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From Conversation to Collective Action

What the GROW-N Panel at NIT Rourkela revealed about India’s water-science ecosystem On a winter evening at NIT Rourkela, a rather unusual panel discussion unfolded as part of HYDRO International 2025 conference. Instead of PowerPoint slides and narrow technical papers, senior professors, early-career researchers and doctoral students sat together to ask a deceptively simple question: How do we build something that lasts? The discussion was organised under the banner of GROW-N (Group on Remote sensing, Ocean and Water resources - for Networking), a young but ambitious network that aims to link science, practice, and policy across India. As the opening speaker explained, GROW-N was created to encourage data sharing, methodological exchange, mentoring of young researchers, and translation of scientific debate into public-policy relevance. What followed was not a ceremonial panel. It was a candid, sometimes uncomfortable diagnosis of how research in India actually works. 1. Th...
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The Topographic Fingerprint of Landscapes

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  Where does a channel begin? This deceptively simple question has challenged researchers for decades. Even a single major storm can reorganize an entire river network by initiating small streams, reminding us that rivers are dynamic, not static. This uncertainty complicates one of the most widely used landscape metrics: drainage density, defined as the total channel length per unit area. So, an important question arises: what lies beyond drainage density? Think about the ridging patterns on human fingertips. Shaped through genetic evolution, they become permanent markers of identity. Landscapes exhibit similar patterns. The spatial organization of ridges across a terrain can be viewed as its topographic fingerprint, preserving the imprint of climatic and geomorphic processes that shaped it over time. Building on this idea, we proposed an alternative metric: ridge density, the density of topographic ridges within a landscape (manuscript under review). Our results show t...
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Importance of Literature Survey in Research

Being engaged in academic research, we spend a lot of time thinking about a novel idea or, so to say, some novel methodology as part of our research journey. We do laborious work, performing experiments, writing code, running simulations day and night, getting suboptimal to optimal results, and then infer it as some novel work to package as a research paper for publication, only to come to know that similar work has already been published just weeks before we planned to send it to the journal. This can be frustrating for anyone; yes, we gain knowledge, but at what cost? As we all know, when we propose our research interest or the direction, we want our research to go in, the first thing we have to do is a literature survey. We search keywords, download relevant papers after skimming through the abstracts; sometimes we download just by looking at the title, and sometimes we reject papers just by their titles, basically judging the book by its cover. Eventually, we find some research gap...
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Does Basin Shape Reflect Stage of Landscape Evolution?

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The ever-evolving topography of the Earth has always sparked human curiosity. Imagine the astonishment of the first person who found a seashell atop a mountain, proof that the Earth's surface was not static but had a story to tell. In 1795, James Hutton proposed a revolutionary idea: the Earth is far older than anyone had imagined, and its landscapes are the result of slow, continuous processes acting over immense spans of time. Later, in 1830, Charles Lyell expanded on Hutton’s vision in his book Principles of Geology , suggesting that landscapes evolve through gradual, incremental changes that shape mountains, valleys, and rivers over billions of years. This understanding didn’t just reshape geology, it influenced Charles Darwin , who carried Lyell’s book aboard the Beagle . The concept of gradual evolution of earth helped Darwin frame his revolutionary theory of biological evolution in The Origin of Species (1859). Together, these ideas highlight: studying how landscapes ...
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Issues with Academic Conferences in India: What GROW-N Thinks Needs to Change

Issues with Academic Conferences in India: What GROW-N Thinks Needs to Change Conferences are supposed to be the cornerstone of academic discourse. But for many in the Indian research community, they are instead a source of frustration. The GROW-N WhatsApp group, a forum of academics and students, recently held a spirited discussion unpacking the many flaws of how conferences are organized in India—and how they can be fixed. Prof. Basudev Biswal initiated the discussion by pointing out how grand inaugurations often delay schedules, forcing student presentations to be cut short, sometimes by half. This disproportionately affects early-career researchers, who often lack the experience to adapt under pressure and end up feeling sidelined. A similar concern was raised by another member, who noted that this reflects broader cultural hierarchies where seniors often overrun time while juniors are penalized. One participant cited Dr. Pradeep from IIT Madras as a model organizer. His conference...
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What (Not) To Do as an Early Career Researcher and Academic in India

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  Speaker: Prof. Arpita Mondal Associate Professor, Department of Civil Engineering and IDP in Climate Studies, IIT Bombay In this insightful seminar, Prof. Arpita Mondal shares candid reflections and practical guidance on the journey of becoming a professor at premier institutes like the IITs. From navigating the early-career academic landscape to understanding expectations in research and teaching, this talk is a must-watch for anyone aspiring to build a career in academia in India. Watch the full talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGvao2KS8Eg    
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“We Make Everything Else Possible” – A Bold Reimagining of Civil Engineering

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  “We Make Everything Else Possible” – A Bold Reimagining of Civil Engineering On 26 th June 2025, the GROW-N Monthly Talk Series hosted a speaker who did far more than deliver a lecture—he sparked a movement.  Prof. Rajagopalan Balaji, a globally respected faculty member from the University of Colorado Boulder, spoke about the past, present and future of civil engineering. His talk sparked an important conversation, offering students valuable insights into building a meaningful career in the civil engineering industry. Prof. Balaji began candidly: he hadn’t even wanted to be a civil engineer. Like many, he ended up in the field due to rank and options. But decades later, with an illustrious international career, he confidently declared: “If I had to start all over again, I wouldn’t choose anything but civil engineering.” The surprising part? His journey wasn’t just about technical skills—it was about realizing that infrastructure is the backbone of our society, driv...
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