An Interview with Prof. Chittaranjan Hota

We recently got to interview Prof. Chittaranjan Hota, a Senior Professor of Computer Science at BPHC. He talks about how he was led to this institute and his experience being with BITS for almost 20 years.

JC: Can you tell us about yourself – your childhood, your birthplace and your education, and how you decided to enter the field of teaching?

So I did my bachelors in computer science in 1990. I was one of the toppers in my university amongst three to four thousand students. Despite getting offers from the state government and a few other IT companies in Bombay, Jaipur and all, I was interested in teaching. I always respected all my teachers. The principal of my college suggested that I join as a lecturer. I joined in 1990 at 21 years of age, immediately after finishing my B.Tech and continued working there for around eight to nine years without thinking too much about my own personal growth. 

I married in 1996 and my father-in-law was a researcher and a university professor. His advice that without an M.Tech and a PhD, there is no scope in my teaching career prompted me to go for a Masters and PhD. I did my Masters and after that I became a Senior Level Assistant Professor. But immediately after my Masters I left Maharashtra and came to BITS Pilani in 2000. I realized that it is a lot of work to pursue my PhD as well as teach. Back then, BITS Pilani had the option of allowing a faculty at lecturer level to also pursue his PhD. Within one or two months of my joining at Pilani, they asked me to come to Hyderabad and Bangalore to teach their industry professionals through WILP (Work Integrated Learning Programme). So there was a struggle for around three to four years when I had to choose between dropping my PhD and joining as a professor at a senior level, elsewhere.

In 2004, a professor from Purdue, an alumnus of BITS Pilani, Prof. Aditya P Mathur (AP Mathur) was visiting. He has written a book on Microprocessors, and is now at Singapore University of Technology and Design. Suddenly our then director told everybody doing their PhD and the faculty in the computer science department that they have to explain what they have done so far in the past couple years to Prof. Mathur. Everybody had to be ready within three or four days and while most people were confused on what to present, I was one of the first ones to present my work to him. Within the next, I think, four to five days, my name was listed for going to Australia to pursue my PhD, as an exchange faculty and research scholar, under the AVC (Australian Vice Chancellor) funding. In the entire history of BITS, they have never allowed anybody else to go with a full pay, leaving the entire semester. 

At the end of 2004, I came back from Australia, almost finishing my PhD. In 2005, BITSAT (BITS Admission Test) started, the first BITSAT, an online entrance test all over India. So, my PhD supervisor, the Deputy Director of Academics back then said, “Hota, you have already become an Assistant Professor, and you will be submitting your PhD soon. Why don’t you come to this Admissions and Placement division and work full time on ensuring that BITSAT is happening smoothly?” So I left IPC (Information Processing Centre) and came to this division. We did a lot of work ensuring everything was perfect including setting up IPSec VPNs across 70 Indian cities in 2005 to run BITSAT. Around 2-3 lakh students wrote BITSAT that year, and I recall, even IIMs were failing to manage online entrance tests, but we were successful in our first attempt. 

In 2008 this Hyderabad campus was starting, and the first director selectively picked a few people and told them to come to Hyderabad Campus. So around 10 people came –  Me, Souri Banerjee who has now gone to Dubai, N.Rajesh, Vidya Rajesh who are in chemistry and biology, Thiruvikraman in physics. There were about 15-20 people managing the operations from the city office. When I joined, I was given multiple responsibilities, managing the entire IT i.e the computer centre, the entire networking of the campus and managing servers. I was also In-Charge for managing the payroll, budget, and HR activities. I was also an Associate Dean for admissions for 5-6 years after that. Then there was one more activity, of course, managing the Computer Science department as the first department head, from 2008 to 2012. So those four or five years were very challenging for me with multiple responsibilities. From there we’ve come ahead, some 17 – 18 years. I have risen in the ranks right from Assistant to Associate, Associate to Professor, Professor to Senior Professor. So every four years, four and a half years, I’ve gotten promoted. And here I am today. 

Two of my own sons are Hyderabad campus students as well. One was an A7 (CS) student and the other one is a dualite.

JC: Sir, you have seen the campus evolve because you joined when the foundations were being established for this campus. Do you have any interesting stories or anecdotes that you would like to share? 

When we joined in 2008, there were many incidents which come to mind. We planned to start in August. It was raining heavily and the admission day was on August 28th or 29th in A-block cellar. We admitted around 550 to 600 students. They all were there with their parents. They were all going to those hostels near Mess 1. The entire ground floor was full of water due to the rain.The students were disgruntled and a heated discussion between parents and the director started. We were all trying to pacify the crowd. Finally the parents said, no, we can’t keep our children here. There wasn’t even a roof on the mess! 

I think on the same first day we all were eating in the mess, in line getting plates without a roof above us. There was an Oriya girl in the line. She did not know that I am Oriya and I am heading the department. I was just watching from a distance. She was telling her friend, “Kahan aagaye?” Meaning ‘where have we come?’. “This is a horrible place. It’s not BITS Pilani. So let us go back tomorrow to that IIT, this IIT, IIT etc.” I was overhearing this conversation. Then I went to her and I asked, where are you from? So she said, Sir, I’m from Bhubaneswar. And I asked, “which branch are you in?” She said, A7. Then I said, I’m the head of A7. I told her that you are the first batch, you have come here to study. You have to take this as a learning experience. Now, within the next few days you should come back to me and say, sir, we made the right decision by not leaving. 

The management postponed the opening date by around a month, so we asked all the students to go back home. In this time, we settled the water, electricity and cleanliness issues and started the institute again from September. This is one incident which I still remember about that girl,  Anita Kar. She is the girl who got the first placement in 2012 with around 15 lakhs LPA from Morgan Stanley. Now she is in the US in a company after doing her Masters from UCSD. 

I have another story. There was a Pharmacy student from Lucknow, Suhas Srivastava. But he was, I think, fourth topper in my Computer Programming (CP) course. Even though I was the head of the department, I was teaching CP as it was the first batch. I understood that the boy is very intelligent and he’s interested in CS. Of course, his Pharmacy CGPA was not that great when he passed out. But today he is SDE4 in Flipkart, which is a dream company for CS students, right? And he doesn’t have any computer science degree. One day, our web servers got hacked. I was In-Charge of managing the web servers and Lab servers. We saw that Algerian hackers had hacked it. There was an Algerian flag visible when you logged into the website. There was some lag, and then a message pops up telling us that your services are down and you are under our control. They didn’t do any damage or any bad stuff to the server. So I called all my IT guys, I asked them to please find out why this had happened. None of our support staff was able to figure out what the issue was. So I called that student and gave him the entire server room which was there in B-block. I said take this room key, servers are there, machines are there, you spend one or two days, on the third day you tell me what is the issue and how to solve it. After a few days he said, sir, this server has a remote login. You are logging in remotely via a script. That’s how we had designed it initially. I recall that there was a vendor who gave it and contacted him for a solution, and soon enough the problem was solved. 

There’s another student from the first batch, Kanwar Bhajneek. He was our A7 student. During his first year, second year, he was helping all the students through a DC++ server. He was maintaining the central server. Two machines were dedicated for this. So we had a lot of such liberal activities during those times. His opinion was to let the students do whatever they want to do. But then there was another angle that people were sharing and downloading disturbing content. I called him and then asked, what are you doing? He said “Sir, if you ask me to, I will stop it.” I said, no, don’t stop it, monitor it so that people are not misusing it. 

When I had this interaction he had around 8.5 CGPA. So to my surprise, when he came to fourth year 2012, he was the highest paid student in the placement. He got around 43 LPA from Epic Systems, USA.

Back in 2012, there were a lot of fights between Pilani, Hyderabad and Goa students for placements, because the placement activities were all controlled by student coordinators. I think it is the same now as well. Our then director, Professor Rao said, I’m now allowing all the heads to ensure that our students are getting placed. There was a girl, Chandralekha Motati, she’s the first gold medalist in 2012, 10 pointer. She moved from our C6 (M.Sc Tech in Information Systems) to A7. She got a horizontal transfer. I asked her to become the coordinator for placements because she was the highest scorer. She agreed. Then we both sat in my chamber, and called each company one by one to ensure that they were all coming. That time, the girl who was heading Microsoft IDC was our alumnus. I knew her. When I asked her why are you not coming? Your company’s name is not there in this placement session. So she answered, Sir, nobody told us that BITS has a campus in Hyderabad! That company came for placements among other companies that year. Microsoft IDC came and took 7-8 students. We ensured that our first batch placement had an average of around 18 LPA.  From there CS average has now come up to 27 lakhs. Another fact, in 2008 when we started taking admissions, ECE was the highest priority among high BITSAT scorers. But from 2009 onwards it was CS. 

JC – Can you tell any positive qualities about BITSians?

BITSians throw themselves towards any challenges that come on their path. There is a sense of responsibility and a leadership quality. There is good connectivity amongst their peers as well. Everyone will be a part of a group of 15-20 members. They will do a whole lot of things for their friends. If you ask a person “Who supplied the password of the quiz to other students?”, nobody would answer. In a class, if you look at everybody’s IQ level, or read their faces for their smartness, etc. you will get the average at a good level. You will not see drastic differences between one group and another group. That is because of no reservation or quota policy. It is all based on merit.

I have another story for you which tells that here, CGPA does not matter. One of my first batch students, Lukka Chaitanya, was a 6 pointer. So this boy was a student of C6 – Information Systems. He came to me one day and asked, “I want to develop a software, can you guide me in the project?” I asked what kind of software? He said sir, biometric software. Then I asked him something related to operating systems. He was very clear in the concept, but, in all courses he was getting D, C grades. That time the grading was A,B,C,D, no minuses. Then there were some courses like structure of programming language and compilers that I was teaching. I then understood that if you give him a task on the computer, he’ll do it. But if you ask him to write the same on pen and paper, he is weak. Then I asked, “what do you want from me?” He said that he wants some computers. I gave him three-four computers, he spent some 8000-9000 rupees to get a reader and assembled everything. That software remained on campus for one and a half to two years at the main entrance gate. Finally, I was surprised when during his fourth year PS, he came up with a letter and showed it to me. It said that the Police Commissioner of Hyderabad had given him a project worth 3-4 crores. I was shocked. He said he would do that project for one and half years and then think about a job. Within the next 2-3 years, he pinged me and said, I am in Japan as a Robotics Engineer. Now he has a nice house, married and working for a good IT company earning a huge sum. The moral is, CGPA does not matter much. 

JC – Any differences in the first and current batch?

So in a family where there is an elder kid and a younger sibling, you can observe that the older one is more mature because he has seen all the problems of life. The younger one is generally laid back, takes matters lightly and always thinks that there is someone present to protect him. We were celebrating the first anniversary of BPHC in 2009. We had a small programme in the open air amphitheater. It was wonderful. Students themselves performed the regional folk dances from Karnataka, Bengal, Punjab and other different states. For them the challenge was how to survive and how to establish themselves as a good brand. Today, due to the brand image that they have established, our average LPA in placements is 2.5 to 3 lakhs more than Goa, both campus average and CS average, whereas Goa is 4 years older to us. We started in 2008, they started in 2004. In Goa they focus more on managerial skills, cracking IIMs etc. But my point is that even though we were 4 years late we have caught up with our sister campus.

Another story I remember is of Abhijit Kane, the postman founder, who was a CS student of ours. He was very meticulous. For example, in his first year he was a dual student. He used to solve the task that we used to give in the CP lab within half an hour. Then, I used to ask him to go to one side and help two-three rows of students. Since there were only 3 TAs and multiple students, we did not mind Abhijit helping his fellow classmates. 

So today if you see ‘12 pass out, ‘13 pass out, ‘14 pass out, all those initial five to six years they all are now either SD3 or SD4 or a senior manager in their IT companies. 30 to 40 percent of those have done higher degrees. MS from US, MBAs, etc. from IIMs, from ISBs. 

One difference I would like to point out is that when I used to teach CDCs in Pilani, there was no class attendance. That time, out of 130-140 total batch size, around 110 would be sitting till the end of the semester. They understood that if your teacher is teaching something interesting, it’s better to come to class and listen to them. If you don’t come to class and interact, how will we know what the students want, or what extra help do students need etc. If students don’t ask me doubts I keep quiet and carry on with the lecture.

I think over the years we have provided multiple avenues, features to students for learning. Impartus is one such avenue. Today, if you randomly ask 10 students if Impartus is required or not, everyone will say yes. My second son used to watch Impartus as well like many other students, at 2x and 3x speed. The responses I hear from many students regarding Imparatus use are, they want to condense 50 minutes lecture to say, 20 to 30 mins by watching at increased speeds as some of those lectures are not that engaging,  some have other academic activities till late at night hence difficult to wake up etc. According to me, the purpose of Impartus is different. If I am teaching at a higher speed in a class, if that video is available to you, you can go back and see whatever you have missed. That was the only purpose. But students are taking it for a different purpose. Now there can be a teacher who will take this for granted and say, Impartus is there, people are not coming to class. So let me not put much effort on teaching. Let me teach at the minimal level to finish my course. This is not good for the entire batch.

One thing I have observed in the current batch, which is not the student’s fault, is that students have weak academic prowess in some subjects. I would say the assignments, the labs and the practicals have reduced the rigor. Last semester there were 7 first placements of ME-CS all of which were from ECE, EEE Companies like Qualcomm, Broadcom, Texas Instruments etc. I asked some of the other ME students of the same batch, where is Adobe? Where is Amazon? Where is Flipkart? Where is Atlassian? Where is CodeNation? Where is Oracle? They said, Sir, we have Micron next along with the above ones. I said, Micron is a EEE/ECE company. So, if you get into a company of your own branch, there is a possibility that you get into good positions quickly by solidifying your work experience. 

It is the government’s issue because the government is pushing academics to be a part of the rat race in terms of increasing their publication and citation records. There is pressure mounted by administrators, management, and government bodies due to which Indian academia is putting a lot of rigor on these aspects, leaving or weakening what best they could offer to students. 

I would say we are doing good, but we need to do slightly better in terms of engaging students in our classrooms which was a norm during my Pilani days, maybe 20 years ago. There are two ways to do this. One is when the teacher has a command over the course that he or she is teaching. Second is that we make sure that the courses that we are teaching you are universally accepted, agreed and meaningful for you. For example, if a mechanical student is being taught a biology course, he/she will have very little interest. They will not be able to remember, recollect, or even write those big words from biology. Of course, if you ask a biologist, they might argue that biology is also an important area, since after the emergence of biotechnology etc. We are currently doing the course curriculum review, possibly something good will come out of it.

Ultimately, students should not only attend classes and study all the time. You should develop your skills in sports. You should develop your interest in writing, reading, watching movies, debates, coding etc. Then of course, you should give the required amount of effort to academics so that you are not stressed during your midsem and compre and develop your personality as an all rounder, an engineer with a sound health and mind. 

I hope this story will create curiosity amongst BITSIANs and give some of them a direction to take in their pursuit to become a bright engineer and contribute to the growth of the nation and society at large.