His Students: Dr. Latha Pillai

Dr. Latha Pillai

Dr. Latha Pillai is currently the director of the Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development in Sriperumbudur near Chennai in India. She is the first woman director of the institute, which was started in 1993. She is a former pro-vice chancellor of the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU). She has more than three decades of experience in higher education and has held various other positions in educational administration, including advisor of the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) and deputy secretary and education officer at the University Grants Commission (UGC).

I had the opportunity to speak to Dr. Latha Pillai about her association with my father, Dr. K. V. Kaliappan, who was her teacher and doctorate guide (advisor) in the Department of Psychology at the University of Madras.

How did you come to know Dr. Kaliappan?

I first met Professor Kaliappan in 1980, when I had registered for my Master’s in Applied Psychology, with a second year specialization in industrial psychology at the University of Madras. There were about 11 or 12 students in my class, and many of us had direct access to the professor as his students. The first subject Dr. Kaliappan taught us was community psychology. It had to do with taking psychology to the community. That was his message and that was his life - really taking psychology to the grassroots and connecting. I got to know him and that message very well even during those early days as his student.

What were your first impressions of him?

He immediately struck me as a very down to earth person, affable, and could put anyone at ease. He had a calm and matter of fact approach to things.

How would you say you have benefited by your association with Dr. Kaliappan? How did he help you with your education and career?

I was kind of an introvert (still think I am!). I was hardly the kind of person who would speak out in class. He asked me to handle the first seminar in my class. I really didn’t know how I would do it. But I must say I really did a very good seminar. It was appreciated by everyone. Since then, I have really not stopped talking, I feel! That is because, professionally, in the last 20 years, my jobs required a lot of talking, advocacy and things like that. I am ever grateful to him for giving me that first push into talking. If you have to swim, you have to jump into the water sort of approach is what he had. It was a tremendous thing. Now, of course, I am appreciated everywhere for the kind of talks and speeches I give.

You knew Professor Kaliappan for over 30 years. What other highlights of your professional and educational connection with him can you tell us about?

I did my Ph.D. with him. So, I was in his Master's classes for two years and my Ph.D. work with him lasted four years. I did my Ph.D. on writer’s cramp and he believed that it was one of the disorders that were not really known and required to be publicized. As a student, I used to wonder why I was taking so long to complete my thesis as I took longer than other students did. But I fondly remember the many evenings I spent at your home in the veranda discussing my work with the professor. That’s something I can never forget. Subsequently, I also worked with him. He was in charge of the NSS (National Service Scheme) as NSS coordinator at the university and I was hired as a program executive to work with him. I worked on programs like personality development. He designed those programs to reach out to the masses and to the students. He created that position and I worked with him for more than a year.

He had a tremendous amount of faith in my abilities. At first, he wanted me to get a job as a teacher in the university department. The only vacant position was a reader. I knew I could not become a reader without becoming a lecturer first but he pushed me to interview for it. I went to the interview but did not get the position. Then I got married and moved away and could not go back to teaching. He thought I would be a great teacher. When I could not teach, I spent long hours discussing my next career steps with him. He had just created an organization called ISEL (International Society for Effective Living). He wanted me to run it. Some of the objectives of this organization were to conduct training and psychological assessments. My family required a steady source of income, so I could not make the decision to become an entrepreneur and did not join the ISEL.

Professor Kaliappan also entrusted me with working on many national and international conferences. I traveled with him to Calcutta, Varanasi and other places. I was associated with the IAAP (Indian Academy of Applied Psychology) and the MPS (Madras Psychology Society), professional bodies that the professor was very involved in. In retrospect, I realized that being involved in all those things helped me come out of my shell.

What do you think is Dr. Kaliappan's legacy? As his student, what would you do to carry on his legacy?

The legacy he left behind is that it is very important to take the subject to the people. To move beyond theory or put theory into practice. That’s one thing he really stood for. He believed in overall personality development, done in his own way. There were differences in opinion between diverse groups of people about how he went about that. He stood his ground on what he said about it. As his student, I do it (carry on his legacy) by propagating the same kind of philosophy of personality development. Beyond that, I would encourage us to look into the possibility of creating an endowment in his name to perhaps recognize a meritorious student every year or something along those lines. This would require more thought and I have recently discussed this with some of the professor's other students.

There are some other things I have done in my career in educational administration, which may not have been done directly in Dr. Kaliappan's honor, but I would say were somewhat influenced by my being his student and a student of psychology. IGNOU has a large number of distance learning programs but did not have a program in psychology, so I started it there. In my present institute, there is now an M.Sc. in Counseling Psychology.

Thank you so much for your time! Is there anything else you would like to share with us?

I was fortunate to have Professor Kaliappan as a mentor and role model. He gave me a tremendous amount of confidence. He motivated many of us. My good friend Dr. S. Karunanidhi  (the present head of the Department of Psychology at the University of Madras) was the only male student in our class. At that time, for various reasons, he wanted to quit the Master's program. Dr. Kaliappan really gave his support at that point of time. He cajoled and pushed Dr. Karunanidhi and saw to it that he did not quit doing his Master's in Psychology. He made his life with it.

Dr. Karunanidhi  also went on to hold several administrative posts like controller and registrar at the university. Maybe that was something that we took on from our professor - moving into administration. In any university, you would find any number of professors who stick to their department and just want to be good in their department and their subject. We made some choices to move beyond that.

(Interviewed by Arulnambi K.)

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