A matter of choice

Preeti Ranjan Panda drives a Hyundai Accent. It is his most expensive possession. So expensive it cost the 40-year-old professor of VLSI (very-large-scale integration) design at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT-Delhi as much as his yearly incomea little over Rs 5 lakh. A few years ago,he had an Oldsmobile that he drove in the San Francisco Bay Area,where he worked for four-and-a-half years in the R&D division of Synopsys,a company that provides tools for chip design. So when Pandason of a professor of economics at Berhampur University,Orissaquit his $120,000-a-year job and joined IIT-Delhi seven years ago as an assistant professor earning Rs 20,000-25,000 a month,he knew what he was signing up for and harboured no misgivings about the cross-over.

The IT industry in the US was nearing saturation. And while there was cutthroat competition in academic circles therepublish or perish,as they sayin India,the research ecosystem was still in its infancy. I wanted to be a part of it. I was reassured by the possibility of research that was not limited by corporate deadlines and profit, says Panda,Titan watch clamping his slim wrist,his feet in leather sandals tucked under the desk in his office. A graduate in 1990 from IIT-Madras,he went on to get a Masters and PhD from the University of California,Irvine,inspired by his three-year-long stint at semiconductor company Texas Instruments in Bangalore that lasted till 1993.

Pandas association with the core research group at one of the first semiconductor MNCs to enter India hinted ever so alluringly at a world beyond the corporate wilderness,where he could find his place in the proverbial sun. When I got my PhD,I knew I was cut out for academics. It wasnt a tough choice to make. But since my area of research was applied technology,I wanted to check out the industry and size up its requirements. It was no surprise to my friends and family when I quit my job, Panda says.

Seven years laterwhen the salaries of IIT faculty are being hotly debatedPanda,now an associate professor for three years,is one of 1,500 professors on hunger strike. As per the Sixth Pay Commission recommendations,he is entitled to a monthly salary of about Rs 70,000. It might seem like a big jump,but Pay Commissions are set up once in 10 years, he says,peering through his glasses.

Most of his batchmates at IIT-Madras are living the corporate life. Of the 25-30 students in the class,only one besides me is an academic, Panda says. But if you have a long-term vision and you want to work towards it without an admin sitting on top to tell you what to do today,academia is the natural place to do so, he reiterates. His work on low-power design is funded by Intel,Freescale and IBM,among others. He receives no honorarium from these grants,which are utilised solely for buying equipment,paying research associates and enabling participation at international conferences.

He is well aware of the trade-off he made in 2002,straddling the fence between industry and academia. His own savings havent grown a penny since he returned from the US. He can still enjoy vacations with his wife and five-year-old son Pranshu,if not in Europe and Hawaii anymore,then in Kasauli,but his favourite sportsskiing and hikingmust be relegated to memory.

To be fair,there is the amenity of the three-bedroom flatin dire need of maintenance,Panda saysallotted to him in the campus greens. Were it not for the quarters,Id probably be living in Greater Noida,not in the heart of the city, he says. Besides,professors are allowed sabbaticals and are entitled to the standard government pension after retirement. Most of all,Panda has the rare luxury and prerogative of taking a break from analysing chip architecture and organising VLSI conferences to fetch his son from the bus stop at 5:30 p.m.,when he returns from day-care,and keep him suitably occupied till his mother is backshe works at the Gurgaon software unit of a medical device company. Five-thirty is a hard deadline. Later in the evening I go back to my research, says Panda,who is up by six every morning to take Pranshu to the bus stop at 7:30.

Weekends are spent doing shopping work,helping Pranshu with homework and at get-togethers with friends. Apart from teaching three-four courses a yearsix to eight lectures a weekhis research keeps him busy,often spilling on to weekends. I must have been a terrible teacher when I joined. But one learns with experience. I enjoy interacting with students now. One perceivable change in the last decade is the quality of research manpowerit has improved tremendously, he says.

What has also changed since the pre-reform years is the industry,made more welcoming and generous by a culture of innovative one-upmanship. Panda says,My research is industry-relevant,but I like having the freedom to do what I am doing at IIT. I only miss the efficiency of work I was used to earliernow other administrative things eat up a lot of time. But then,its not a perfect life,even in the corporate world.

Sanjiv Narayan

vice-president and managing director,calypto design systems india

Sanjiv Narayan jokes that his office on the fourth floor of a highrise in Noida is above an ande ki dukaan,a supermarket,really. Through the window blinds in a neat little room with a round table and chairs,a sea of cars glints in the sun. Narayan,43-year-old vice-president and managing director of Calypto Design Systems Indiaa subsidiary of a US-based company that makes software for designing semiconductor chipstalks of Panda,his friend and contemporary,with a fond familiarity. When I was at the University of California,Irvine,all the Indian boys were excited at the news of a certain Preeti joining us for post-graduate research. Much to the disappointment of a classmate who drove 45 miles to the airport to receive the newcomer,Preeti turned out to be a guy, he says.

Having graduated from IIT-Delhi in 1988,Narayan was a couple of years senior to Panda,though they worked in the same lab at the university for three-and-a-half years. Like the professor,Narayan,too,took the Silicon Valley route,working with Ambit Design Systemsa startup that was acquired by Cadence Design Systems in 1998in California for a few years before he got a transfer and moved to India with his family in 2000. When I returned,my professors at IIT suggested I take up a faculty position,but I didnt want too much about my environment to change, Narayan says. Perhaps Id have considered it seriously if the IITs compensated their faculty fairly. While faculty salaries in the US are comparable to what the private sector pays there,faculty in India get a salary that is a very small fraction of what they might get paid in comparable industry jobs.

He says Professor Panda could earn five to ten times his current salary if he joined the semiconductor industry as a design architect. Several of Preetis students work for Calypto. A new joinee,fresh out of college,makes over Rs 6 lakh a year. Of course,the EDA (electronic design automation) industry pays exceptionally well,but even going by the IT industry average,professors are grossly underpaid. There is something perverse about a system that leaves you with no money to buy a house in the city after youve spent 30 years of your life doing great research,publishing in leading international technical journals,and graduating 3,000 students at an institute of repute, says Narayan. I love teaching,but not on those terms.

Narayan,who set up Calypto India in 2004,owns several cars and says he can probably afford to buy a new one every other year. Five years after its inception,his firm of about 40 employees is venture-funded,with its sales growing by 45 per cent over the past year,notwithstanding the economic downturn. In the corporate sector,you pay a heavy price for failure. As an academic,you can set your own standards of success and determine your pace of progress, Narayan says. Of course,I have the freedom to be creative with my work,but this might not have been possible if I had been several rungs down the corporate ladder.

He says it is the sheer passion for unhindered research that makes academics so attractive to dedicated professors like Panda. There is a certain alacrity and diligence about Preeti. He is a no-nonsense guy. I dont think I can be as professorial, says Narayan,who is currently focused more on driving sales and engineering management than technical research.

Narayan lives in upscale Friends Colony in Delhi with his wife and two children,and his father,a former government employee. I grew up in the railway colony in Sarojini Nagar in New Delhi,so I know what a government employees life is like, he says. His own children,aged eight and 12,are aware of his precarious work/life balancehe spends over 10 hours a day at work and five hours sleeping,is inseparable from his Blackberry,and has time to play with them only over weekends,when theyd rather sleep. Its not the industry that is to blame,perhaps my own time management is poor, Narayan says.

To be sure,he has his fingers in too many pies: he is organising a Boy Scouts camping trip for his son and his friends this weekend; he is a member of the local RWA and the Rotary Club; and every once in a while,he conducts tours at the National Rail Museumhe has 110 feet of model railway tracks and a huge train collection at home.

The freedom to enjoy vacations abroad and spend freely comes at a predictable cost. I wont say Im contented. Campus life,in a way,has its peace. You dont have to worry about financial audits and dealing with government departments, Narayan says. Check Preetis blood pressure and cholesterol and mine,and youll have the answer.