India’s First Computers | Part 2: TIFRAC & IBM’s Double Game

Visvesvaraya, Cauvery and Karnataka’s Water Legacy

When people speak of Sir M. Visvesvaraya, they usually remember him as one of India’s greatest engineers. As Diwan of Mysore in the early twentieth century, he championed ambitious infrastructure projects that he believed would modernise the princely state and drive economic growth. Among his most significant achievements was the Krishna Raja Sagara, or KRS, dam across the Cauvery River. Visvesvaraya strongly supported the project because Mysore needed reliable water storage and electricity. One important motivation was to provide power for the Kolar Gold Fields, then among the most important mining centres in India. The dam helped transform Mysore’s economy by supporting industry and expanding access to electricity. But the KRS dam’s impact went far beyond mining. The vast reservoir enabled large-scale irrigation across parts of present-day Karnataka. Farmers increasingly cultivated water-intensive crops such as sugarcane and paddy, bringing prosperity to many regions but also creating a growing dependence on Cauvery waters. That agricultural transformation had long-term consequences. As irrigation expanded upstream in Karnataka, concerns grew downstream in what is now Tamil Nadu, where farmers also depended on the river. Competing demands eventually evolved into one of India’s most enduring inter-state water disputes. More than a century later, debates over sharing the Cauvery continue, linking today’s politics and agriculture to Visvesvaraya’s vision of development through engineering. Hosts: Jacob Koshy and Sobhana K Nair Recorded and produced by Jude Francis Weston Edited by Shiksha Jural and Jude Francis Weston

Forgotten Heroes | Part 3: Yellapragada Subbarow - The forgotten alchemist

In the annals of modern medicine, few scientists have saved as many lives while remaining as profoundly overlooked as Yellapragada Subbarow. Born in colonial India and later working in the United States, Subbarow’s research laid the foundations for breakthroughs that transformed global healthcare—from treatments for parasitic diseases and cancer to advances in antibiotics and nutritional science. Yet, unlike many scientific luminaries, his name rarely entered the public imagination. This episode—the third instalment in our series on forgotten Indian scientists with Anand Ranganathan and Sheetal Ranganathan—revisits the extraordinary life and legacy of a man whose discoveries quietly reshaped twentieth-century medicine. We trace Subbarow’s journey from hardship and intellectual struggle in India to pioneering biochemical research in America, exploring both his scientific triumphs and the institutional barriers that often obscured his contributions. The conversation delves into the medicines and scientific pathways linked to Subbarow’s work, asking why some innovators become household names while others fade into obscurity. At once a biography, a history of science, and a meditation on recognition, this episode restores to view one of the most consequential Indian minds of the modern era. Hosts: Jacob Koshy and Sobhana Nair Producer and editor: Jude Francis Weston

Forgotten Heroes | Part 2: How India gave the world the first blood pressure drug

What did Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill have in common, besides shaping mid‑20th mid‑20th‑century history? Both suffered from hypertension, a condition Western medicine did not recognise as a disease until well into the 1940s. High blood pressure was seen as an inevitable companion of aging, something to be endured rather than treated. Doctors advised lifestyle changes, less salt, more rest, and, at best, mild sedatives. Long before this shift in medical thinking, Indian practitioners were using the roots of Sarpagandha to treat manic disorders. Drawing on this traditional knowledge, Ram Nath Chopra, the father of Indian pharmacology, demonstrated that the herb could also bring down blood pressure. His work marked a turning point. Building on Chopra’s research and clinical trials by Indian doctors, the Swiss pharmaceutical company Ciba isolated the active alkaloid responsible for Sarpagandha’s hypotensive effect. The result was Reserpine, the world’s first effective drug to control hypertension. In this episode of The Rearview, the second in our “Forgotten Heroes” series, we trace Chopra’s remarkable journey and examine how a British army doctor working in India quietly transformed global medicine and laid the foundations of India’s modern pharmaceutical industry. Hosts: Jacob Koshy and Sobhana K Nair Guests: Anand Ranganathan and Sheetal Ranganathan Producer and editor: Jude Francis Weston

Forgotten Heroes | Part 1: How two Indian mathematicians were denied credit for inventing fingerprinting

Hem Chandra Bose and Aziz Ul-Haque were the experts who played a pivotal role in developing the Henry Classification System for cataloging finger prints. This was during the early 20th century, when both were police inspectors, part of the colonial Bengal Police Service. This was a unique system that enabled the identification of any person, by employing 10 identifying characteristics of their fingerprints such as whorls, ridges and the like. Routine as this sounds today, this was the first time that such a system was conceived to create a criminal database that could then be used to track repeat offenders. Much like Aadhar-based fingerprinting systems strengthen Digital Stack systems like the UPI, this approach was revolutionary and was adopted by Scotland Yard and eventually part of plot points in the Sherlock Holmes- stories. However nearly all credit for developing this was usurped by Edward Henry, Inspector General, Bengal Police under whom Haque and Bose worked. This and a lot more in the three part series of The Rearview Podcast. Hosts: Jacob Koshy and Sobhana K Nair Guests: Anand Ranganathan and Sheetal Ranganathan Producer and editor: Jude Francis Weston

India's First Computers | Part 3: How software won

India’s computing story unfolds in two distinct phases. In the decades after Independence, the country set out to build its own computer hardware. But from the 1970s onwards, that ambition quietly gave way to something else: software. In this concluding episode of the series, we trace how and why that pivot happened. During the 1960s, American universities began partnering with the Indian Institutes of Technology and other academic institutions, drawn by India’s deep pool of technical talent. Instead of manufacturing machines locally, these collaborations imported IBM computers and focused entirely on software and programming. This shift marked the beginning of India’s transformation into the world’s back office for software engineering. We examine how India came to dominate global software labour—and ask the big, unresolved question: why did the country give up on building computer hardware altogether? Hosts: Sobhana K Nair & Jacob Koshy Producer and editor: Jude Weston