Advancement for Whom? Remembering Professor Anil Waman Date

I first met Anil Date in the central library at IIT Bombay. I was in my first year of the undergraduate programme. It was 1973.

Anil had just joined the Mechanical Engineering department and looked nothing like what one expected a professor to be. Corduroy jeans, long hair, a remarkably young face. More like a student trying to issue books than a faculty member.

At the counter, the librarian was unconvinced. The faculty card was examined with suspicion. Questions followed. Anil looked amused, slightly puzzled. Then he saw me and asked for help.

I stepped in and confirmed that yes, this was indeed Professor Anil Date.

That was my first encounter with him, unassuming, unconventional, and quietly challenging expectations.

The Friday Evenings

There was also a personal thread. His wife, Suranga, was distantly related to me. That connection led to more conversations, and conversations led to visits.

The Dates lived in a B transit quarter on campus, a modest two-bedroom apartment that slowly became a hub of discussions. I used to drop in on Friday evenings after the film we watched in the convocation hall. Those evenings stretched late into the night. We spoke about technology, its purpose, and more importantly, its relevance in India.

Anil had strong views. He was deeply read, but never abstract. His thinking had been shaped by experience, including time spent working in villages near Karjat, before joining IIT. He had earned his bachelor’s from Bombay University, gone to Manchester for a master’s, and completed his PhD at Imperial College London. But what returned to India was not just a thermodynamics expert. It was someone who had begun asking a different question entirely.

Were we solving the right problems? Or merely replicating models from elsewhere that did not have relevance?

Some of my friends from my hostel joined those Friday sessions. He welcomed them. The space became even more alive. And through all of it, there was Suranga, serving endless cups of tea, anchoring the warmth that made those late evenings memorable.

The Question He Never Stopped Asking

Anil had been deeply influenced by Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful. That influence was not decorative. It shaped his core conviction — that technology must be enabling rather than exclusionary, and that relevance, not sophistication, was the true measure of good engineering.

Advancement for whom? — this was not rhetorical for him. It had a specific geography: rural India. It had a specific demand: that the engineer must enter the field with empathy, not just expertise.”

He played a key role in establishing what would become the Centre for Technology Alternatives for Rural Areas (CTARA) at IIT Bombay. It began in a basement of Mechanical Engineering Department. No fanfare. Just intent.

He would joke that he received little support from the Main Building for what was initially called the Appropriate Technology Group. But whenever a prominent visitor came to IIT, the Director’s office would summon Anil to speak about his work. We used to ask each other, with some wryness: how Indian, exactly, is the Indian Institute of Technology?

He built CTARA step by step, with projects, people, purpose. Today it stands as a centre offering advanced teaching and research programmes, and he served as its founding head. That journey reflects not just institutional growth, but personal conviction. He also held the first Rahul Bajaj Chair Professorship in Mechanical Engineering, and later became Emeritus Professor. These distinctions were real, but they were not what drove him. He extensively published and wrote two seminal books on heat transfer and combustion analytic. He was also judged as the best teacher at IIT Bombay

The Man Himself

Anil once told me that when he arrived in London for his studies, he could not speak a single sentence in English. By the time his PhD at Imperial College was done, he was singing pop songs — Dire Straits, most likely. He loved cricket and played alongside some international names. He had a perfectly cultivated British accent, but he would switch easily into Marathi the moment he was in the field.

The range was not accidental. It was who he was.

When I returned to IIT Bombay as a professor myself, Anil was now a full professor. Conversations resumed, deeper now — on education, on appropriate technology, on what academia was and was not doing. He took a keen interest in what I was working on. He listened carefully and always encouraged without flattery.

One day, after I had stepped away from full-time teaching, he called. No preamble.

“Why don’t you join CTARA as an adjunct?” he asked. He had already spoken to the Director.

Within a week, I received the appointment.

That was Anil. Quiet, decisive.

He also urged me to seek fellowship at INSA and he offered to nominate me himself. All these matter, Prasad, he had said.

His daughter Pankaja spent time working with us on video communication. Anil never interfered. He simply gave her space.

Over a Glass of Draft Beer

We shared a close friendship. We would meet at a pub to talk about teaching. Later, simply to reconnect and then talk about changing times. Anil loved a good draft beer.

One of the last times I met Anil was at a pub in a mall in Ghatkopar. We spoke at length. Nothing urgent, yet everything meaningful. Conversations with Anil were always like that, expansive, thoughtful, quietly enriching.

The final meeting was at the Rude lounge at Hiranandani in Powai, where I introduced him to my friend Professor Pratim Biswas, who had just moved to the University of Miami as Dean of Engineering. I took some pictures that day. Last year we hardly spoke due to his illness. He passed away on April 24, 2026 in Mumbai. He was 80.

What Finally Endures

Anil’s legacy lies not just in what he built, but in how he chose to think. We may not often find this combination in academia, the intellectual rigour, field engagement, and a persistent, honest concern for relevance.

Anil loved my blogs. He was among the first to respond to a new post, with a comment, an appreciation, or a call that would follow.

Today, I owe him one.

Miss you so much Anil.

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