Dr Manik G. Deshmukh
Imagine writing so many exams in a single semester that the watchman at the exam centre starts recognising your face. Morning shift, afternoon shift, then back again the next morning. He finally stops you: why are you writing so many papers? What do you even get from this? For most people, it’s just a hypothetical scenario. For Dr. Manik G. Deshmukh, an associate professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at SVERI’s College of Engineering, Pandharpur, Maharashtra, it’s just what happened. He had sixteen NPTEL exams that semester, and that wasn’t even the beginning of it.
It actually started in 2018. Dr. Manik, with more than 35 years of teaching experience, was not exactly in the mood to become a student again. But the college had made it mandatory for every faculty member to take one NPTEL course every semester. He enrolled in ‘Foundation Engineering’, the same subject he was already teaching, so he could clear the requirement and move on.
He didn’t move on. The course was taught by Prof. Kousik Deb of IIT Kharagpur, and within the first few lectures, Dr. Manik noticed something strange. He’d been teaching the same subject for more than two decades. He understood the formulas, methods, and solutions. But what Prof. Deb was doing was different. He was explaining why pile behaviour changes between clay and sand, what forces are actually at play, and what the numbers mean beneath the surface.
“Even after 25–30 years of experience, I felt that something was missing in my teaching,” he says.
One course wasn’t going to be enough. So he took another. Then two more. By the time COVID hit, he had completed six courses. When things reopened, he completed twelve courses in a single semester, and then sixteen. He was taking courses in Theory of Computation, Artificial Intelligence, Mathematics, and Humanities—subjects with no obvious connection to what he had been hired to teach. He wasn’t chasing breadth for its own sake. The first course had shown him a gap he hadn’t known existed. He wanted to see how many more were out there. “From Civil Engineering to Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, any branch – I can teach now. NPTEL gave me that confidence,” he says.
One day, an email arrived telling Dr. Manik that he had been awarded NPTEL Star in three categories simultaneously. He hadn’t known such a thing existed. Since then, the recognition has continued, from Discipline Stars and NPTEL Domain Scholar certificates in Humanities and Civil Engineering to an invitation to the NPTEL Star Meet at IIT Bombay. He is currently expecting a Superstar recognition in this semester’s results, with a Megastar recognition as his next target. In his region, people now recognise him for these achievements.
“I was a topper in 10th, topper in 12th, still a popular teacher, but the real stardom came from NPTEL,” he says.
Not long ago, a student came to Dr. Manik with her first NPTEL result. She had scored 72 and was pleased. He told her she had missed a silver certificate by three marks. She promised to go for gold next time. He did not say anything after that. He did not need to.
He still thinks about that first course: sitting with Prof. Kousik Deb’s lectures and realising, somewhere around the third or fourth lecture, that twenty-five years hadn’t been enough. That feeling didn’t leave. At 71 courses and counting, with a target of 100 before the year is out, Dr. Manik is still the man at the desk the watchman can’t figure out. He doesn’t explain it anymore. He just shows up.
~written by Nehansh Kesharwani