The First Princi.pal
A story waiting to be told has been told
This book is a tribute to one of India’s foremost educationists and institution builders — the late Dr. PS Mani Sundaram.
From the book:
‘Grown ups will tell you that dandelions are weeds. Kids however, are much more imaginative and trusting. They see them as flowers and blow on them to make their dreams come true. Each REC batch was a bunch of dandelions.
Princi would pick up the bunch each summer and blow us gently into the world.
Each little parachute went its own way to different destinations. Some settled quickly into conducive soil while other seeds travelled, slowly floated to the ground and waited till another gust carried them onward.’
The First Princi.pal, as the title suggests, is about a life well lived where making a difference to someone or something was an ordinary affair. It brings out PS Mani Sundaram’s (Princi’s) genuine student friendliness. The book, a montage of memories, was released by Tamilnadu Governor Sh K Rosaiah at the Golden Jubilee Celebrations on 19th July, 2014 at NIT Trichy. The late President Sh. Pranab Mukherjee received its first copy.
Meandering through the life of Dr. PS Mani Sundaram, it captures anecdotes of mixed flavour to highlight the genius of one of independent India’s foremost institution builders. Princi gave Regional Engineering College, Trichy (now National Institute of Technology) the distinction of consistently featuring among the top 10 Engineering colleges for 50 years running. His was a professional career that had to beat the odds of functioning under India’s political and bureaucratic regimes of the 1960s and 70s. Not only did he measure up to the challenges, his astute administrative sense made sure he did so in style.
A charismatic leader—administrator par excellence, pragmatic visionary and academic entrepreneur—he upped the ante of India’s higher education. Besides driving the astounding success of REC, he laid a solid foundation for Bharathidasan University as its first Vice Chancellor. His foresight has seen it grow from strength to strength in the three decades of its existence. Today the Bharathidasan Institute of Management stands tall as one of India’s premier Business Schools, rubbing shoulders with the IIMs.
There’s a child in each of us that never dies. That child is wondrous, spontaneous, innocent, creative, giving and forgiving. Princi knew how important it was to keep that child alive in each of the students that he picked for REC. He understood the imperative of creating a culture where wonder would lead to curiosity. He built an environment in which to explore whatever was fuelled by each person’s curiosity. And gave you the tools to try out things on your own. In a way that was safe, secure and didn’t cause any harm to anyone or anything else. He hoped that the institution would fire our imagination because he believed, like Albert Einstein said, ‘Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.’
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