{"id":1169,"date":"2026-10-29T13:54:28","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T13:54:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stories.nptel.ac.in\/?p=1169"},"modified":"2026-10-29T13:54:28","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T13:54:28","slug":"naval-architect-by-profession-total-grandfather-at-heart-m-s-p-raju","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stories.nptel.ac.in\/index.php\/2026\/10\/29\/naval-architect-by-profession-total-grandfather-at-heart-m-s-p-raju\/","title":{"rendered":"Naval Architect by Profession, Total Grandfather at Heart: M.S.P. Raju"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

MSP Raju<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every Thursday morning, M.S.P. Raju checks his NPTEL assignment marks. This may not sound particularly unusual until you learn that he has two grandchildren, but still remains excited for his marks! His wife sometimes sees him reaching for his phone first thing in the morning and wonders what could possibly be so urgent, they laugh and are amused at this entire situation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is unexpected coming from a man who has spent decades as a naval scientist, professor and industry professional, and now serves as a Vice President at a ship-design company. He has worked at DRDO as a scientist, spent years in the maritime industry and academia, earned an M.Tech from IIT Madras, and recently completed an Executive Programme in Business Management from IIM Visakhapatnam. Yet for all the experience behind him, Raju has never stopped being a student.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His association with NPTEL itself goes back a long way. As an IIT Madras alumnus, he remembers a time when NPTEL courses were still being distributed as CDs. Years later, when he was teaching and encouraging his students to take NPTEL courses, he decided to take the courses alongside them and become a student himself, just to motivate them further. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Raju’s choice of courses was not limited to the subjects that appeared on his resume. A Naval Architect by training, he decided to learn Sanskrit. For years, he had been interested in the Bhagavad Gita. He wanted to understand it deeply, and felt that learning Sanskrit would help him do so. He enrolled in Spoken Sanskrit courses through NPTEL, progressing from basic and intermediate levels to advanced study, and even explored Paninian grammar. He simply wanted to understand something that fascinated him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sanskrit was only the beginning. He went on to explore courses like \u2018Science of Happiness and Wellbeing\u2019, \u2018Yoga and Positive Psychology\u2019, \u2018Indian Psychology\u2019, \u2018Strategic Management\u2019, \u2018Project Management\u2019, \u2018Business Analytics\u2019, \u2018Design Thinking\u2019 and more. Along the way, he completed 15 NPTEL courses, earning the NPTEL Believers Award and Discipline Star recognitions in both Management and Humanities & Social Sciences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At DRDO, he had become deeply involved in Experimental Hydrodynamics. But he wanted to experience other parts of Naval Architecture like ship production, construction, surveying and repair. So he moved into industry, eventually working across different roles and organisations before moving into academia. Even while working, he continued teaching. It gave him another reason to learn, and learning gave him something to teach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cLearn to teach and teach to learn.\u201d <\/strong>He does not believe that having 24 hours in a day is the problem. \u201cIt is not time management, it is self-management,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

He may register for five courses in a semester, but choose only two or three for examination while using the others as additional learning material.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And examination day itself is something he genuinely enjoys. If he registers for a course, he writes the exam, whether he feels fully prepared or not. He does not seem particularly bothered by the possibility of a lower score. And then there is the part he enjoys most: arriving at the examination centre and finding himself surrounded by younger students – the kutti-kuttis<\/em>,<\/strong> as he affectionately calls them. He enjoys finding his roll number, locating his examination room and sitting down to write the paper. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is also a lesson in how he approaches NPTEL. He does not advocate doing an overwhelming number of courses one semester and then stopping altogether. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

His advice is to make learning sustainable. \u201cConsistency is more important than intensity.\u201d Even one course every semester, he believes, can keep a person in the habit of learning.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

For him, age should not determine whether someone learns, and a profession should not determine what they are allowed to be curious about. \u201cLearning does not have an age limit, and curiosity does not have any discipline boundary.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that may be the most rudimentary  way to understand M.S.P. Raju. He may have been a Naval Scientist by profession, a professor by experience, an industry professional by choice and a grandfather at home. But every Thursday morning, when he reaches for his phone to check his NPTEL marks, he is simply a student again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

~written by<\/em> Shambhavi Shekhar<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MSP Raju Every Thursday morning, M.S.P. Raju checks his NPTEL assignment marks. This may not sound particularly unusual until you learn that he has two grandchildren, but still remains excited for his marks! His wife sometimes sees him reaching for his phone first thing in the morning and wonders what could possibly be so urgent, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1172,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nptel-star"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stories.nptel.ac.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stories.nptel.ac.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stories.nptel.ac.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.nptel.ac.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.nptel.ac.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1169"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stories.nptel.ac.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1171,"href":"https:\/\/stories.nptel.ac.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169\/revisions\/1171"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.nptel.ac.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stories.nptel.ac.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.nptel.ac.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.nptel.ac.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}