Brief Profile of Dr Subhan Khan, Chief Scientist(Retd.), CSIR-NISTADS

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Dr Subhan Khan is a sixty-three-year young Founding Chancellor of Maithan University, Maithan, Patron and Founder President of Mewat Development Society (MDS) and Former Chief Scientist of CSIR-NISTADS, New Delhi.

Dr Subhan Khan is alumni of Haryana Agricultural University (1972-1984) Hisar(Haryana) from where he did his BSc. (Hons) Agri. in 1976 with 61% marks and with Haryana Agricultural Marketing Board Merit Scholarship; followed by M.Sc. (Rural Sociology) in 1978 with 82.4% marks and with ICAR Junior Research Fellowship and Ph. D. (Rural Sociology) in 1984 with 80.6% marks with CSIR Senior Research Fellowship where he specialised in agricultural sciences and rural sociology.

He joined CSIR-NISTADS in 1983 and superannuated as chief Scientist in 2014. In his about 30-years career with CSIR-NISTADS, he pioneered the applications of GIS, GPS and remote sensing applications, methodologies and techniques to study and plan the regional resources and develop related activities.

He has been striving hard to initiate quality education in Mewat. Dr Subhan Khan’s first experiment of opening Mewat Public School (MPS) in Gurgaon Town on NH-8 on duly allotted wakaf Board land to Mewat Development Society (MDS), a Chandigarh based 1987 registered NGO, after initial success was made totally failed by a highly and complex nexus of political, commercial and religious forces there, but another joint educational experiment of similar type on one’s own land, viz. starting Aravali Public School (APS), on 1st July 2000 by Aravali Education Society (AES), a Delhi based 1996 registered NGO , with the efforts of Dr Subhan Khan which was its Founder President and his friend Er Mohd Israil which was his Founder Secretary is now spread over 19 acres of owned land in pleasing & calm foothills of Aravali valley, at Moosa Nagar near Ferozepur Jhirka, Mewat (Haryana).This school has achieved the status as senior secondary affiliated to the CBSE and intentionally made co-educational, as girl education is not given much preference in this region. However, in APS the girl education is not only given equal recognition, but preferred as the girl education is made 50% free here. Similarly, initial emphasis was deliberately given on ‘English Conversation’ to remove hesitation among students coming from rural and poor background. Similarly, a myth about science and engineering education was intentionally propagated in this region, that its ‘local students are very poor intellectually, and hence having maximum dropout rates, and not passing at any level of general studies in the school classes with any satisfactory numbers, forget achieving any meritorious positions or perusing subjects like science, medical or engineering, etc.’ Though some people came in this trap and started believing the same and persuaded their art studies while a few others did not and persuaded science, medical and engineering and succeeded in their filed but with much difficulties in those days.

APS from day one is working on focused vision ‘to bring a change by lighting a candle for light instead of cursing the darkness.’ It may be observed that since beginning APS has started showing brilliant results. It maintained the achievements of outstanding academic records, as in the year 2007, 100% students passed class Xth and its students achieved 89.5%, while in the subsequent year 2008, again 100% students passed class Xth and improved their meritorious record to 91%. In the same years, in class XIIth, 100% students had passed and achieved 78% and with 53% and 85% marks, respectively, which demonstrated consistency in academic improvements. Now in every year school brings 100% results in Board exams and achieve merit in 10th and 12th class including Science, beside other co-curricular activities. To mention a few, in 2015 CBSE XIIth class science stream results demonstrated very categorically the resultant efforts and hope from APS wherein Mr. Imran Alam achieved 94.4%; Ms. Rekha Raghav 94% and Mr. Mohd Naseem 84%. Further, in 2016, APS maintained its outstanding results of XIIth Class science stream where Ms. Chhaya Gupta obtained 91.8%. Such people destroyed the ridiculous myth on non-competent Mewatis which was acutely prevalent 4-5 decades earlier past that students coming from this region are incompetent and cannot pass normal art classes forget to think about science stream.

In Dr Subhan Khan’s three-decade careeras SRF/RA/ scientistwith CSIR-NISTADS (1983-2014), he pioneered the application of GIS, GPS and remote sensing methodologies and techniques for study and planning of regional resource and development activities. At CSIR-NISTADS, he catalysed and undertook over 100 externally funded research projects/activities from National and International agencies/organisations including United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), World Health Organisation (WHO); central Ministry of Science & Technology; Environment and Forests and Climate Change; Min. Of Panchayati Raj; Rural Development; ministry of Women and Child Development; min of Minority Affairs; and Haryana state Department of Science & Technology; Haryana Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj; Haryana Urban Development Authority, etc. Most of the projects involved generating/collecting massive field data, analysis, optimisation, plan/strategy formulation, dissemination of results and outputs through workshops, seminars and training of persons.

Over the years, he has brought out more than 100 project technical completion reports and more than 80 research papers and supervised four Ph. D. students and 40 MSc. /MTech. / MBA students.

He is a member of various professional and scientific Associations/Bodies such as : Computer Society of India (CSI), Mumbai; Indian Academy of Social Sciences (IASS), Allahabad; Indian Science Congress Association (ISCA), Calcutta; Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH), New Delhi; American Society for Photogrammetry & Remote Sensing (ASPRS),USA; Society of Management of Science & Applied Cybernetics (SOMAC), New Delhi, Indian Society of Social Scientists in Agriculture (ISSA), Hisar; Indian Society of Agricultural Statistics (ISAS), New Delhi; Indian Society of Extension Education (ISEE), New Delhi; and Indian National Cartographic Association (INCA), Dehradun and ,India Islamic Cultural Centre(IICC), etc.

Dr Subhan Khan, as a young researcher at CSIR-NISTADS, while working on a project in Mewat region, he was pained to see the distressful economic and social plight of its local people, particularly Meos, the major inhabitants. As an activist, along with likeminded other young researchers, he started working in filed as activist, first under the banner of Mewat Students and Youth Organisation(MYO) an unregistered civil society and later on in 1987-88 he formed and formally got registered an NGO namely, the Mewat Development Society (MDS), with registrars of Societies & Firms, Govt of Haryana. The MDS has a wide ranging charter, inter alia, to conduct research studies on the Science, Technology and Society (STS) interaction; S&T Policies, S&T Information System; Spatial Technologies Applications; undertake, organize, conduct and facilitate courses, conferences, lectures, research and education, etc. on various aspects of science, technology and development; undertake contract, sponsored consultancy projects on behalf of state governments, autonomous institutions, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and private firms for various purposes like socio-economic surveys including impact assessment reports, feasibility studies, techno-economic studies and marketing research, state-of-the-art reports, research and evaluation studies on various dimensions of science, technology, education and development.

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