The life of Dr Ashok Jhunjhunwala, the chairman of ITEL foundation and who spent over four decades at IIT Madras as a professor, has been chronicled in a biography named ‘Roots and Wings – Building India’s Dee Tech Ecosystem’.
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The book is authored by Saloni Malhotra, founder of Desicrew Solutions, and was launched on Tuesday, July 21, at an event in Delhi.
During her address, Malhotra recalled her days with Dr Jhunjhunwala and said that when Javed Akhtar visited ITEL Foundation, a not-for-profit incubation and innovation centre in Chennai, he said, “When I see the work here, I see a hope for the future”
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Among the dignitaries present at the event was commerce minister Piyush Goyal, who also delivered a special address and talked about how time and again he has looked to Dr Jhunjhunwala wala for guidance and support.
He said, “The way each one of you, in your chosen work, is contributing to India’s evolution and in our journey towards Viksit Bharat by 2047. I think collectively, what each one of us is doing in our work can be found in some measure through the life and times of Professor Jhunjhunwala.”
He then recalled that Dr Jhunjhunwala comes from Kolkata and discussed how his life might have turned out differently if the city’s circumstances had been different.
“But sadly, over the last 40-50 years, we’ve seen the decay of West Bengal, due to which so many people had to leave that state and find other areas to work in, other states to live in, and you can experience that. I have found that whenever I went to West Bengal for any of my official duties, in the last few years, the level of poverty, the level of deprivation, the level of almost inhuman life that many of the poor people there were destined to live, was very hurtful,” Goyal said.
“We were seeing a situation where people like Dr Jhunjhunwala had no hope in Kolkata. But Kolkata’s loss is India’s gain,” he said.
Dr Jhunjhunwala spoke about the importance of technology and said that it always advances.
“New things come. Every decade, something new will come. Unless we empower ourselves and are in control over our technology, we will be pushed around the way we have been done by the United States over the last two years,” he said.
