Hindu School Science Centre
Hindu School Science Centre :
Hindu School Science Centre came into existence by the sincere effort of small band of science lovers on 2nd of November 1979. With the humble beginning- this tiny organisation showed such impressive growth within few years that from some corners the statements like "Institution within Institution" or "Vatican within ROME", started appearing! While it is next to impossible to describe all the activities of the centre in this brief article, some vital few can be served here.

THE NAMES OF FOUNDER MEMBERS OF HINDU SCHOOL SCIENCE CENTRE:

Mr.Chandra Sekhar Roy, Mr.Sabyasachi Nath
Mr. Asimananda Kundu, Mr. Shankar Samanta
Mr.Arindam Chaterjee, Mr.Anjan Bhattacharya
Mr.Debabrata Ghosh, Mr.Debashis Sengupta
Mr.Jayanta Dutta, Mr.Ramesh Dutta

This science organisation participated in the famous science exhibition (in Feb, 1980) of Nehru children's museum as its maiden attempt. With utmost dedication and excellent teamwork at work, we were awarded the first prize (Best model trophy). The model which put first feather in the cap of Hindu School Science Centre, was an excellent theodolite designed and built by some enthusiastic members (class IX standard students) who were guided by their seniors on relevant trigonometry & geometrical optics.
After this impressive success, Hindu School Science Centre organised a series of programs like
• A Seminar on "application of mathematics in science and technology".
• A Science camp at Kakdip, Sagardip to study marine animals.
• Participating in quiz contest on SPACE SCIENCE, organised by Birla Industrial and Technological Museum. Here we obtained Runner's up prize among a large number of participants.
• Setting up of a wall magazine "Science Correspondent" at Hindu School premises to show latest news on Science and Technology.
• Launching an intensive tree-plantation programme in the locality. About forty trees were planted within six days by our members!
• Setting up a library of science books. We started with only seventy books on school level science.
All the above activities were achieved within the end of 1980 i. e within slightly more than a year after the birth of our Science Centre! Obviously this was no ordinary achievement. These mammoth projects within such small time frame could be completed only by great sacrifice of educational career of some founder members. For example, C.S.Roy dropped his semester examination of Anatomy in his medical course at N.R.S Medical college; similarly S. Nath did not appear for final graduation exam that year and so on!
Above examples bear the testimony dedication of the founder members towards a great cause.
Having observed such tireless science population efforts, unweaving dedication and unselfish commitment of the members of the Hindu School Science Centre, some persons with high erudition and great heart came forward for boosting the activities of the science organisation by providing UNICEF and state Govt grants.
In 1982, Dr.Partha Sarathi Chakrayborty (at that time professor of Chemistry, Presidency College Calcutta and Asst. Director Public Instruction, Govt of West Bengal) arranged scientific equipment, books, furniture (worth more than rupees two lakhs) from UNICEF for Hindu School Science Centre! It was really a big boost- a full-fledged laboratory on Physics and Chemistry could be set up with those apparatus delivered by UNICEF.
That was not all, we received another fairly large grant from the Education Department, Govt of West Bengal in 1983. This grant in aid included furniture, preserved botanical and zoological specimens, microscopes, clay models, teaching aids for health science etc . For such aid in kind, the credit should go to the then Hon'ble Education Minister Sri Partha Dey, Dr.P.S.Chakraborty and Mr. Paresh Chandra Chakraborty the Headmaster Hindu School. "Paresh babu" (Headmaster was popularly known by this name) played a pivotal role in making Hindu School Science Centre a type of centre of excellence.
After this big leap forward in terms of resources, some steps towards official formalizations were taken. So far our organisation had been operating under an ad-hoc committee consisting of some x-students, teachers (as advisors) and student members. In the month of May-1983, a full-fledged Governing body was formed in presence of all the general members. Fortunately, no major problem appeared during the formation of the governing body and several sub-committees.
This governing body consisted of some founder members also:
Chairman(Ex officio)-Mr.Paresh Chandra Chakraborty, Head Master Hindu School
Science Director: Mr.Chandra Sekhar Roy(Founder Member)
Chief-Coordinator: Mr.Sabyasachi Nath(Founder Member)
Secretary: Mr.Sanjoy Bose
Treasurer: Mr.Goutam Banerjee
Joint Secretary: Mr.Prasun Sengupta, Mr.Subroto Mitra.
Teachers as G.B members: Dr.Aloke Chakraborty, Mr.Ajit Ghatak, Mr.Sishir Mukherjee, Mr.Samarjit Roy, Mr.Swapan Saha, and Mr.Surajit Chakraborty
Next step after the formation of Governing body was the opening of a bank account in Allahabad Bank, appointing an auditor and applying for society registrations. These steps were vitally necessary for applying for govt aid on a regular basis. Unfortunately, even after completing the formalities we were unable to obtain regular aid from the state Govt. Reason of this indifferent attitude of the Govt could not be demystified even today!
So far we have received a cash grant of Rs. 11000/-from the education department of our state govt in 1983. We purchased some laboratory equipment (e.g. a high quality telescope, microscope), science books and produced the utilization certificate without any delay, but the government officials remained unimpressed, apathetic as before. This however could not discourage our members who were positive thinkers. The paucity of fund due to lack of Govt aid helped us to become financially independent as we shall see later.
At the end of 1983-there were several proposals from the guardians of morning section to open up a section for teaching science to the children. We acted promptly to set up the "KINDERGARTEN SECTION" with only six children (class III to IV). With this humble beginning, the KG section of Hindu School Science Centre started growing rapidly to become a mammoth division of our centre within several months!
Thanks to the guardians of those little aspiring scientists for showing overwhelming response which made it possible for us to have more than 100 Kindergarten members. To prevent overflow and consequent fall in quality, we had to arrange a kind of recruitment examination after two years! Kindergarten activities included film shows on animal world, space science, quiz contests on general sciences, demonstrations of Laboratory experiments as "Science as fun" etc. A separate library of children's science books was set up also. Many senior members came forward to donate many excellent books for this library. Every Sunday KG section programmes were held with leadership of Pralay Saha, a very dedicated G.B. member who became our treasurer later on, in 1985.
After 1985 a new type of activities gathered momentum. There were two main reasons for such unexpected growth in new direction.
1. During 1985,there was a nation-wide vigorous growth of Computer awareness among school students.
2. During the same time, the applications of digital electronics and microprocessors started appearing in practically every sphere in our country. Electronic Components became widely available in Calcutta (with affordable price tags).
We feel ourselves very fortunate in actively participating in this silent revolution through various project activities in our Science Centre. Some of these activities during 1985 to 1990 were:
Organising computer awareness programmes for our members. We had access of some powerful home computers like BBC-Micro, TI-99 and EIKO. Some great programmers like Subhro Bose, Dibyendu Dey and many others came out of such computer training endeavor of Hindu School Science Centre.
• Setting up of a digital electronics and microprocessor laboratory to allow the members to participate in hands on project activities. Some of the projects we designed and built in our "poor man's" lab (we used logic probe instead of oscilloscopes!)
• 4-digit TTL I.C (7490/7447) based digital counter with 7-Segment LED display.
• Up to 24-hour (on-delay) digital timer with CMOS (CD4040/CD4011) digital I.Cs.
• 12-hour digital clock with digital I.Cs. This big sized (5ftx3.5ft) digital clock, made by our members, and was officially inaugurated by Mr.Prasad Ranjan Roy (IAS), the then Director of secondary education.
• 8085 microprocessor based count down timer (with multiplexed 7-Segment LED).
• 8085 microprocessor controlled electronic LED based moving display with many visual effects like freeze, flash, jumpon etc.
• An ambitious Z-80 microprocessor based home computer project under the "Brand" name of "HSSC MICRO" (we are indebted to Mr.C.S.Roy and Mr.Amalendu Sen for this).
Another direction of our progress was the publication of periodicals/books on science and technology. Our first attempt was the publication of the annual magazine "Science Correspondent" in 1980. That was the start, after which many issues came out. Another monthly magazine from our organisation was the "Mathematica", an excellent periodical for the mathematics lovers. Unfortunately, due to some unavoidable reasons, this mathematical-publication had to be discontinued after 6th issue.
In 1989 a book on electronics (in Bengali), entitled "Digital Electronics o Microprocessor" was published by us. This maiden attempt proved very beneficial to our organisation. The book became very popular, within months- our organisation earned fairly healthy profit, which far exceeded the amount, invested for publication activities. This book, written by our science director Mr.C.S.Roy, opened up another opportunity besides generating revenue for the organisation.
This was a very wide publicity among academic and business persons. Many entrepreneurs began approaching our electronics section for consultancy for the development of electronic products. Thus, link between our organisation and the industry was established through a book on electronics! We undertook several R & D consultancy projects on electronic displays from some reputed SSI units of Calcutta and Dhaka (a businessman Mr.Hyder Hussain of Bangladesh approached us after coming across our book in Calcutta Book Fair). Such activities helped us to a great extent, in solving our financial problems.
On being stimulated by the staggering success of the earlier book-publication project, we published another book entitled "Make your own microcomputer". This book was for the readers interested in-microprocessor/ microcontroller applications. This book could not catch up the market to that extent as was predicted by some of our members. Nevertheless, this book helped in elevating the image of our centre in academic circles.
Though we conducted our business activities to strengthen the financial base of our organisation, our academic and pure-science persuit were never put on the back seat. We strove hard to strike a balance between the two entirely different poles.
For example, a very important activity "Saibal Roy memorial talent search examination" continued with roaring popularity. Each year hundreds of school students from reputed institutions participated in this written talent search test on mathematics, physical science, life science and computer fundamentals. With a modest beginning of having only 30 participants in 1981- this talent search test became a mega event, within several years, with more than 1500 participants and four examination centres in the city! Full credit should go to our executive body members like Santanu Maulick, Ananda Das and Pralay Saha, for making this event highly popular among the students of our state.
Under the able leadership of Arnab Biswas and Koushik Bhattacharya our physical science section activities got a big boost. Arnab started a series of practical demonstrations, quiz contests and study classes on physics and mathematics to the members. He made best use of the teaching aids received from UNICEF. Koushik organised some interesting laboratory and manufacturing activities on inorganic & organic chemistry. Such activities included experiments on growth of crystals, organic esters, extraction of formic acid from red ants etc. In our chemistry laboratory our members made soap (coconut oil, potassium hydroxide etc) and fountain pen ink etc. This section got involved in PCB (printed circuit board) etching project (with ferric chloride solution) with some requirements generated by our electronics section.
Our biology section, led by Kushal Sen and Pramit Basu, became very active in the following areas: plant and animal preservation, organising science camps regularly and experiments with microscopes.
In 1991, we felt the genuine need to expand beyond the boundary of our own organisation i.e. we wished to participate in national and international science movements. This desire was obviously based on solid rationale of inviting opportunities of closer interactions with other science organisations of home and abroad.
As a primary step in this direction, we started conducting joint programmes with other science clubs like “Association for young scientists” and “Science Communicator’s Forum”. Besides that, we started exerting sincere efforts to form science clubs in other schools. As a result of such attempt, we could establish “Hare School Science Centre” under the leadership of Bodhishatya Sensarma, a brilliant student of Hare School. In this project we got all sorts of cooperation from the Headmaster Mr. Nimai Chakraborty and Life Science teacher Mr. Rupak Homroy of Hare school. To start the preliminary work, we donated scientific equipment and other teaching aids worth more than Rs. 10000/-.
In 1995, we participated in the children’s science congress in New Delhi.
Our participation in this mega event was made possible with kind operation from Mr. Abhijit Bardhan, an outstanding leader of science movement of West Bengal and founder of “Science Communicator’s Forum”. From Hindu School Science Centre a team of three members led by Barnali Chattrejee was sent to attend the “Children’s Science Congress”.
Female Membership Issues
Till the end of 1993 our science centre remained totally a boy’s organisation. In 1994 that tradition was broken- with the approval of our governing body members, Barnali Chatterjee became the first female member and after six months, Dipanwita Saha joined us. Although Barnali was a good organiser and had keen interest in popular science activities, she had to face tough situation in our organisation for some obscure reasons. One of the reasons might be her rapid entry into the top management of our organisation. On top of that her aggressive style of problem solving activities gave rise to severe discontent among some active senior members. In other words, her intentions were right but her implementation approaches were far from being right.
This created an overall negative feeling about the decision of allowing girls to enter in our organisation! For this, we had to impose a kind of embargo on the admission of female members. Certainly this was a management failure for which our organisation lost many aspiring, brilliant female science activists.
We launched a massive campaign against environmental pollution in 1994/95. Our primary aim was to make common people aware about the harmful effects of polluting the environment. We conducted a number of seminars on global warming, ecological imbalance and other threats. As a part of this programme, we organised widespread tree- plantation activities.
Fortunately, following prominent intellectuals extended their whole- hearted cooperations: -
MR. C. R. DUTTA(Hon’ble secretary of institution f engineers).
DR. R. N. BOSE (vice chancellor of Calcutta University).
DR. ABIRLAL MUKHERJEE(A renowned ENT surgeon of Calcutta Medical College).
DR. PRATAP CHANDRA CHANDRA (Famous scholar and politician).
DR. ANISH DEB (Reader, Applied physics Calcutta University and a prolific writer in science).
MR. SAMARESH GOSWAMI (Director, Birla Industrial & Technological Museum).
DR. AJOY CHAKRABORTY (Head- Applied physics, Calcutta University).
Another project with astronomical telescopes:- From two different sources, we obtained two fairly high power astronomical telescopes with which our members started sky watching hands on at the roof top of Hindu School building. In that connection, some of interested members were sent to B.I.T.M for receiving formal training on astronomy and telescope making. Under the marvellous guidance of Mr.D.K.Pathak, the senior scientific officer of B.I.T.M. Among excellent theoritical & practical lessons, most interesting part was undoubtedly the demo with “mini- planetorium” insight their premises.