Bits: Leading Change

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Today, Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS)-Pilani is one of the leading deemed to be Science and Technology Universities of India. An institution that has seen thousands of students pass out from its portals to take up brilliant careers. A testament of the commitment of the House of the Birlas towards giving back to society.
The story of the growth and change of BITS as an institution is a saga of the unyielding commitment and effort of many good men. The early development of BITS was on account of the work of a number of people who served willingly in the harsh desert terrain. People like SD Pande. V Lakshminarayanan and D Upadhya were the few leading spirits of institution building in those days. The commitment and vision of the Birlas was forever an inspiration and guiding light.
In later years some of the country's leading academics steered BITS through its fruitful collaboration with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Ford Foundation ensuring that it was able to rise up to match the high academic standards and expectations of its collaborators.
BITS: Leading Change provides a wonderful account of the struggles and challenges of the early years, the defining moments of change and discerning glimpses into the future of this marvelous institution.

Dr. Umesh Dhyani is Assistant Professor, Department of Humanities & Social Sciences at BITS, Pilani, which is one of the premier deemed to be Science and Technology Universities of India, credited with continuing academic reforms since its origin. He completed his PhD from BITS- Pilani in Social Sciences and has also done his PGDBA programme.
For the last two and half decades, Dr. Dhyani has been involved in teaching, research and other academic and institutional activities at BITS-Pilani. He has for long taught courses in Public Policy and Conflict Management to the graduate students at BITS-Pilani. An extensive researcher, Dr. Dhyani has participated, presented and published research papers in numerous seminars, conferences and journals in India and abroad and has also delivered invited talks at various academic institutions. He is on the advisory board of an academic journal on Sustainable Development. His area of research is CSR and community participation. He is the author of among other works, 'Global Corporate Executives 63 Mantras' (2005) and Co-author of 'Grassroots Entrepreneurship Strategy for Development' (2004). Apart from academics, he has extensively worked in promoting development projects for the rural population.

The book is a modest attempt to study the evolution and growth of the Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS), a fully residential technical university commonly known as BITS in general parlance. For the alumni, life at BITS, its drama clubs, debating societies, cafeteria, corridors, well laid campus, sports fields and grueling academic regime is a source of nostalgia. For the general public, BITS is a trusted name and the institution rates on par with the best in the world.
The institution's growth has been phenomenal and it has contributed greatly to the continuously emerging national need for education. Unlike many other business men of their time who squandered their wealth in pursuit of pleasure and self-gratification, the Birlas generously invested theirs in the spread of education. BITS remains one of the biggest examples of their philanthropic endeavour. The educational campus is one of its kind in the country. It was developed in a remote desert village in the Shekhawati region of Rajasthan, Pilani, as it was the birth place of the Birlas. The story of BITS is the saga of men and women who gathered in Pilani and devotedly worked to build a unique institution of higher learning.

"Four years ago, while India was yet shaking off her last shackles of bondage, far away in the heart of the desert, a new colony was growing up to acquire a fresh importance and significance. Few, I dare say, could at that stage understand the meaning of the gesture, fewer still could read in it the will of the nation expressed for self- development. Pilani, in fact, seldom received, from those to whom was entrusted the task of nation building, that attention and cordiality which was its due." wrote K.C. Saraswat, first batch alumnus of the Birla College of Engineering in an article in the College Magazine in the year 1951 Who would have ever imagined that a tiny Paathshala started amidst the sand dunes of the Shekhawati region in Pilani, then a small village in the Jhunjhunu district of Rajasthan in the early 20th century would gradually grow into a national institute of higher learning. (The Shekhawati region in Rajasthan mostly encompasses the administrative districts of Jhunjhunu and Sikar.