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Finally it sparked!

Today we made a significant step forward in the project at BARC. At last, after meandering over different paths, we were able to produce a voltage of 8kV, enough to ignite a spark plug. After this we have to observe the effect of change in the shape of the pulses on spark plug. But still this was a crucial step. Hurray!

The project is completely hardware. So there have been lot of hiccups. Sometimes, it is very frustrating to do hardware stuff, especially during debugging. I mean, 'sirf ek tuti hui wire circuit ko hijda bana deti hai'. We have spent hours just to find out which path of the circuit is broken. But, at last, at least some of the circuit has been 'freezed' (as our project guide calls it).

Apart from the sudy-related aspects, what I am realising during my stint at BARC is that, I am not interested in doing complete hardware project in future and BARC is not a great place to work as it seems from outside. The second conclusion may be baffling for some, as BARC is considered a prime scientific institution in India. But I have my reasons. I found the overall atmosphere very gloomy and cheerless ( in fact, Gopal keeps on yawing at BARC. Now you can imagine). And it's like a typical government office more tp, less work ( I must exclude my project guide from that. He has been really helpful and always seems to be busy with his work).

That's what worries me. BARC is India's premier research institute. And, yet, there is little incentive for young people to come and do research in BARC. Even Gopal is not thinking about it. The main problem is that the researchers in Government institutes are paid less in India. But when I checked BARC site I found it to be true. http://www.barc.ernet.in/empdata/payscale.html. There may be many perks, but still corpoartes offer must better payscale and better growth opportunities.

So to facilitate research in India, big companies should support research (IIRC, this was topic for the XAT essay this year). Some have already started it. Multinationals like Google, Microsoft, HP have already opened their research wings in Bangalore. Universities should also be included in the research like the foreign universities. India shouldn't be content with managing the backoffices of the multinationals, but also should provide the 'brain' for the. India has to move from 'BPO (business process outsourcing)' to 'KPO( knowledge process outsourcing)' to be Superpower of twenty-first century.

posted by ninad @ 9:46 pm