BENGALURU : Former chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) head of the committee which spearheaded the National Education Policy (NEP)-2020, Dr K Kasturirangan’s book, ‘Space And Beyond: Professional Voyage of K Kasturirangan’, was launched in the city on Friday evening amidst a light-hearted debate on whether it is a biography or not.
The debate was finally laid to rest by Dr Kasturirangan himself, who preferred to call the book “useful”. He even compared the book to his report on Western Ghats, which has not been adopted by any government although it was submitted over a decade ago.
The book, published by Springer and released by T V Mohandas Pai, chairman, Manipal Global, in the presence of several eminent personalities from the scientific and education fields, is a 22-chapter work mainly written by Dr Kasturirangan. It covers areas such as space, science, education, policy-making and environmental issues.
Senior aerospace scientist Dr B N Suresh, who is presently chancellor of the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST), Thiruvananthapuram, and editor of the book, said, “Many would think it is a biography. But the first thing he (Kasturirangan) told me when we were discussing plans for the book was that there’s no question of writing a biography. It is a multifarious book which includes technology, management, administration, policy-making and caters to a variety of topics. Therefore, it is not a biography,” he added.
However, Prof Anurag Behar, Vice-Chancellor, Azim Premji University and member of the NEP-2020 committee, disagreed with Dr Suresh. He insisted that it was indeed a biography, but not that of Dr Kasturirangan, but of ‘the best of India’.