
joined as Secretary to the Government
of India. Gandhi had asked him to find Gaur supervising the installation of a GPS station at Kodaikanal in 2002. PHOTO: KABIR ROY

ways in which the benefits of science

and technology could reach the ordinary
person. To this end, Gaur conceived of a
service that would tell fishermen around
the country where fish were to be found
in the sea. The idea was that fish occupy
nutrient-rich waters, which can be identi-
fied in satellite images from their higher
temperature gradient. Gaur enlisted the
National Remote Sensing Agency to de-
In 1989, Prime Minister Rajiv In Bangalore, Gaur was also associated
with the Indian Institute for Astrophysics.
Gandhi invited Gaur to take In addition to overseeing the installation of
charge of the Department telescopes at Hanle in Ladakh, he used the
pristine location to set up a high-precision
of Ocean Development. carbon dioxide monitoring station. While
Using remote sensing earlier European estimates had held the re-
gion to be a carbon source, measurements
technology, Gaur conceived made here helped to show it was actually a

of a service that would tell

velop such maps and installed over a hun-
dred fax machines in coastal districts. The
maps would be updated every two or three
days and made available to fishermen.
Other programmes included drugs
from the sea, sea-bed mining and a large
multi-institution project to monitor a
25-kilometre-wide band of the sea near
the coast from Gujarat to the Andamans
for physical, chemical and biological
characteristics. At the time, India’s mis-
sions to Antarctica had come in for crit-
icism in parliament. Gaur wrote a policy
paper on why India should assert its pres-
ence in Antarctica through science, and
went on to develop a strong programme
for Antarctic research. Characteristical-
ly, he included one place on the ship for
an artist or a writer – which was elimi-
nated after he left.
After three years in Delhi, Gaur joined
the newly started CSIR Centre for Math-
ematical Modelling and Computer Simu-
lation (C-MMACS) in Bangalore. An im-
portant new project he took up used the
fact that GPS accuracy had improved to
the point where it could reliably measure
the relative motion of tectonic plates. The
British had in the 19th century conducted
the great trigonometrical survey, begin-
ning in Madras and extending triangle by
fishermen where fish could
be found at sea.
triangle through the subcontinent. Some
of their markers were still identifiable,
with their coordinates accurately record-
ed more than a century ago. Comparing
those coordinates with modern GPS coor-
dinates allowed Gaur and his colleagues
to establish that the southern part of the
Indian plate had stayed rigid. They es-
tablished a GPS reference station in Ban-
galore, and for the first time confirmed
by direct measurement that Bangalore,
on the Indian plate, advanced towards
the Eurasian plate at a rate of around 5
cm per year. It was in the region around
the Himalaya that rocks deformed and
strains accumulated in complex ways to
be later released as earthquakes.
In a broad sense, the rock samples that
Gaur had collected as a young man in the
Rajmahal Traps could have been used
to answer questions about plate move-
ments. Now, he was answering some
of those questions in great detail using
methods that would have been hard to
imagine at the time.
sink, absorbing more than it released.
According to R. Srinivasan, who
worked with Gaur at NGRI and is now
Visiting Professor at the Divecha Cen-
tre for Climate Change, IISc, Bengaluru,
geophysics activity in India is largely
focussed on two areas: mineral explora-
tion, particularly oil and gas; and trying
to understand and forecast earthquakes.
Gaur’s work has been pioneering for both
these applications in the Indian context,
first in terms of measurements – GPS,
broadband seismic data – and then in
terms of how they are analysed and mod-
elled. Srinivasan says Gaur has been
far-sighted and mentored people who con-
tinue to carry this work forward. “To my
mind,” he says, “Prof. Gaur was a very ef-
fective and great institution builder.”
As Honorary Scientist at CSIR Fourth
Paradigm Institute (formerly C-MMACS),
Gaur continues to work with students and
give talks. Now 85, he recently travelled to
Kashmir and visited seismic stations that
could help understand earthquake hazards
there. Asked if anything from his long list
of contributions gives him particular sat-
isfaction, he says, “None. I am an eternally
dissatisfied person.” He does admit to mo-
ments of joy while working, though, quite
often when he is out in the mountains. 

48 SHAASTRA | September-October 2021

 SCIENCE | TECHNOLOGY | INNOVATION

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Digital
goes the
easel
With emerging
technologies embracing
art, digital artists are
tasting success – and
raking it in.
A
JAYADEVAN P.K.
mrit Pal Singh has been a de-
signer for nearly a decade now.
Until recently, though, not many
knew of him outside the world of
design. But that was then.
Today, he is not just a hugely popular
figure in the world of digital art but has
also sold artworks worth about `2.9 crore
so far. “Things changed so much in the
last six months I don’t even know where
to begin,” says Singh, 32.
To a large extent, behind his sudden
success are emerging technologies such
as blockchain and non-fungible tokens
(NFT). NFTs were hardly a matter of pub-
lic discourse even earlier this year. But in
recent times the phenomenon has swept
across the globe, as if to make up for the
standstill in the real world.
“At the beginning of the year, I had no
idea what those were,” Singh recalls, refer-
ring to NFTs. He’s richer for the knowledge.
Blockchain is a digital ledger that keeps
a record of entries that are validated by all
participants on the chain who agree to a
set of rules or protocols. An NFT is simply
an entry on a blockchain that is tied to a
digital asset. In this case, the blockchain
used to create NFTs is a decentralised,
open-source platform called Etherium.
When an asset changes hands, the token
reflects that change, thus proving the own-
ership of that asset. This means people can
now uniquely identify digital assets, or
50 SHAASTRA | September-October 2021
TECHNOLOGY
art, as in this case, and buy and sell it.
To simplify the concept of fungibil-
ity, consider the rupee. The value of a
`2,000-note and that of four `500 notes is
the same. So instead of using the former,
you can use four `500 notes. Or if you ex-
change a set of `500 notes with another
set, they still hold the same value. This
means currency is fungible.
But a physical product, say a Raja Ravi
Varma painting, has only one original
and several copies. The copies can never
replace the original in value. That is, the
original object is non-fungible and unique.
The value of art lies in the ability of the
seller and buyer to establish provenance
and, thereby, uniqueness. In the world of
digital art, it was hard to verify the prov-
enance of a piece since you couldn’t dis-
tinguish between copies. But that changed
with the NFT. Every piece of digital art
that is an NFT can be uniquely identified.
CHANGING TRENDS
Growing up in Delhi, Singh had a passing
interest in drawing. His parents, who run
a business, allowed him to pursue a cre-
ative career and it became a serious pur-
suit after school. He joined the Vancouver
Film School, Canada, in 2012, wanting to
become a motion designer and work on an-
imation. But when he came back to India,
he found that most of the opportunities
were in designing apps; thus began his
career with start-ups and tech companies.
On the side, he started on 3-dimension-
al mock-ups that other designers could
license from him and use in their own
designs. By 2019, he was tired of the start-
up ecosystem and wanted a break. Among
these mock-ups were a set of toy faces that
companies and designers could license
and use. Singh called it the Toy Faces
Library and launched it in June 2020 on
Product Hunt, a product discovery site
where users vote for items uploaded by
its creators. The library became popular
with nearly 1,400 upvotes and was the talk
of the design and tech community. Adobe,
which sells software to creators, funded
Singh’s Toy Faces project.
In February 2021, life took a new turn.
Someone told him on Twitter about a
“thing called NFT” and that Toy Faces
would make great NFTs. Singh released
toy faces that looked like artists Frida
Kahlo and Vincent van Gogh first as
NFTs later that month. “Suddenly I saw
bids on those,” he says.
A bidding war ensued and eventually
the two pieces sold for a total of 7.6 ETH
(ETH is short for Ether, the popular cryp-
In the world of digital art, it was hard to verify the
provenance of a piece since you couldn’t tell fake from
original. But that has changed with NFT.
tocurrency built on top of the Ethereum
blockchain). At today’s prices, it roughly
translates to `21 lakh. “I just had a great
start and then I just went all out,” he says.
Since then, he has created and sold digital
art worth 100 ETH (roughly `2.9 crore).
Singh’s growth is indicative of a wider
shift: the melding of the worlds of tech-
nology and art, and thrusting art into the
future. For the first time, digital artists
have a way to bypass the traditional art
scene centred on art galleries and cliques
— not only for the artistic value of their
creations but also for its growing impor-
tance as an investable asset for collectors.
“No one took me seriously seven years
ago when I was talking about blockchain
and art. Now everyone is waking up be-
cause there’s money in it, and I love how
it is throwing up some complex ethical di-
lemmas,” says New York-based Raghava
K.K., one of the earliest artists to work at
the intersection of technology and art.
Raghava, however, argues that there
are more speculators buying digital art
today than people who appreciate art.
“What we need is more believers. That
way we can create a new asset class that
will sustain art. That requires serious
commitment,” says the artist who has
been commissioned to create several piec-
es of digital art across the world.
NFT FEVER
Driven by liquidity in the markets and
fewer avenues for high-risk, high-re-
ward bets, several investors have poured
money into cryptocurrencies and NFTs.
Deal-making on such platforms is moving
at a feverish pace.
The process of creating an NFT is called
minting and several platforms enable this
for a fee. In the first half of this year alone,
NFTs worth nearly $2.5 billion were sold
on such platforms, up from $13.7 million
in the first half of last year, according to
‘Masked Reality’ (left), a dramatic installation
by Harshit Agrawal, one of India’s first artists
to co-create art with artificial intelligence.
PHOTO: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
data from Nonfungible.com, which tracks
the NFT market. While some speculate
that the market could slow down or even
crash, it has been growing at an explosive
pace until now.
An early attempt at creating and selling
digital goods using the blockchain dates
back to 2017, where a game built on Ethe-
reum called CryptoKitties allowed users
to buy, collect and breed virtual cats. The
CryptoKitties frenzy died down but, in
May 2020, Dapper Labs, the developers of
CryptoKitties, launched a marketplace
called NBA Top Shot where fans could
buy video highlights of some of the great-
est NBA plays. By May 2021, fans had
bought clips worth over $700 million.
In February, Chris Torres, the creator
of a 2011 viral meme called Nyan Cat, sold
a unique re-mastered version of the video
for nearly $600,000 on Foundation, an NFT
platform. The original Nyan Cat meme
was a YouTube video of a cartoon cat with
a Pop-Tart body oozing a rainbow as it
flew through space with a Japanese pop
song in the background. In March, Twitter
co-founder Jack Dorsey sold the NFT of his
first-ever Tweet for $2.9 million. Edward
Snowden’s NFT — an image of his face
made from the pages of a U.S. court deci-
sion on his mass surveillance exposure —
was sold for $5.4 million in April.
Bollywood actors Amitabh Bachchan
and Sunny Leone are also launching their
own NFT collections. Bachchan’s collec-
tion will include his father Harivansh
Rai Bachchan’s poem Madhushala and
signed film posters. Leone will share a set
of collectibles, including curated art and
costume designs, on her site. Indian cryp-
tocurrency exchange WazirX launched
SHAASTRA | September-October 2021 51
 TECHNOLOGY

an NFT marketplace in June and has sold

over 1,000 NFTs so far.
“Collectibles that have a piece of histo-
ry or meaning for a generation of people
who grew up online fetch a high price,”
says Nitin Sharma, an early-stage inves-
tor in crypto start-ups. He adds that some
of the emotions and values that buyers
associate with digital art today are fame,
cuteness, sex and even dankness (dank
memes refer to unique or odd memes).
Sharma stresses that there is a “gold
rush” for NFTs. “And that’s because there’s
too much liquidity in the market; people
have made millions in crypto and some
amount of speculation,” says Sharma, who
runs a fund called Antler in India and is
seeking to invest in start-ups that make
“the picks and shovels” in this gold rush.
The big breakthrough in the field came
when auction house Christie’s sold an
NFT called Everydays: The First 5000 Days
by artist Michael Winkelmann, who goes
by the alias Beeple, for $69 million. It was
later revealed that the buyer was a Tamil
Nadu-born crypto entrepreneur called Vi-
gnesh Sundaresan, who goes by the name
Metakovan in the virtual world. The auc-
tion was prime-time news on nearly every
top television channel and newspaper. The
internet was abuzz with the story for days.

CHANGING DEMOGRAPHIC
The changing demographic of prospective
art buyers and people who want to experi-
ence art is also promoting innovation. “Gal-
leries have no choice but to evolve. There’s Amrit Pal Singh, who has sold artworks
worth about `3 crore, traces his success as a
a whole demographic that experiences art digital artist to emerging technologies such as
in digital forms and they’re now starting to blockchain and non-fungible tokens.
buy,” says Aparajita Jain, co-director of Na- PHOTO: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

ture Morte, a leading contemporary art gal-

lery in New Delhi. Jain recently launched
Terrain.art, an NFT platform that has cu-
rated the works of several digital artists.
That new demographic is already
spending a considerable amount of time
in the metaverse — a virtual shared
space — through video games or on vid-
eo conferences. “For my 16-year-old son
or my daughter, video games and plat-
forms such as Instagram are where a lot
of their time is spent. They’re already in
the metaverse,” Jain adds.
Most NFT collectors are crypto enthu-
siasts or even crypto millionaires who are
fascinated by art. They also look at an NFT
as an investment. A typical collector would
invest in several artists and hope that these
artists earn fame in the future, making
their own collections more valuable. They
also invest in collectibles such as the Nyan
Cat or projects that sell a limited number of
collectibles such as CryptoPunks and the
Bored Ape Yacht Club, Dorsey’s first Tweet
or computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee’s
source code for the World Wide Web.
Bollywood actors Amitabh
Bachchan and Sunny Leone
are also launching their own
NFT collections. Bachchan’s
NFT collection will include
his father Harivansh Rai
Bachchan’s poem Madhushala
and signed film posters.
THE METAVERSE
Harshit Agrawal is one of India’s earliest
artists to co-create art with artificial intel-
ligence. He recently curated an art show
titled Intertwined Intelligences for Terrain.
art. The idea took shape when he tried to
create what a digitally native future would
look like. “We’ve already started spending Aparajita Jain, co-director of Nature Morte, a
much of our time in digital worlds. More leading contemporary art gallery in New Delhi,
has launched an NFT platform that has curated
so during the pandemic. Given that, I the works of digital artists.
wanted to try and show how humans can PHOTO: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

52 SHAASTRA | September-October 2021


Nitin Sharma reckons that liquidity is driving
a “gold rush” for NFTs. He hopes to invest in
start-ups that make the “picks and shovels” in
this gold rush.
PHOTO: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
co-imagine a future with artificial intelli-
gence which will be a big part of our dig-
ital worlds,” says Agrawal, whose solo
exhibition at Kolkata gallery Emami Art,
which got under way in mid-September,
explores some of these themes.
With digital art, the possibilities for
artists to engage with the future have also
grown, giving those from the global South
a bigger platform of expression. “Unlike
in the West, the Eastern world does not
look at anything as binary. The binary
view, which is big in academic circles, is
crumbling because they are based on ab-
solute truths in a conceptual world. The
Raghava K.K. was an early evangelist for
digital art, but reckons that only the infusion
of money has given traction to his ideas.
PHOTO: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
TOP 5 ART NFT MARKETPLACES
Platform No. of art NFTs sold Volume ($m)
Art Blocks 2,05,666 936.4
SuperRare 25,097 127.3
MakersPlace 18,865 26.1
Known Origin 22,994 14.3
CryptoArte 18,533 19.6
Source: Nonfungible.com
human experience of art is detached from
all that,” Raghava says.
“In the East, we live art,” he adds. “We
experience it in a truly democratic way. It’s
a conceptual and radical shift. NFTs are say-
ing that we want artists to rise to that occa-
sion. This is the sentiment. Not the gold rush
where people are hedging from one curren-
cy to another. Where is the art in that?”
That his work was finally considered as
art and not a product mattered to Singh. “For
the majority of my career, digital art was not
seen as art. It was always considered more
commercial even though it is as intense as,
say, painting on a canvas,” says Singh, who
recently created a series of NFTs called Mar-
tian Bunkers X Bored Elon in which he cap-
tures an imaginary future on Mars.
THE FUTURE OF ART
The gallery model is also changing. In the
NFT community, artists work on their
own promotions, marketing and building
an audience. In the traditional world, the
gallery does most of that work for artists in
exchange for a hefty fee. In NFTs, the ma-
jority of the proceeds from a sale will go to
the artist. The marketplaces that facilitate
The gallery model is also
changing. In the NFT
community, artists work
on their own promotions,
marketing and building an
audience.
this trade typically charge a fee between
2.5% and 15% of the value of the art piece.
Also, unlike in the traditional art world,
in the world of NFTs, artists can also earn
from secondary sales. That is, every time
the artwork changes hands, and there’s an
appreciation in its price, artists stand to
benefit. In the non-digital world, proceeds
from secondary sales often go to collectors
or galleries. “With NFT, on every sale you
get 10%,” says Singh.
What Metakovan plans to do with the
artwork he has purchased offers a glimpse
of the future. He imagines setting up an art
museum in the metaverse where users can
see some of the digital world’s most im-
portant artworks, including Beeple’s art.
His company, Metapurse, plans to hire
some of the world’s best architects and
build a virtual world of art. “We intend
to create a monument that this particular
piece [Beeple’s work] deserves, which can
only exist in the metaverse,” Metakovan
told The Art Newspaper in March.
Organisations such as Metapurse them-
selves could be run on the blockchain. This
new type of a body is called a decentralised
autonomous organisation where the com-
pany rules and governance are burned
onto smart contracts on the blockchain
without a central authority controlling it.
“How we deal with technologies like
blockchain and artificial intelligence
will be the most defining aspects of how
humanity moves forward. The idea of
post-human and decentralised ownership
is very much here and artists will engage
more and more with it,” says Agrawal.
The current sentiment throws up stim-
ulating dilemmas for artists. Raghava
holds that just because it is easy to com-
modify art now, it doesn’t mean that it
must be sold. “If everything is digitisable
and commodifiable, should everything be
put up for sale?” he wonders.
The true job of an artist, according to
Raghava, is to make art more inclusive,
not exclusive; hopeful, not hopeless; heal-
ing, not anxiety-inducing; future-facing,
not backward-looking. It must be relevant
and not academic and a way of life more
than a commodity, he holds. Even as it
throws up ethical dilemmas for artists,
the world of digital art and NFTs make all
this possible. 
SHAASTRA | September-October 2021 53
 BOOKS

Race for
power
Nuclear fusion energy as a
carbon-neutral source or

PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK
power is no longer a distant
dream, reckons a former
fusion community insider.
Hari Pulakkat British economist and data scientist but had The world uses 620 exajoules

I
of energy a year. Since solar
done his PhD from Imperial College London
n 1957, British physicist John Lawson on plasma physics. He was, strictly speaking,
published a paper that established the
conditions for creating sustained fusion
once an insider of the fusion community.
The major teams he describes are the Na-
and wind energies cannot
reactions by combining elements in a reac- tional Ignition Facility at Livermore in Cali- meet much of this demand,
nuclear energy — and
tor that finally produced more energy than fornia, the Joint European Torus based near
what it consumed. Lawson had concluded Oxford in the U.K., the Max Planck Institute
that there were no physics-based limitations
for achieving nuclear fusion in a reactor.
for Plasma Physics in Germany, the Interna-
tional Thermonuclear Experimental Reac-
particularly fusion energy —
Atomic fusion was the pro- tion in southern France, remains the best bet.
cess through which stars and a few private compa-
produced their energy, and nies such as the U.K.-based plains the fusion projects well, with scepti-
Lawson’s paper was a shot First Light Fusion and cism thrown in only occasionally.
in the arm for proponents of Tokamak Energy. Each of The major stumbling block for fusion,
fusion energy. In fact, many these institutions or com- as Turrell describes it, is the unpredictable
scientists then believed panies thinks that theirs behaviour of plasma that exists at the high
that the technology would is the best approach and temperatures required for fusion (in excess
be used widely to produce most likely to succeed. of 100 million degrees Celsius). Many of the
energy. It didn’t quite work The private companies, scientists interviewed say that if we under-
out that way. especially, are extremely stood plasma better, we would have had com-
For the next six decades, optimistic and talk about mercial fusion reactors a few decades ago.
at least three generations operating commercial fu- Physicists have come a long way in under-
of scientists tried hard to sion reactors by the 2040s. standing plasma instabilities. But have they
achieve fusion inside re- Early in the book, Tur- understood enough? Probably not.
actors, spending billions rell establishes the need
of taxpayer dollars in the to develop commercial NOT QUITE THERE YET
process. Sustaining a fu- nuclear fusion. The world In the end, the book is a good introduction
sion reaction in a confined is hungry for energy, and to current fusion research, but the reader
space had technological The Star Builders: Nuclear that demand will only in- is no nearer to concluding that fusion will
challenges that physicists Fusion and the Race to crease in the near future. be a reality soon. In the final chapters, Tur-
and engineers had not fore- Power the Planet The world uses 620 exa- rell examines the dangers and the econom-
seen in the 1950s. So much By Arthur Turrell joules of energy a year (1 ics of fusion energy. Fusion does not pro-
so that the joke around the exajoule = 1018 joules), and duce large amounts of dangerous waste.
Published by Scribner
world was that fusion was this would increase by The raw materials of fusion – two differ-
an energy source that was 272 pages; $28 50% by 2050, according to ent forms of hydrogen – are so abundant
always 30 years away. the U.S. Energy Informa- that there is enough supply on Earth for a
But that’s about to change, says Arthur tion Administration. It is hard to imagine so- billion years at least. Unlike the raw ma-
Turrell in The Star Builders. lar and wind energies supplying a major part terials of fission, terrorists cannot make
of this demand. If fossil fuels can supply no a bomb if they get the raw materials of fu-
BULLISH ON FUSION more than 30% of the world’s energy by 2050, sion. While solar and wind will remain the
Coming at a time of increasing storms and as the IPCC says, there is no option but to pur- cheapest forms of energy, fusion can be the
fires driven by climate change, The Star sue nuclear energy. Nuclear fission is risky next best, better than fossil fuels.
Builders infuses optimism into the quest for a and creates dangerous waste. So the best op- It is worth noting that last month, after
carbon-neutral source of energy. The book is tion is fusion, if we could make it work. the book was published, the National Igni-
about people and companies trying to achieve The main argument in the book is that tion Facility created 700 times the energy
nuclear fusion around the world and, in their it would work, and sooner than we think. generation capacity of the U.S., but only
own opinion, on the verge of succeeding. In Although Turrell remains aloof and rarely for a fraction of a second. It is far from
fusion time-scales, the term ‘on the verge’ expresses strong opinions, he is optimistic achieving ignition, the point at which fu-
means about 15-20 years. The author is a about the future of fusion energy. He ex- sion becomes self-sustaining. 

54 SHAASTRA | September-October 2021

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 BOOKS
Where there’s a wheel,
there’s a way
A delightful history of mobility vehicles over time,
and their profound influence in steering societal
and political change.
Bishakha De Sarkar
B
ack in those days when cable was merely a
bulky knitting pattern and surfing was what
Archie and his pals did, a friend had found
a good way of whiling away time as a schoolboy
in Delhi. He would stand on the road outside his
house in the early 1960s, counting the number of
cars that went by. If he was lucky, he recalls, he
would get to see 10 or 12 vehicles in an hour.
Then came the Maruti, and India saw a revo-
lution on the roads, in more ways than one. Any
child who may now want to count Delhi’s vehicles
is asking for trouble. For one, there are few pave-
ments in the city. Two, the fumes are toxic. And,
three, you can’t keep up with the cars in any case.
Many of the changes that the so-called family car
A Brief History of ushered in come up – though in different contexts
Motion: From the – in journalist Tom Standage’s A Brief History of
Wheel to the Car, to Motion: From the Wheel to the Car, to What Comes
What Comes Next Next. Packed with information and anecdotes, this
By Tom Standage book by the digital editor at The Economist and ed-
itor-in-chief of its website steers us through time
Published by Bloomsbury
and geography to narrate a remarkable story. He
272 pages; £18 tells us how wheels morphed over time, how cars
changed landscapes and were an effective tool for
feminism and civil liberty and about the future of
driverless automobiles. He looks at companies’
efforts at luring women customers by marketing
cars as fashion items and mentions the impact of
the quest for oil on geopolitical equations.
The story of He answers, often with understated humour,
vehicles is not just
questions that we may have on the different
modes of transport. Ever wondered, for instance,
about evolving what pushed horse-led carriages out of England
and the United States?
modes of transport, It was horse manure.
but about the socio- “By the 1890s around 300,000 horses were
working on the streets of London, and more than
economic changes 150,000 in New York City. Each of these horses
produced an average of twen-
that followed. ty-two pounds
56 SHAASTRA | September-October 2021
(ten kilograms) of manure a day, plus a quart
(about a liter) of urine,” he writes. The stench,
he adds, was unbearable, and cleaning up was a
mammoth task.
If the manure produced by the 15,000 horses in
Rochester, New York, was piled up each year, it
would cover an acre of ground to a height of 175
feet and breed 16 billion flies, city health officials
had estimated. And Rochester, he underlines,
was small compared to New York City, which
had ten times as many horses.
“To advocates of a newly emerging technolo-
gy, the solution seemed obvious: get rid of horses
and replace them with self-propelling motor ve-
hicles, known at the time as horseless carriages.
Today we call them cars,” he writes.
And cars, he adds, ushered in unimaginable
changes. “Today it is the motor vehicle, rather
than the horse, that seems unsustainable.”
HISTORY ON WHEELS
The author of such works as A History of the
World in Six Glasses and The Victorian Internet
delves deep into history to tell us the story of
motion. The first wheeled vehicles were possi-
bly hand-pulled Carpathian mine carts – as ev-
idenced by vessels with four wheels from 3500-
3000 BCE found on the southern flanks of the
copper ore-rich mountains in Central and East-
ern Europe. Producing an ingot of the metal en-
tailed processing large amounts of ore, which, he
points out, had to be dug out of the mountains by
hand. The carts were invented to ease the shift-
ing of heavy loads.
What’s significant is that the story of vehicles
– from carts and automobiles to bikes and elec-
tric cars – is not just about evolving modes of
transport. More absorbing still is his account of
the socio-economic changes that followed or were
prompted by new forms of transport.
The bicycle, for instance, was a great leveller
in the late 19th century. “It let people travel as
quickly as they could on horseback, but without
the expense of buying, feeding, and maintaining
a horse,” Standage writes. The American month-
ly The Century Magazine said it enabled the poor
man to “sing the song of the open road” as freely
as the millionaire.
PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK
PEDAL POWER
Not surprisingly, bicycles emerged not just as a
cheaper alternative for the people, but also as a
liberating tool for women. “This was not simply
because women cyclists challenged the impracti-
cality of Victorian clothing and took to wearing
trousers or bloomers instead. Beloved of suffrag-
ettes and socialists, bicycles became more broad-
ly associated with personal emancipation and
social progress.”
And, if you saw Paul Newman woo his lady
love on a cycle in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance
Kid, or, nearer home, watched Dev Anand on a
bicycle pursue Nutan in Paying Guest, you would
know the role the two-wheeler played in promot-
ing romance.
“They broadened people’s social circles, letting
PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK
cyclists travel beyond their own communities and
greatly increasing the number of potential mar-
riage partners. Cycling … allowed young men and
women to escape the oversight of chaperones. As
one newspaper explained in 1899, ‘The chief mer-
it of the bicycle in the eyes of the young is that it
dispenses with the chaperon … It imparts open air
freedom and freshness to a life heretofore cribbed,
crabbed, cabined and confined by convention.’”
The impact of automobiles on the right to
movement of Black Americans makes for a fasci-
nating read, too. He recounts the story of the jit-
ney – a form of ride-sharing that was popular for a
spell in the 20th century. An economic slowdown,
which began in 1913, prompted many who had
lost their jobs to drive their cars as cabs to earn
money. They would ply their vehicles on the main
street of a city, ferrying three or four passengers
to or from the central business district. There
were also all-Black jitney routes, operated by
Black drivers for Black riders, in Southern cities.
Then came activist Rosa Parks. On December
1, 1955, she resisted segregation in a bus – Blacks
had to sit at the back and give up their seats if
a white person was without one – by refusing to
vacate her seat. She was arrested, which led to a
boycott of buses in Montgomery. African-Ameri-
cans who owned cars supported the Montgomery
Bus Boycott by carrying people who needed to
travel for 10 cents – which was the bus fare.
“The boycott was widely observed… as
near-empty buses plied the streets. The organiz-
ers decided to continue the boycott and estab-
lished a new body, the Montgomery Improve-
ment Association (MIA), to oversee it. Martin
Luther King Jr., a young local minister, was
elected as its leader,” he writes.
Standage, clearly, has done a thorough study of
his subject. The indices point to the large number
of books, academic notes, journals, newspapers,
civic body notes and political committee minutes
that he consulted for this volume.
While it must be a historian’s delight, there’s
a lot for the trivia lover, too. Standage tells traf-
fic light enthusiasts (there has to be a fan club
somewhere!) that the first signal was installed
on Westminster Bridge in London in 1868. Rail-
way engineer John Peake Knight invented a set
of semaphore arms. Placed on a tall post, these
arms had to be raised and lowered manually –
raised meant vehicles and horses had to stop to Cars were an
allow pedestrians to pass, lowered arms meant
vehicles and horses had to exercise caution.
effective tool
And just what was Detroit police officer Wil- for channelling
feminism and civil
liam Potts’s contribution to traffic lights? In 1917,
Potts added an amber light to the traffic pole to
warn people that the signal was about to change.
liberty: companies
SOCIAL MOBILITY lured women
customers by
The book focuses largely on the U.S. and Britain,
but much of what he writes brings to mind the
far-reaching changes that India has been wit-
nessing over the years. Towns got connected to
marketing cars as
cities, villages to towns. The Metro in Delhi en- fashion items.
abled Muslim women living in the Walled City
to come out of their homes, just the way bicycles
brought women out in the West.
Then, of course, we have seen highways and
expressways trample over villages, pavements
and shanties, the rise of pollution and smog, and
citizen campaigns for restricting traffic.
Where do we go from here? The COVID-19 pan-
demic has brought back the past – the magic of
empty roads and unpolluted air – and many ex-
pect a restriction on traffic and cars in the com-
ing years. Consultancy group KPMG predicts
that the pandemic will result in a world of “fewer
trips, fewer miles, and fewer cars”.
The future perhaps lies in one’s hands – in the
smartphone. The movement towards ride-hail-
ing, car-pooling, bike-sharing and other mobility
services may lead to the use of a single app for a
host of transport options, Standage states.
“This approach, known in the industry as mo-
bility as a service (MaaS), can be seen in action
in Helsinki, where trains, trams, buses, bike
rental, taxis, e-scooters, and car rental can all be
accessed through a single app,” he says.
“The smartphone, rather than any particular
means of transport, is the true heir to the car,”
he writes.
It’s all about mobility, after all. 
SHAASTRA | September-October 2021 57
 BOOKS
In search of blue
An authoritative biography of blue gives a new tint to
the ongoing quest for the rarest colour on Earth.
Vijaysree Venkatraman
T
he first time he saw the colour, M.A.
Subramanian could not believe his
eyes. The U.S.-based professor had
asked a graduate student to grind a trio of
dull oxides and bake the mixture at around
1,200° Celsius. The goal was to make a multi-
ferroic or high-efficiency electronic materi-
al. What stared back at him from the furnace
the next day was a dazzling blue powder.
The solid-state chemist at Oregon State
University, with a PhD from IIT Madras,
had worked in DuPont for over 20 years. He
recalled colleagues from
the pigment division saying
that it was hard to make
a blue compound in the
lab. His industry instincts
kicked in. Though it was
not multiferroic, he pat-
ented the material, which
proved to be inert, non-tox-
ic and heat-reflecting.
‘Mas’ Subramanian, it
turns out, had discovered
the first new blue pigment
in more than two centu-
ries. YInMn (pronounced
Yin-Min) Blue — a mix of
Yttrium (Y), Indium (In)
and Manganese (Mn) — has
captured the imagination of
the creative community. In Blue: In Search of
the U.S., YInMn Blue was Nature’s Rarest Color
approved for use in indus-
By Kai Kupferschmidt
trial coatings and plastics
in 2017. It was marketed as Published by The Experiment Consumers are wary of the
paint earlier this year. 224 pages; $24.95
The story of YInMn Blue
figures prominently in Blue: In search of Na-
ture’s Rarest Color, by Kai Kupferschmidt,
a correspondent for Science magazine. The
author writes engagingly of the science and
aesthetics of blues in nature, the history of
blue dyes and pigments, and the ongoing
quest for blues. Viewing the world through
the lens of his favourite colour, he presents
his information in five sections: ‘Stones’,
‘Seeing’, ‘Plants’, ‘Speaking’, and ‘Animals’.
The peacock on the book jacket rep-
resents the idea that most blue in nature
is illusory. Blue-coloured birds, beetles
and butterflies have tiny patterns on the
surface of their bodies. These structures
reflect light, so the blue wavelengths (380-
500 nanometres) get exquisitely enhanced,
while other wavelengths cancel out. Even
58 SHAASTRA | September-October 2021
the all-encompassing sky is not blue. Some
plants make blue flowers and berries by
modifying red pigments. There are a few
blue minerals. Still, extracting a durable
blue pigment from natural sources is diffi-
cult. Blue has always demanded ingenuity.
Before YInMn Blue, another blue pig-
ment had wowed the world. Ultramarine,
once worth its weight in gold, was processed
from lapis lazuli found in the Hindu Kush
mountains. Michelangelo used ultrama-
rine to depict the blue of the heavens in the
Sistine Chapel. Later, synthetic ultramarine
became a mass commodity. People use it for
mundane activities such
as making white laundry
appear whiter. Its manufac-
ture, however, is not ecolog-
ically friendly. And other
synthetic blues have their
own shortcomings.
Scientists know how light
interacts with the arrange-
ment of atoms in an existing
mineral to give it a distinct
hue, but they cannot predict
what colour any new mate-
rial will be without actually
making it in the lab. Having
pinned down the structure
of YInMn Blue, Subramani-
an’s group is changing com-
ponents of the pigment to try
and create other hues.
Elsewhere, researchers
are on a quest for blue food
colourants from plants.
fact that a blue chemical —
synthetic indigo — colours
both their candy and jeans. Currently, the
only source of natural blue is spirulina, an
extract of blue algae, which is neither vi-
brant nor durable, Kupferschmidt writes. A
British scientist has succeeded in making a
safe and eye-catching blue from the petals
of the butterfly pea flower, but the food in-
dustry needs a more durable colourant.
Meanwhile, Suntory, the Japanese whis-
ky manufacturer, is backing an effort to cre-
ate a blue rose through genetic engineering.
In over two decades, researcher Yoshikazu
Tanaka has developed a mauve rose, and
hopes to get to true blue before retirement.
Two sections of the book — ‘Seeing’ and
‘Speaking’ — deal with how we perceive
and describe colour. Take the cornflower.
It absorbs the red part of the spectrum from
PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK
‘Mas’ Subramanian in his Oregon State
University office. PHOTO: JTANGOSU/WIKICOMMONS
Most blue in nature is
illusory. Even the all-
encompassing sky is not
blue. Some plants make
blue flowers and berries by
modifying red pigments.
white sunlight and reflects (or rejects)
the rest. The eye transforms the reflected
light, which appears blue, into electrical
signals for the brain to process. Language
provides the beholder with the prescribed
shade of colour. “Where then is the blue,”
Kupferschmidt muses philosophically.
But even the visually impaired can sense
blue light. They grow more alert in its pres-
ence. So, what is its impact on the sighted,
who are increasingly bathed in the blue glow
of electronic devices, often well into the night?
Can patients rest well in clinical wards, un-
der artificial lights, rich in blue wavelengths?
Such research is already changing internal
lighting in homes and hospitals.
In the closing pages, when you learn that
the Berlin-based author, born in 1982, has
tested HIV-positive, you cannot help feel-
ing blue. When he resolves to look out into
the world more often, as if he were seeing
all its colours for the very first time, you
feel relieved, and even inspired. Thanks to
this authoritative biography of blue, most
curious readers will get a new understand-
ing of the science of colour. Scientists too
may begin to appreciate works of art.
These days, Subramanian accompanies
his wife to art museums, to see what magic
the old masters created — especially with
blue pigments. YInMn Blue, he says, has
enriched his life in more ways than one. 
Vijaysree Venkatraman is a Boston-based
science journalist. @vijeescijo
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The world’s back-up plan
to counter global warming
Geoengineering is a deliberate attempt to change the Earth’s features on a global scale.
I
n 1896, Swedish physicist Svante Ar-
rhenius published an article in the
Philosophical Magazine, where he pos-
ited that atmospheric carbon dioxide
absorbed heat and therefore warmed
the Earth. It was a novel argument. Before
him, although scientists knew that the at-
mosphere absorbed heat, they did not fully
understand the mechanism of absorption.
Arrhenius, a Nobel Prize winner credited
with developing the branch of physical
chemistry, was also the first scientist to
quantify the contribution of carbon diox-
ide and water vapour to the greenhouse
effect, which heats up the Earth.
Arrhenius had come to the problem as
a way of understanding how the Earth
warmed up after the ice ages. If carbon
dioxide – which he called carbonic acid
– helped the Earth get out of the ice ages
(an assertion that was not true), it was
logical to suppose that burning coal would
increase the Earth’s temperature over
the centuries. Arrhenius thought that an
increase in temperature would be a good
thing, and that “we may hope to enjoy ages
with more equitable and better climates”.
The more we burn coal, the faster we will
achieve a balmy climate. Living in cold
Sweden, Arrhenius didn’t quite expect
global warming to be a big problem.
Ideas about tinkering with the Earth’s
processes had originated long before Ar-
rhenius. There were scientists who had
proposed tampering with the weather but
60 SHAASTRA | September-October 2021
FIRST PRINCIPLES
not on a global scale. For example, Amer-
ican meteorologist James Pollard Espy
published a book called The Philosophy
of Storms (1841), in which he claimed to
have discovered methods to produce rain
at will. It was not climate modification.
Arrhenius was among the first scientists
to propose deliberately toying with the
Earth’s climate for our comfort.
Current definitions of geoengineering
do not consider Arrhenius’s suggestion
as an example of geoengineering, because
fossil emissions and the consequent global
warming are unintentional. As physicist
David Keith, now at Harvard, explained
in one of his papers in 2000, geoengineer-
ing is a deliberate attempt to change the
Earth’s features on a global scale. Both
the intention and scale are important
parts of the definition. Burning coal is not
primarily aimed at changing tempera-
tures. Experiments such as cloud seeding
do not result in global change. Neither is,
therefore, geoengineering. Curiously, the
ability to modify weather was considered
of strategic value by some policymakers.
If there is a global
climate emergency,
spewing aerosols into the
stratosphere will be the
best way to cool it down.
U.S. politicians feared a day when the So-
viets would learn to control the weather
before the American scientists did.
Over the 20th century, as it became clear
that global warming would become a seri-
ous problem, various people had proposed
interfering with the Earth’s climate sys-
tem deliberately. Such suggestions were
not taken seriously because even scien-
tists had underestimated the extent of
warming over the 21st century. When they
realised that global warming would be
catastrophic to life and the world econo-
my, scientists started talking in whispers
about geoengineering. It was not a topic
that the community considered good for
debate. Talking prematurely about geoen-
gineering would get the world, many sci-
entists argued, to become complacent and
not cut fossil fuel use.
By the 1990s, things had begun to
change. In a 1992 report called Policy Im-
plications of Greenhouse Warming: Miti-
gation, Adaptation, and the Science Base,
the U.S. National Academy of Sciences de-
voted a chapter to geoengineering. By the
end of the century, scientists had begun
to propose geoengineering projects for re-
search and research papers had begun to
be published with regularity. In 2009, Rus-
sian scientists did the first published field
experiment in geoengineering, spraying
aerosols in the stratosphere and mea-
suring the radiation that passed through
them. There is now widespread accep-

Geoengineering is now mostly
understood as solar radiation
management, which means
measures to reflect sunlight
back into space
ILLUSTRATION: SHUTTERSTOCK
tance among scientists and policymakers
that research into the topic is necessary
because the world needs a back-up plan.
Geoengineering ideas are roughly clas-
sified into two categories: those to remove
the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and
those that control their impact. The first
category consists of a set of measures rang-
ing from growing more trees to sucking
carbon dioxide out of the air and burying
it underground (see ‘Cleaning up their act’,
Page 36). In the second category are pro-
posals to reduce solar radiation hitting the
Earth, most of them being ideas to reflect
sunlight back into space before it heats up
the atmosphere. Some scientists are reluc-
tant to call the first category geoengineer-
ing; they consider it a safe “mitigation”
option devoid of serious negative impacts.
Geoengineering is now mostly under-
stood as solar radiation management,
which means measures to reflect sun-
light back into space. Some
of the moves pro-
posed in the last two
decades are these:
PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK
injecting tiny particles high in the strato-
sphere to reflect sunlight; creating more
reflecting clouds by spraying sea water
into the atmosphere; putting a shade in
space that blocks sunlight; and dispersing
cirrus clouds that block infrared radia-
tion to space. Scientists have suggested
painting buildings white – especially in
cities – or building up foam on the sea
surface, both of which would reflect sun-
light back into space (see ‘Geoengineering
masks climate change problem’, Page 40).
The first category (removing carbon di-
oxide from the air) includes proposals to
reduce ocean acidification by dissolving al-
kaline minerals in the ocean, which would
in turn get more carbon dioxide from the
air to dissolve in the oceans. Increasing the
ocean biomass, by iron seeding to increase
algal growth or cultivating seaweeds on a
large scale, has been proposed as a way of
fixing carbon dioxide. Australian scientists
are trying to remove carbon dioxide by
enhancing the weathering of the mineral
olivine, which reacts with carbonic acid in
the sea water through a set of reactions and
sinks to the sea floor.
Among the second category, injecting
reflective aerosols into the stratosphere
is the most researched field for blocking
radiation from the sun into the Earth.
A small drop in radiation from the sun
can have global consequences. Recent
research suggests that a rapid drop in so-
lar radiation may have caused the entire
planet to be covered in ice around 700 mil-
lion years ago, and that such drops can
happen in the future. A drop in solar ra-
diation is thought to be one of the causes
of the ice ages, too. There has been spec-
ulation that the Earth is about to enter a
mini-ice age because of low solar activity;
scientists, however, have rejected that
possibility.
Scientists believe that
painting buildings white
would reflect sunlight
back into space.
Volcanic eruptions show that the tech-
nique of injecting reflective aerosols into
the stratosphere works. Big eruptions
throw up large amounts of aerosols and ash
into the atmosphere. These linger in the
air for a few years and cool the Earth. In
1815, Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted
and plunged the northern hemisphere into
long-lasting wintry conditions, causing
historians to dub it as the year without a
summer. In 1991, Mount Pinatubo erupted
in the Philippines and global temperatures
plunged by 0.6° Celsius for a year and a half.
It is now widely accepted that blocking
solar radiation through aerosol will work
— and work quickly. If there is a global cli-
mate emergency, spewing aerosols into the
stratosphere will be the best way to cool it
down, while the world reduces carbon diox-
ide levels over decades. However, scientists
need to understand the mechanism well.
How much aerosol and how often? How can
we do this without affecting the ozone lay-
er? Computer simulations have given sci-
entists deep insights into the effects of solar
radiation management, but field experi-
ments are the gold standard in science. Spe-
cifically, the physics of aerosols and chem-
istry of the atmosphere are not understood
enough for the simulations to work well.
BALLOON TRIAL ON THE ANVIL
Scientists have been planning several field
experiments to gather data and improve
their understanding. Harvard Univer-
sity scientists led by physicist Keith, a
longtime proponent of geoengineering re-
search, had planned an experiment called
the Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation
Experiment (SCoPEx), which would use
a balloon at an altitude of about 20km to
study how artificial aerosols injected into
the stratosphere would affect the strato-
spheric chemistry. The first part of the
experiment was just to test a balloon with
a payload of 600 kilogram. If the balloon
stays for a day in the thin atmosphere,
Harvard will scatter 1.8 kilos of calcium
carbonate particles and observe how they
interact with each other chemical species.
The first part of the experiment was to
happen last year, but had to be postponed
because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The
site of the experiment was then moved to
Sweden, but it was cancelled due to public
resistance. “Bill Gates wants to spray mil-
lions of tonnes of CHALK into the strato-
sphere to reflect sunlight and slow global
warming,” claimed a headline in the Brit-
ish paper Daily Mail. Bill Gates is only one
of the 30-odd philanthropists who support
Harvard’s geoengineering research.
The date for the experiment is not spec-
ified, but it won’t happen before next year.
Scientists now have the onerous job of get-
ting public support for their research. 
SHAASTRA | September-October 2021 61
 112
FunTech
2 3 4
THEME
Biology, biotech, medicine
ACROSS 2 European Union divided over
1C ore component of 8 - A PC, new work (6)
5 mostly refurbished (9) 3 One unable to speak aloud, had
6 Essential diet for adolescent, to change (6)
6
say (7) 4 Integration puzzle she is trying
7
7 Winner verily demonstrates oddly, after end of class (9)
courage (5) 5S pot cryptic clue: “A small
8F  undamental unit of trade, particle” (8)
reportedly (4) 8 Cruel, ultimately tyrannical
889 9 10 10 Second eccentric queen with leaders destroyed heritage (7)
extremely comprehensive
9 Stolen stuff includes camera
order (8)
accessory (4)
11 P assionate, carnal, illicit way
11 10 Platform to lecture,
to test a new drug (8,5)
welcoming a fine fellow (8)
12 15 S tarting to clean dirty rooms in
12 A small quantity injected into
houses — we have 46 of them (11)
vein, perhaps providing a
13 14 17 One visiting sick lady with
sibling for critical treatment (8) cure (7)
15 16 18 U  ncle dancing with American 13 W ager a model under test (4)
in the centre (7) 14 P aper uses it after editing (6)
19 C  unning enemy hiding 16 Way to reach lake, for example (5)
17 unknown biological catalyst (6) Solution to Crossword (July-August 2021)
Across: 1 Furnace; 3 Gibbs; 5 Rammed; 9 Muon;
18 DOWN 10 Perovskite; 11 Etch; 12 Fatigue; 16 Rockwell;
17 Alloy; 18 Crucible; 19 Eutectic
1H
 eads of computer networks Down: 2 Composite; 3 Graphene; 4 Quench; 6
19 log in illegally for making Doping; 7 Temper; 8 Dielectric; 12 Fracture; 13
copies (7) Plastic; 14 Polymer; 15 Crystal
COMPILER: KrisKross

PopScience
QUIZ CLUB, IIT MADRAS

Where science intersects with popular culture

2 Native to Thailand, this

species of wasps stings its
prey – cockroaches – and releases
4 This computer-
aided design
(CAD) tool for
Pyrochroidae
family of fire-
coloured beetles,
a toxin into their neural nodes, synthetic biology found only in
which blocks the roaches’ receptor lets the user draw Australia. These
to the octopamine hormone. and analyse genetic were identified
This leaves the cockroach alive circuits. Its name in 2020 by Yun
but with impaired motility. What is a word-play on a PHOTO: HSIAO AND POLLOCK Hsiao, a PhD
phenomenon is this similar to, in character from a 1904 play, student at the Australian National
a literary context, from which the who is an unofficial mascot of The University, and his collaborator
wasp gets its name? Walt Disney Company. The name Dr Darren Pollock, professor of
is derived from the fact that the entomology at the Eastern New

3 This Python package, whose

name is inspired by a 1985
sci-fi film, has a documentation
CAD tool allows users to fiddle
around with components within
the system.
Mexico University. They named
three Binburrum species of
beetles, of which there were only
that is filled with references to a few specimens, after three

1 The 2006 film The Prestige,

set in the late 19th century,
the movie. The Python package
aims to simplify and increase
convenience in handling
5 The Binburrum genus of
beetles belongs to the
rare legendary birds in a “pocket
monster” gaming franchise that
Hsiao was fond of as a child. What
depicts the lives of two rival
datetime-related code in the are the three names, and what
stage magicians. Each of them
programming language. According franchise are they a part of?
tries to outdo the other; often,
to the documentation, what it
they come up with various ways
does is “Pretty much make you a
PHOTO: JMORTONPHOTO.COM/OTOGODFREY.COM

of performing the same trick.

badass time traveller.” Name the
This is analogous to a real-life
8-letter package, and the film that
rivalry, where two scientists
inspired it all.
involved came up with different
ways to perform a similar task.
Interestingly, the two scientists
are depicted in the film,
although they perform slightly
different tasks. Which two
scientists are these?
car in Back to the Future); 4. TinkerCell (inspired by Tinker Bell); 5. Articuno, Moltres, Zapdos; the Pokemon franchise.
1. Nikola Tesla and Thomas Alva Edison (AC vs DC); 2. Dementor’s Kiss from the Harry Potter series; the wasp is called Ampulex dementor; 3. Delorean (named after the

62 SHAASTRA | September-October 2021

SPOONERISMS IT’S ALL G(R)EEK TO ME!
A spoonerism is
a pair of phrases
that acquire two
different meanings
when their initial
sounds/syllables are
interchanged. Find a The given word or phrase or sentence

WORD GAMES CLUB, IIT MADRAS

pair of words/phrases that fits in with the
definitions given in the clue such that they
have two different meanings when their
initial sounds/syllables are interchanged.
The numbers in brackets indicate the
number of letters in the spoonerism
phrase. At least one of the words/phrases
has a science/technology theme.
Example: String jumbo chess pieces
together, to peruse literature (4,5; 4,5)
Solution: Bead rooks; read books
1. Reimburse close mathematician (3,4; 6)
2. Metal bags for programming rules (3,5; 6)
3. Cheese grab leads to coastal
phenomenon (4,5; 3,6)
4. 24-hour period, Ronald’s nickname for
inert gas (3,3; 5)
5. Fundamental science rectifies water
body (7; 3,3)
holds two clues: taking away a Greek
alphabet from a synonym of the first half
yields a synonym of the second half. The
numbers in brackets indicate the number
of characters in each of the two synonyms.
Example: Letter’s wager (8, 3)
Solution: From the word Alphabet,
which is an eight-letter word synonym ANAGRAMS
for Letter, take away the Greek alphabet
Alpha, and you’re left with Bet, a three- Scramble the given phrase to get the
letter word synonym for Wager. names of renowned scientists.
Alphabet – Alpha = Bet Example: Narwhales cried
Solution: Charles Darwin
NOW, CRACK THESE:
1. Atypical or normal (7, 5) NOW, TAKE A SHOT AT THESE:
2. Alumina, magnesia and chromia for 1. Beach bar bagels
example, get poems (6, 4) 2. Unclean liars
3. Greatest adage (7, 5) 3. A family charade
4. Dung, female horse (6, 4) 4. Frail Ron links DNA
5. Gemstone’s electrical component (8, 5) 5. Red wishing corner

3. Brie seize; Sea breeze 5. Diopside – Psi = Diode 3. Michael Faraday

5. Physics; Sea fix 2. Tin sacks; Syntax 3. Maximum – Mu = Maxim; 4. Manure – Nu = Mare; 5. Erwin Schrodinger 2. Carl Linnaeus
4. Day Ron; Radon 1. Pay near; Napier 1. Unusual – Nu = Usual; 2. Oxides – Xi = Odes; 4. Rosalind Franklin 1. Charles Babbage

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shaastramag.iitm.ac.in
 TIME MACHINE
The Intel chip that
re-engineered the world
The 4004, the world’s first microprocessor, has kept the
gears of computer technology grinding.
1971 I
PHOTO: INTEL
THE ARTIST’S MARK
Chip designer Federico
Faggin, who perhaps
saw himself as an artist,
etched his initials ‘F.F.’
into the design of the
pre-production 4004. Later,
he moved it to the chip’s
border (at bottom right in
picture above) evidently
because he wanted to
pack in additional circuits.
In contemporaneous
interviews, Faggin said:
“I felt it was a true work
of art, where each stroke
was not only aesthetic but
also function-specific and
meaningful.”
COWLARS & KA-CHING!
The 4004 chip was used in
a variety of applications.
Ted Hoff, who was in
charge of the Applications
Research group, recalled at
a Computer History
Museum event in
2006 that the chip
found early
applications
in pinball
machines,
traffic light controllers,
cash registers, bank teller
terminals, and blood
analysers. Gas stations
used it for inventory
control. Farmers too
outfitted cows with collars
(‘cowlars’) embedded with
microprocessors to record
the cows’ nutrient input
— to correlate it with milk
production.
PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK
64 SHAASTRA | September-October 2021
n November 1971, an advertise-
ment (at right), spread across
two pages in Electronic News,
an influential trade journal, an-
nounced the arrival of “a new
era of integrated electronics”.
The claim, from Intel, a compa-
ny that had then been around
for only three years, may have
sounded hyperbolic at the time.
But, in fact, it understated the
significance of the product whose
launch was being advertised: “a
micro-programmable computer
on a chip!” The 4004, the first mi-
croprocessor to be commercially
launched, has over the past 50
years had a profound effect on
the personal computer industry;
more importantly, it has touched
ordinary people’s lives in ways
beyond measure. Successive
generations of microprocessors
have found widespread appli-
cations in devices that simplify
and enrich everyday life. The
current global shortage of semi-
conductor chips (see ‘Time to chip
in’, Page 14), which has disrupted
technology supply chains for the
automotive, personal computing
and consumer goods industries,
is ironically a testament to just
how central the microprocessor
is in keeping the gears of comput-
er technology grinding.
Designing the 4004 also put In-
tel, which had until then been
preoccupied with memory
chips, onto a higher orbit of
growth. And yet, the compa-
ny was oblivious to the po-
tential significance of
the microproces-
sor. In fact, when
Busicom, a Jap-
anese calculator
manufacturer,
approached
it with a con-
tract to de-
velop custom
chips for its ma-
chines, Intel consid-
ered it a distraction.
It was late on the project ex-
ecution, which left Busicom
engineer Masatoshi Shima
fuming. Intel later scrambled
to salvage the project.
Three Intel engineers –
Ted Hoff, Stan Mazor, and
Federico Faggin – are cred-
ited with the success of the
4004 (although Intel briefly tried
to play down Faggin’s contribu-
tion). Patents number 3,821,715
and 3,753,011 list their three
names, but Shima is also widely
acknowledged as a driving force
behind the 4004. Hoff and Mazor
were in charge of the chip archi-
tecture, and Faggin was brought
onto the 4004 team in April 1970
to design the chip.
By all accounts, Faggin’s cre-
dentials, and in particular, the
‘silicon gate technology’, which he
had developed earlier, were criti-
cal to the development of the 4004.
The silicon gate technology for
integrated circuits was far supe-
rior to the incumbent metal oxide
semiconductor (MOS) ‘alumini-
um gate technology’: it allowed for
twice the number of random-logic
transistors and increased process-
ing speed by up to 10 times. Two
other inventions by Faggin – the
bootstrap load with silicon gate,
and the “buried contact” (a meth-
od to make direct ohmic
contact between the poly-
silicon gate material and
the junctions) – made it
possible to improve speed
and circuit density.
In the late 1960s,
there was a race
among companies
to develop the first
microprocessor.
Fairchild, for
instance, devel-
oped a CPU us-
ing MOS chips
with four-phase
logic, but as
Chip designer
Federico Faggin
PHOTO: DICKLYON/WIKICOMMONS
PHOTO: INTEL
The global shortage of
semiconductor chips,
which has disrupted
technology supply chains
for the automotive,
personal computing and
consumer goods sectors,
shows just how central
the microprocessor is.
Faggin recalls, “that CPU was not
a single chip and was never com-
mercialised separately.” Texas
Instruments was working on a
microprocessor project based on
the Computer Terminal Corpora-
tion (CTC) architecture. That chip
was completed in mid-1971, barely
months after the 4004.
Although it was custom-de-
signed for use in calculators, the
4004 could be used for other appli-
cations. Busicom had exclusive
rights to the microprocessor, but
Intel offered it a price concession
if it would drop the exclusivity
clause, which it accepted. Conse-
quently, the 4000 family was un-
veiled in November 1971. It found
wider application in many areas
(see box ‘Cowlars and Ka-ching’
alongside).
Today, the global microproces-
sors market is valued at about
$85 billion. Microprocessors are
ubiquitous – in PCs, cameras,
cellphones, automobiles, air bags,
elevators, beepers, agricultural
equipment, key chains, and so
on. Former Intel Chairman Andy
Grove said the 4004 “gave Intel its
future”. But more strikingly, it
re-engineered the world. 
Electric is
the future now.

Quick. Intelligent.
0-40kmph in 3.3 seconds Onboard navigation with 4G LTE
6kW PMS motor Reverse assist
26 Nm instant torque Bluetooth control
Top speed 80kmph Over-the-air updates

Powerful. Expanding Network.

2.9 kWh battery pack with 18 cities and counting
new 21700 lithium-ion cells
Millions of kms of ride statistics

Born in IIT Madras.

Growing at Warp Speed.