K S Sudhakaran alumnus NIT Calicut receives DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI AWARD from NIT Director

 SANPAR Industries Pvt Ltd   

 K S Sudhakaran - Managing Director

 Mob: +91 98 4504 0253

Phone:  +91 4343 5959

Email:  sudhakaran@sanpar.com

Website: www.sanpar.com

Address: Plot No. 5, 2nd Cross, KSSIDC Industrial Estate,    

Bommasandra,    2nd Stage,    Bangalore - 560 099. 

Karnataka, India

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CALICUTCITY:SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES...SOMS...NIT CALICUT

 

The above is a photograph  of the SOMS  (SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES NIT CALICUT).It is a very impressive and large complex built with architectural accuracy and splendour and is a cut above many such campuses supposed to be inaguarated by Shri. Krishnadas Nair former CMD of HAL and was the Chairman of the Board of Governors of NIT Calicut for some time. It is built on some newly acquired land on the faculty quarters side of NIT  few kilometres from the main road amidst sylvan surroundings.

It is an excellent and well planned outfit with all attributes embedded with each other in a professional fashion with a very spacious courtyard.

People who were involved in the design of this campus deserve praise and with such an infrastructure SOMS would someday become an even more premier institute.

Budget hotel in Calicut (Kozhikode) Hotel Ambadi Comfort Inn,Near Palayam Bus-stand, Phone numbers Land line 0495-2702112,Mobile Phone number -8086340380.

THE CONCEPT OF BIG BALL

 

I have always been an ardent admirer and a player of Basket Ball. Ever since this game was introduced in our school in the early 1970’s I have played this game at few levels. I was formally trained in Basket Ball by a Karnataka State player  Somakumar  who used to play for ITI. It was a one month coaching camp with two hour sessions in the morning and evening and was handled by a bunch of senior coaches. I used to be in the Basket ball  court of NIT Calicut most of the time sometimes even playing in the rain.

 

Rules of Basket ball have been modified from time to time and now we have a three pointer rule..a penalty area marked by a semicircle and goals from outside this area get three points. Fair enough to the skill of shorter players.

 

Strictly speaking Basket Ball is an unfair game. I sometimes meet  Mr.Aman Sharma  Basket Ball coach at SAI sports authority of India and we discuss such issues. Unfair because it is widely a tall mans game.Even countries and teams field tall players who have a distinct unfair advantage over the shorter ones. When I watch this game played in some countries some very tall people make a mockery of the game hanging from the basket and inserting almost their complete hands into the basket and the like. Players have evolved and changed but the game has not evolved at the pace at which it should have.

Mr.Aman Sharma,

Basketball Coach,SAI

 

What Iam trying to suggest is that the rigour involved with the game must be increased which would necessitate a new game called BIG BALL being introduced ,very much a modern day Basket Ball but with increased rigour and new set of norms.

 

The rigour of the game can be enhanced by increasing the height of the basket by exactly one feet…the ball could weigh some 200grams more than the present ball weight; increase the length and breadth of the court by some twenty percent and there could be six players on each side…but THE GAME CALLED BIG BALL WORKS WITH A COLLOSAL RULE.IF THE AVERAGE HEIGHT OF THE PLAYERS IN A TEAM WERE TO EXCEED SIX FEET THEY MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO PLAY CONVENTIONAL BASKET BALL BUT MUST PLAY THE NEW GAME CALLED BIG BALL.

Sporting pundits around the world must consider this new sport and fine-tune its laws even further..but a new game like this will increase the spoils of the Sporting World and benefit all stake holders.

I SPEAK TO KALLOL ROY OF BARC

I used to serve in Mumbai in 1999  in the area of  Enterprise solutions and my office being behind the Star TV Network in Andheri East and staying at a hotel in Juhu. I was conducting an interview to make some recruitments when a gentleman with some affiliation with BARC the Bhaba Atomic Research Center happenned to be on the list.I remembered that Kallol Roy who used to be my senior at college was at BARC and enquired if he knew Kallol and to my surprise knew him very well and got the residence number of Kallol.

I had forgotten about the matter but one Sunday afternoon decided to call him on the number from my office and lo Kallol was on the other side. Kallol never knew me all too well and I had some difficulty in permeating myself. Kallol Roy was in the Seventh Semester when I joined the Regional Engineering College Calicut.He used to be a person with a wide spectrum of academic interests and used to take part in debating and person with high motivation.

None the less we got talking for nearly an hour on the phone transcending many events during his and my stay at college and he had the gift of giving almost accurate dates of events.It was a very nice experience  talking to him at length..thereafter I have not had a chat with Kallol but came to know from some quarters he had risen to very high posts in BARC..May be he is headed to become a distinguished alumni of REC  NIT  Calicut.

CALICUTCITY:KUNNAMANGALAM NEAR CALICUT

Some  fifteen kilometers from Calicut Kozhikode is a place called Kunnamangalam..which would translate into a hamlet with hills..in Malayalam.  Karanthur is adjacent to Kunnamangalam towards Calicut (Kozhikode) and Koduvally adjacent to Kunnamangalam towards Wayanad. Kunnamangalam is on the kozhikode-wayanad road.

Kunnamangaslam has a theatre called Sindhu theater which we students used to frequent.IIM Kozhikode is in Kunnamangalam.

There was no full fledged bus-stand in Kunnamangalam prior to 1984 and the first moffusil bus stop came at this place around this time and presently there are two such stands.

As we proceed from Calicut (Kozhikode) towards wayanad the road at Kunnamangalam branches into another that goes towards the right to Chatamangalam where NIT Calicut is located some eight kilometers ahead .At Chatamangalam there is a river which has to be crossed and the location presents an excellent view a combination of water-ways and hills.

One of the shorter routes to Calicut (Kozhikode) from this place is via Karanthur through the Medical College Calicut.

Kunnamangalam must have changed a lot by now and must be in the memories of  NIT Calicut alumni and IIM Kozhikode alumni as well.

An incident in my hostel room D - 312 NIT Calicut

Somewhere in early 1986  an untoward thing happened in my hostel room D -312.Incidentally my neighbors at D 312 were Girijesh Prasad Pandey to my left, Sanal Kumar to my right and PVK Mohan in the room opposite to mine. Girijesh used to do Yoga every morning.

What happened was that I lit an incense stick around 6pm in the evening ..stuck it into the wall..and then went downstairs for some work leaving my room open. When I returned to my alarm I found Indradeep Singh dousing a small fire in my room. Indradeep was apparently returning from a bath and noticed some fumes from my room and instantly doused it with the little water that was laft in his bucket. I was aghast when I returned and was upset for many days.

What had happened was this. The fiery droppings from the incense stick that I had lit had dropped on a banian that was on a string below setting the banian on fire. What a freak and un-predictable event. Luckily Indradeep saved the day because of his presence of mind. Thanks to you Indradeep even after so many years.

People who stay in hostels more precisely students must take note of this incident and take adequate care in their rooms.

INDUCTION MOTORS

Dr.P S  Srinivasan used to teach us  Induction Motors  at  NIT Calicut  in 1985 and used to do a splendid job and this write-up is for him.At  8:00 AM  in the morning in the top floor of the Departmental Building he used to teach this subject almost every day.

There might be people around the world who would like to know something about this subject. In Induction Motors unlike DC motors there is no conductive link between the stator and rotor ..the link is inductive.

Note that there are two kinds of Induction Motors classified based on the type of input power namely  three phase induction motors and single phase motors.

In three phase Induction Motors the Stator is wound with three phase winding which is displaced from each other by 120 degrees.This is space displaced winding. When three phase supply which is also time displaced by 120 degrees passes through these coils the stator creates Rotating Magnetic Field.

Note that there are two kinds of rotors associated with three phase induction motors  namely wound rotor motors and cage motors also called squirell cage  motors. When the rotating magnetic field travels over the rotor it creates rotary motion. Squirell cage motors produce low starting torque whereas Slip ring motors or wound rotor motors have higher starting torque. In Slip Ring induction motors speed control is possible through brushes on the slip ring that varies rotor resistance. Squirell cage motors have good running torque.

The rotating magnetic field mentioned earlier  is given by  F = P N / 120  F is frequency of input power .....N is speed of the field..P is number of poles it creates. Change in input frequency changes speed of the magnetic field.

Rotor copper loss and rotor iron loss is  linked to slip....slip  is  N as calculated above minus n the rotor speed divided by N..,, namely  (N-n)/N.

Kindly refer to the specific formulae. Slip times stator frequency is rotor frequency..slip times rotor power input is rotor copper loss.Rotor power input is Stator power input  minus stator copper and iron losses. There is a similar formula for rotor iron looses..please check.

Single phase Induction motors  use a Capacitor for operation and uses a space split winding of 90 degrees. One of these wingdings have a capacitor which creates 90 degree phase shift from a single phase power supply thus creating rotating magnetic field.

Speed control is one of the disadvantages of Induction motors. Devices of Power Electronics is used to vary the input frequency there-by achieving speed control.

PVK Mohan My Friend

At  NIT Calicut I has a special friend so to say..PVK Mohan from Mumbai.He was to me in many ways an interesting character.Basically he is a teluguite from Dadar in Mumbai.

PVK Mohan used to be a hefty person and in the third semester Electrical Circuit Theory class got stuck between benches when he tried to move to his place of seating and few benches had to be re-arranged to make way for him.This created humour in the class for a while. If Iam not mistaken he used to often talk of his elder brother Who is an IIT and IIM graduate.

The reason Why I remember PVK Mohan is that in the D hostel his room used to be exactly opposite to that of mine. This means every day I bumped into him and he used to call me PO…POH…what a nice nick-name. This room of PVK mohan later went to Vinod Shetty our junior also from Mumbai.

PVK fat that he was used to be sometimes called as Pressure Volume  Constant. He used to play Table Tennis well with a powerful back-hand.

Later I came to know PVK Mohan had joined IIM Bangalore and specialized in Finance and works for a Multinational.

PVK  where-ever you are I just happened to remember you.

Dr. S U Pillai of NIT REC Calicut

I was frantically searching for a photograph of   Dr. S U Pillai on the net but sadly I found none..only a audio-video clip of one of his key-note address at some seminar that too in  Pakistan. Dr. S U Pillai is to REC Calicut what Krishna Menon was to India..defiant..single minded..crusader..a maverick who knew what could have been done and wasn't and pursued with dogged determination against odds to put REC NIT Calicut on a more stable and formidable ground.

A PHOTO FROM FACEBOOK 

Let me also mention in the history of REC's there is one more name I heard..Dr. Manisundaram who was principal of REC-Tiruchi in the early 1980's..I have not seen him but only heard of him to be in the league of one of the transformers of NIT REC Tiruchi.

Who is Dr. S U Pillai...he was the Principal of REC Calicut from 1983 for a period of twelve years...What did he do ?  He brought discipline into the various elements of the institute and at the same time laid foundations for its future without fear or favour  and by doing so left a legacy that cannot be effaced or underestimated..... though not a person demanding veneration but none the less a achiever with idealistic goals and a strategic change creator.

I used to know Dr. Pillai  fairly well especially sometimes sharing the dais with him at some functions and seminars.

Dr. S U Pillai was one of the earliest crusaders of academic autonomy for REC Calicut and surprisingly the institute has become academically autonomous now though under a different posture.There were many who endorsed it and many silently opposed to it and given the circumstances of the times making the institute academically autonomous would have been a complex legal tangle..but his cries for academic autonomy had one positive side effect..without delay it disciplined the university of Calicut especially in adhering to time frames and schedules with pin-point precision. I have to thank him for this as it made the lives of students more predictable and stable and postponement of exams becomes a thing of the past and results were announced with haste and precision.Though during these times academic autonomy was not granted but it did one thing the need for it diminished at least for the short-run.

Dr. S U Pillai was passionate about REC and Kerala and could not stand REC Calicut not figuring among the top REC's of these times and possibly went about expediting things towards this end. Today I think NIT Calicut would figure among the top three NIT's of the country and may be a front-runner on some independent yard-sticks - the verve to achieve these some where came from the Pillai era.

He tried to fortify the campus an effort not embarked upon by many..the borders were hazy and at times intruding into public domain without proper demarcations  but none the less providing a rough or may be a largely precise boundary for the institute and also identifying usable land that remained dormant was a challenging affair. I still beleive some 20% of the land mass of REC NIT is tucked at remote and isolated patches and would need ingenuity to be put into larger good. The fencing and boundary gave insights into the land resources in a more pronounced fashion and the many possibilities that could arise there-upon.

In my view point some thing interesting has dawned upon Nit Calicut of today namely the Koduvally-Kettangal road.This road must have come up of-late and is a de-facto highway on which the present NIT Calicut is located.Geographically speaking this is a welcome move and I am told a main gate has come up at this place.Firstly the Kunnamangalam highway is a prominent life-line of this part of the world because it connects Calicut to ooty, Mysore and Bangalore the more resplendent  neighbors of  Calicut as a city. The Cherupuzha river was an impediment during that era which must have been bridged now which means the travel time to NIT Calicut from the many cities mentioned above must have reduced by nearly an hour..a very welcome sign. This means  the entire campus of NIT at present has a welcome re-orientation facing the Western Ghats..The posture of NIT of today is Ghat-ward.

What could NIT Calicut do to pursue the legacy in some form handed over by Dr.Pillai.. first of all acknowledge his contribution in no lesser terms. I am sad to note that none of the Technical institutes in the country match up anywhere vis-a-vis the best in the World..a matter of grave strategic concern.

Secondly create bench-marks on various parameters to progress in an organised manner into becoming the better of technical institutions in the country and the world ; and finally call one of the roads in the campus after him  as a tribute to his endeavours that many would know that there was a man who fought relentlessly for the future of NIT Calicut of today.