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Amar Sinha: An IITian Journey from Bilbari to Paris

By Ranita Sinha, Kolkata

One day on an usual visit to a Bishnupriya Manipuri house, my eyes fell on a book. A small thin white coloured book with the title- “ From Bilbari to Paris - Professional Biography of an IITian”. The book is written by Upasana Sinha.

Amidst curiosity I picked up the book and started reading it. It was about Sri Amar Sinha, a Bishnupriya Manipuri IITian in the 50's. I got so thrilled after reading the book that i thought of sharing what ever little I can with all of you. As I believe, like me most of us are not aware of this jewel of our community. We all know what Indian Institute Technology is all about, and what the status it carries in India and abroad.

But before writing about Sri Amar Sinha, I would like to write a few lines about Smt. Upasana Sinha, the author. Upasana Sinha, wife of Sri Deepak Sinha and eldest daughter-in-law of Sri Dilip Sinha and Smt. Promila Sinha of Kailashar, Tripura is a faculty in the Department of Chemistry, Nagaland University. She joined Nagaland University in the year 2003 after completing her Ph.D in Chemistry from IIT, Guwahati. She wrote this biography when she went to visit her maternal uncle-in-law, Sri Amar Sinha in Madrid, Spain in January 2005.

Sri Pramod Kumar Sinha, father of Amar Sinha was a police officer during the British regime. Among his eight children, Amar Sinha was the second. He was an origin of village Bilbari of Patherkandi in Karimganj district, Assam. As Sri Promod Sinha was transferred to different places during his service tenure, in the year 1937 Amar Sinha was born at Kamalpur, a place some distance away from Guwahati. Amar Sinha was fondly called Godon by his family members.

Amar Sinha started his school life from Guwahati. As his father had a transferable job he had to change lot of schools. He studied in Guwahati, Rangia, Bilbari, Sylhet (Bangladesh), Dharmanagar and Shillong. He passed out his matriculation examination from Jail Road Bengali High School in the first division. Then he joined St. Edmund's College, Shillong and passed out I.Sc course acquiring the 39th position in the whole of Assam in the year 1953. After that he enrolled for B.Sc ( Physics, Chemistry, Maths) but did not complete it as he joined the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur, the oldest and the first IIT.

Amar Sinha had to face restrictions from his father to procure his IIT degree; because he wanted his son to complete his B.Sc first and also because they were not rich enough to support his studies. But it was Amar Sinha's childhood dream to study engineering from IIT Kharagpur. So, he moved ahead to fulfil his dream and in the mean time the scholarship he was getting after matriculation was enhanced and thus he did not find any monetary problems.

As Amar Sinha was an inborn talent he did not find any difficulty in completing the course. He completed the course attaining a first class. During the time his course was in progress he appeared at an interview at Deheradun Military Academy to join as an electro mechanical engineer. He was selected and was supposed to join after completing his course. But after his course he did not join the job because he wanted to study further and he knew very well that once he joins the military service he would not be able to continue his studies. He rather preferred to join as a Lecturer in Assam Engineering College.

He enjoyed the first year of his teaching career in Assam Engineering College. But he was a professionally adventurous person and from the second year he started feeling bore. He desperately wanted a change in his job. In the mean time he saw two advertisements in the newspaper- one was the French Government Fellowship for practical training in engineering and the other was for pilot officer in Indian Air Force. He applied for both and was selected for both the positions. As his family wanted him to go to France so he resigned from Assam Engineering College and headed for France.

In the year 1961 he set sail for Europe. He first flew from Guwahati to Calcutta by Indian Airlines and from Calcutta to Paris by Air France. After reaching Paris, all the students were sent to Besaan Besacou University for two months to learn the French language. After that all the students were asked to decide which degree they wanted to pursue. Amar Sinha wanted to do a doctorate degree but for that he had to leave Paris and he did not wanted to leave Paris. So, he rather joined the Institute Superior des Materio et Constructio Mechanic for a Masters Degree in Mechanical Engineering. The course got over in the year 1963.

After the course was over Amar Sinha was ready to come back to India. Before coming back he went to watch a movie named Aimez Brahms filmed in Paris. The film showed all the beautiful sights of Paris and he fell in love with the beauty and made up his mind to stay back.

Amar Sinha joined a French Company as a design engineer in the year 1963. There he was not given routine job but was given new problems all the time and he enjoyed it. But as it was mentioned earlier that he was a professional hunger, he was not satisfied with what he was doing. So, he left the job and joined Renault France in April 1964 and served there till 1968. In 1969 Renault Engineering Company created the 'Systems Economics' Department and Amar Sinha with two colleagues jointly headed the department. There Amar Sinha's team had developed a public transport system which was partly bus and partly train. The train part was automatic and it functions without a driver. The transport system could not be made fully automatic as people would get scared when they would see an automobile moving without any driver, especially at night. This transport system is still seen in the streets of Ville Nouvell D'evry, a town near Paris.

Than in the year 1969 he resigned from Renault Paris and joined Renault Spain and he shifted his base from Paris to Spain. In the mean time he was busy with other assignments too – like engine project in Algiers and Venezuela, design of public transport system in France, purchasing inventory system of Renault in Spain, projects for setting up of machine tool factories in Thailand and Malaysia etc. All this assignments took place between 1969 to 1974. Amar Sinha was the proud designer of Renault 18. In November 1973, his brain child Renault 18 was launched in Spain.

But Amar Sinha's professional journey was not smooth at all. At every step he faced restrictions from his colleagues. But he was a born winner. So, he never looked back and achieved whatever he wanted to achieve. Amar Sinha retired from Renault Spain in the nineties as one of the directors of the company.

This biography does not say much about Amar Sinha's personal life. It only mentions that he was married to Nermin and has two children - Ela and Arun and they stay in Madrid. Wife Nermin has her own business. Their daughter Ela is married to a well-established dentist, Paco and has two lovely children Borcha and Alexandra. Son Arun works for a water sports company which is based in Spain, Portugal and France and is married to lawyer Ana.

Thus, it is a small effort from my part to introduce you all with a Bishnupriya Manipuri IITian who went all the way from Bilbari to Paris to fulfil his dream. I thank Upasana for writing such a lovely piece and allow us to know about such a talented person of our community.

Comments

  1. My first reaction was - Really! our brothers are in IIT, the prestigious engineering college of India. Thats great. She didnot tell me or u can say i didnot ask her when did the concerned person took admission in IIT.

    I got amazed to come to know that Amar sinha completed IIT in those times when darkness of ignorane was looming at large.

    HIs effort is indeed praiseworthy and historic.

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  2. The story seems undigestable. Since still we dont have participation in the higher education. And Amar sinha's story seems away from originality. Is it correct? But it is true. We have people, people who has brought glory to our community.

    And Amar Sinha is one amongst them.

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  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  5. Readers would be thankfull to Mr.Sandy if he furnishes with his identity with some information about his respected father...

    Ms Ranita might be incorrect by terming Mr Amar Sinha as the ist BM IITan but the story of Amar Sinha depicts the journey of a villager to Paris with success kissing his feet..

    Mr Sandy's father must be having his own success story...We would definitely love to know...

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  6. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  7. Mr Sandeep

    If your facts are at all true, I m really very sorry. I apologize heartily for the mistake. But i hv not written it all by myself.

    It is natural that you will be upset after reading my article, if ur claim is true. If i would hv been at ur place, i would hv reacted like u. But believe me I had no intention to hurt anybody. I would be greatful if u kindly provide us with the information of ur father and let us know.

    waiting eagerly to get the proper information fm u, so that such a big error could be rectified.

    I apologize once again.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Mr Sandep

    I have only requested to enlighten and let us know about the Ist BM IITan...
    Every individual of India is well aware of the fact,how it means to be an IITan.It is probably the greatest dream a person can think of his career.Ist or the latest...being an IITan itself is the best thing a person can sought after.

    ReplyDelete
  9. it was very much unfortunate on my part to delete some personalised objectionable comments.

    Moreover, i have made necessary changes in the main article.

    everybody has the right to voice their disenchantment but not in personal front.

    Thnaks,

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  11. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  12. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  13. Same kind of indecent personalised attacks were also noticed in one debate at BM - orkut, where members used to pass indecent personal remarks on open platforms instead of bebating and presenting their view maintaining a level of standard.Due to which the erudite coetrie started showing disinterest on that.

    I alwys believed that this blog is not for the masses but for tthe classes. Lets not make this the same.
    Please restrain from personal indecent remarks as non BM people aslo regularly hit this blog and the articles also had been appriciated by many.
    Kindly use personal IDs for exchange of abusive and slangs for each other.

    When the blogger has already apologised for the errors then there is no point of arguing the same..Here we are discussing about the great BM IITan and kind alnguage being used are quite unfortunate. I wish those legendary perons are not aware of these pejorative debates...

    Thanks a ton to Rishi for deleting those comments....

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  14. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  15. i request Mr Sandeep Rajkumar to write an article on BM. it is my earnest request to him and i am public requesting.

    dont make it personal Sandeep, since we all do aspect something from you.

    Rishikesh would be happy getting his article. after all one more contribuation and that is from an US citizen.


    Yours friend, Rakesh

    ReplyDelete
  16. as 4 IITwallas,many people thinks today they r the most overrated one.how many scientist ever india produced are from IIT? how many of them got a nobel? have u heard any scientific invention by any IITwalla? presently they work as software COOLE's 4 developed countries & nothing else.
    india wastes poor peoples money on them n they fly away for the biscuits thrown to them to make themselves richer.

    ReplyDelete

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