Ashok Jhunjhunwala: India’s professor of change

He is an incongruous figure on his 30-year-old Chetak scooter — a man who has played and continues to play a crucial role in taking technology in many forms to the Indian masses. Ashok Jhunjhunwala is the father of the WLL or the Wireless Local Loop technology in India, a concept that transformed the communications sector in India in the 1980s and 90s and made telephones accessible to the everyday Indian.

“From the time I studied in IIT Kanpur, I wanted to work only for my country,” says Jhunjhunwala with an impish glint in his eyes. “My sole purpose to is to make technology available for the average Indian. That is what will take knowledge to the most remote parts of the country,” he said.

Jhunjhunwala is perhaps best known for his invention Aakash, the tablet launched and promoted by the Government of India for a mere Rs 2,500. Technology should be, as Jhunjhunwala believes, in the hands of the millions of poor students in rural areas.

Launched in 2011, Aakash was one of the more ambitious projects of the UPA government. And although it was to produce and sell around 10 million tablets, Aakash died a silent death after sales of just a few hundred thousands.

Jhunjhunwala though is not disheartened. “Aakash served its purpose,” he said emphatically. “The purpose was to get ICT (Information and Communication Technology) into the hands of every student. At that time the cheapest laptop cost around Rs 50,000. The technology was not very difficult but the cost was a challenge. Still we pulled it off and look where we are now — everyone has a smartphone so the need for the tablet is reduced. ICT has spread far and wide across the country,” he said.

Jhunjhunwala is a prolific inventor and innovator. Almost two decades ago he worked alongside the government to take telephony to remote rural areas. He experimented with internet kiosks in villages but power was a challenge back then. Aakash came next and despite it not attaining the initial target, was a mini revolution of sorts.

The professor is now busy at work in an unconnected field — trying to solve the problem of long hours of power cuts across the country. “We began talking about a solution for power cuts last summer when there was huge shortage of power,” he explained. “The idea was to cut demand, as supply was not easy to fix. If we cut demand, we can make the gap narrower and slowly inch up supply. But how do you do it? Solar power is not incentivised as much as it should be. So we put our heads together and came up with a mind bogglingly simple solution,” he smiled.

STILL RIDING HIGH... “You keep working, think positive, re-orient, follow your aim, change and approach it differently,” says Ashok Jhunjhunwala the man behind Aakash tablets and now furiously working on solving the country’s perpetual power problem. —Corbis

“Look above you,” instructed Jhunjhunwala. “This fan, these tubelights, my television set, my mobile phone charger — all of them run on DC (Direct Current) power,” he said.

Jhunjhunwala animatedly explains that power supply to homes is provided as AC (Alternating Current) whereas most electrical appliances used at home run on DC. The conversion from AC to DC, which takes place within the appliance, causes a loss of 40 per cent of power. Jhunjhunwala has created separate plug points for the gadgets in his office which provide DC power and  saves 40 per cent of power that way.

“Now we have power blackouts which means that there is a 100 per cent power cut,” said Jhunjhunwala. “My idea is to have a power ‘brownout’ which means that 90 per cent of AC power is cut from the transformer, while 10 per cent of power is provided in DC form via a separate line to each house. Two lights, a fan, a television and a cellphone charger will function on this DC line. That way we will not be in the dark completely and we also reduce demand by load shedding,” he said.

A deceptively simple solution, that only a mind like Jhunjhunwala’s could conjure up. “The whole thing requires an investment of only Rs 2,000 per house,” he added. “There are only two units or gadgets, one at the substation which converts 10 per cent AC to DC and one at your home,” he said.

 The Government of India is carrying out on-ground trials of this innovation by Jhunjhunwala. Already 200 houses in Madurantakam, near Chennai, are fitted with this DC model and they have zero power cuts. Jhunjhunwala explains that the Centre will conduct a pilot study of 100,000 houses in a town in the near future.

 In bureaucratic India, selling an idea to the lumbering government is nothing if not strenuous but Jhunjhunwala takes it in his stride. “At this age, I have realised one teaching of the Bhagavad Gita,” he said. “Your karma is to follow your dharma and not worry about the fruits — meaning keep doing, keep following your aim and never give up. The fruits of your efforts are not in your hands. So I keep going on. When your dreams are big, you must motivate others to work with you. You will fail often but you must keep trying,” he smiled.

 Born in 1953, Jhunjhunwala was a Marwari (Rajasthani) born and brought up in Kolkata. His childhood years growing up in a large joint family of cousins and uncles and grandparents honed his leadership skills. “Early on, at a young age, I was able to lead all my cousins,” he reminisced.

From 1970 to 75, IIT Kanpur opened his eyes to another refreshing world — naxalism and poverty and J.P. Narayan all together formed a melting pot of his future beliefs — that he would only serve his country. From 1975 to 81, he educated himself in the Americas. In 1981, he returned to his motherland, taking up a job in Chennai at IIT Madras and remains there in the same small office till date.

 “When I was in Kanpur I wanted to join politics,” he confessed. “But I got disenchanted with that. So I turned my attention to science and bringing science to the people. All of the engineering I have learnt, I actually have learnt from my students,” he said. Jhunjhunwala keeps up a frenzied pace, setting up IIT’s Research Park and creating entrepreneurs like Desi Crew who set up successful rural BPOs. His aim is to mentor and nourish as many bright minds as he possibly can. He is on various educational committees with the Government of India, hammering out ways in which to take quality education to India’s poorest.

“You keep working, think positive, re-orient, follow your aim, change and approach it differently,” he said. “We just have to keep moving on.”

And he does move on, on his prized 30-year-old Chetak scooter, bought on his return from the US. In India’s pre-liberalised economy, everything had a queue, be it a scooter or a gas cylinder, he says. The scooter took a year to arrive at his home after payment.

And his first LPG gas cylinder was in fact a wedding gift. Jhunjhunwala has seen the best of both of India’s economies and sputters on his Chetak serenely into India’s future, sitting, as always, at the helm of change.

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