In the autumn of 1979, the campus of Roorkee University (now IIT Roorkee) was quiet, but the winds of institutional change across India were howling. That year, I was a young student pursuing my second-year post-graduation in Chemical Engineering, having chosen Environmental Engineering as my elective. As it happened, I was the only student enrolled in that elective.
My professor was none other than Prof. Dr. G. D. Agarwal.
At that exact moment in history, Dr. Agarwal was arguably one of the busiest top-level government officials in the country. He had recently been appointed as the inaugural Member-Secretary of the newly formed Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB). He was actively laying down the very bricks of India’s modern environmental regulatory framework. Yet, despite the massive bureaucratic weight on his shoulders, he regularly traveled down to Roorkee as a visiting professor just to teach his single elective student.
Because there were no crowded lecture halls, our academic relationship quickly evolved into something far more meaningful. We met informally at various spots across the beautiful Roorkee campus. With a remarkably friendly, unassuming, and generous demeanor, he would walk and talk with me, bridging the gap between advanced engineering theory and the raw, unvarnished reality of implementing pollution control on the ground.
The Prophecy of 1979
Looking back almost five decades later, the sheer foresight of those informal campus discussions is staggering.
We didn’t just talk about chemical kinetics, wastewater treatment, or effluent standards. As we brainstormed the pragmatic approaches needed to tackle India's emerging environmental crises, Dr. Agarwal and I frequently gravitated toward a deeper, more troubling concern: the potential danger of environmental issues becoming an impractical legal weapon.
We saw a future where noble environmental intentions could be hijacked by a combination of rigid bureaucrats, political higher-ups, and "not-so-pragmatic" engineers.
We worried that the clean, rational logic of engineering—which seeks to optimize systems, balance mass, and find real-world, site-specific solutions—would be suffocated by a dense jungle of litigation, red tape, and political posturing.
We feared that instead of actually cleaning the environment, the system would become a "paper exercise" designed to manage files, protect interests, and stall progress.
A Shared Disillusionment
Those candid, visionary dialogues with Dr. Agarwal deeply shaped my perspective as I entered my own career in engineering and administration. Throughout my decades of professional service, I carried that exact ethos: striving to look past the rigid paperwork to find common-sense, impactful solutions.
Yet, history proved the two of us entirely correct.
Over the years, I watched with growing dismay as the very warnings we whispered on the Roorkee campus manifested in real life. Environmental governance in India increasingly transformed into the exact bureaucratic, impractical weapon we had feared. Real-world efficacy was too often traded for political optics and gridlock. Like my late professor, I too eventually fell into a deep disillusionment seeing the manner in which things proceeded.
The Ultimate Act of a Technocrat!
It was this very disillusionment that eventually drove my brilliant professor to take the path he did. Dr. Agarwal realized that the conventional regulatory machinery—the very machine he helped build as the first Member-Secretary of the CPCB—had become too slow, co-opted, and rigid to save what mattered most.
When the engineering and legal frameworks failed to protect his beloved River Ganga, he did not abandon his analytical mind. Instead, he transitioned into monastic life as Swami Gyan Swaroop Sanand, choosing the only weapon the bureaucratic and political executive could neither co-opt nor ignore: his own life and spiritual resolve.
His historic, ultimate fast-unto-death in 2018 was the final, desperate cry of a brilliant technocrat who refused to let the truth be buried under red tape.
To the world, he is remembered as Swami Sanand, the fierce ascetic and martyr for the holy Ganga.
But to me, he will always be the visionary professor from 1979—the busy top-level official who took the time to walk with his lone student, looking far into the horizon, and warning us of the storms to come.
Rest in peace, Professor! The truth of your words echoes louder than ever! 🙏🙏🙏
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