User:Mdumar.p/sandbox

=Early life= Dinesh Vaswani was born in Allahabad (now Prayagraj) on 27th December 1968 in an average middle class family. His father was a businessman and his mother a housewife. He has one elder brother. He got married in 1996 and has a son. He completed early Education till grade 5 at Bal Bharti Niketan School and Boy's High School.

=Early Education= After initial education at Allahabad, he moved to the prestigious school for Royalties – Mayo College, Ajmer. He studied at Mayo College from 1979 to 1986. Although an average student in studies, he displayed exceptional whole-man-ship qualities in all spheres of life. He was a keen sportsman, participating in nearly all sports including basketball, football, hockey, cricket, tennis and volleyball. He also excelled in indoor games like table-tennis, badminton and proved to be a strategist in chess. Besides, his keen interest in arts and crafts brought him closer to the world of design. He was given accolades in unique designing for his craftwork by Lalit Kala Parishad twice. With his interest in natural history, he was appointed as Student Curator of the Mayo College museum which is one of biggest school museums in the world.

He started mountaineering at an early age of 15 when he completed Adventure Course at Nehru Institute of Mountaineering. He was awarded the Best all-rounder by Padma Shri (Col) D.K. Khullar. Thereafter, he went on to complete more mountaineering courses at Himalayan Mountaineering Institute. He under-went training with some of the world’s best mountaineers like Padma Bhushan George Medal Tenzing Norgay ,Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan Nawang Gombu, Ang Dorje Sherpa and Sange Dorjee Sherpa, etc He encountered not only tough situations in undergoing mountaineering but also survived dangerous accidents on two occasions. He suffered a one inch deep injury on his ankle just before leaving for the 1st Adventure Course and completed most of the course despite the injury. He had a disastrous fall of over 300 feet after the waist belt of his rucksack snapped open and the backpack of over 25 kgs flung over his head turning him into a ball and sent him rolling down a steep slope. During his accent to  Mt BC Roy (18,600 feet) he slipped into a deep crevasse and had to be rescued. During this fall he lost his snow goggles and was advised to return to base camp, however he was determined to reach the top. He became the youngest ever to have completed the Basic Course and successfully climbed Mt BC Roy. He was appointed Secretary of Mayo Mountaineering Club and is the only student till date to be awarded colours in mountaineering. He also received job offers at various institutes as rock climbing instructor.

In 1985 he was awarded the prestigious international award – the Duke of Edinburgh’s Gold Award, considered the highest award given to a school/college child for exceptional all-round performance. He received the award from then Vice-President of India Shri R Venkataraman. Thereafter, he joined St. Xavier’s College, Ahmedabad in 1986 and completed his graduation in B.A. (Economics) in 1989. Alongside his college education he joined the National Cadet Corps (India)(NCC). During his under-graduation years he took to basketball in sports and became the editor of both the college and NCC publications. He was awarded the Best student of the year and Best Youth of Ahmedabad in 1988-89. Having never even sat in an airplane, his first ever encounter with a flying machine started with his sitting in the cockpit of a glider (Rohini) for his first training sortie. His natural adaptation to excellence in NCC won him Best Cadet at a national camp along with Best in Rifle shooting. On completion of NCC ‘C’ Certificate he was given the golden chance of appearing for the Service Selection Board and successfully qualified to join the Indian Air Force as a trainee pilot. He was the last pilot to be inducted into [http://IAF IAF] from pure non-science background.

His unique quality of having both the left and right brain functionality along with development of courage, valour and fearlessness could be seen manifesting from the beginning of his life.

=Military Career= On 14th December 1991, after completion of rigourous training of 18 months, he was commissioned as Pilot Officer into Transport aircraft stream of the flying branch. During the pre-flying training course he was awarded Best in Academics and Best All-Rounder Cadet. He excelled in air-to-ground firing and in formation flying.

After undergoing a specialised training on HAWKER SIDDELEY (HS-748) for one year and was posted to a VIP squadron. He served as a VIP pilot for two and half years before being transferred to aerial photography role for 4 years. He soon mastered photography including aerial photography and qualified as a specialist in ultra-low-level-flying. In subsequent years he had undertaken all roles of transport flying, viz parachuting drops, casualty evacuation, air-ambulance and aerial electronic-intelligence besides cargo and passenger carriage. During these flying tenures he also undertook missions from very short runways, over-sea flying, forward area runways and cross-border tasks in enemy territory. He has flown over 3,000 hours and was also awarded Flight Safety Stars for accident/incident free flying. His continuous lookout for improvement led him to make modifications in components from a Russian fighter aircraft and utilize it in HS-748 which led to increased intelligence gathering capabilities.

He was also given a long tenure as Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM) combatant commander for four years. During “Operation Parakram” he was deployed at the borders of Jammu & Kashmir for 18 months as an independent commander of the missile battalion. The camp was the closet ever deployment of such a large battalion by the [http://IAF IAF]. The camp came under attack by infiltrators several times all of which were thwarted off due to his leadership and adoption of natural stealth security measures. For this his citation for gallantry medal was raised and he was awarded Chief of Air Staff Commendation medal. He also undertook live firing of the long range SAM with clear kills being granted both times. He gathered expertise in all spheres of SAM systems including radars, generator and heavy vehicle systems which saw the Squadron being awarded Best Squadron of the IAF twice. He also made technical innovations to existing communication equipment for improved connectivity over the wide spread camp.

His exceptional management qualities were put to use when he was given the responsibility of core committees of handling the prestigious Annual Air Force Day Investiture Parade in 2006, 2007 and 2008. Looking after the massive 10,000 to 12,000 attendees including VIPs with complete flawlessness brought to light his ability in handling mage-events. He was appointed as Mess Secretary of the Officers’ Mess. Although a routine activity, he brought about revolutionary changes in the accounting system while changing the very look of all the elements, viz library, gymnasium, VIP and guest rooms, gardens and sports facilities.

During the last seven and half years of his career in the IAF, he served at HQ South Western Air Command which has the area of responsibility over the region of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Goa. As the officer-incharge of all transport aircraft operating in the region as big as 1/8 Europe, he set about making changes to the systems to ensure increased utilization of the fleet. He studied the system and worked towards higher coordination with all other branches of the IAF. Along with the full team he put together software for near-real time monitoring of the entire IAF aircraft movement. Coupling this with logistics, armament and engineering branches the utilization or Tonnage Per Hour suddenly shot up by 400 – 600%. This caught the attention of the Air HQ and the software was implemented pan-India. For this his citation was raised for the civil national award – Dr Biren Roy Award for a continuous three years.

He soon found himself becoming a part of the core team managing the grand Iron-Fist exercises of 2010, 2013 and 2016. The super-mega multifarious event showcases over 200 aircraft displaying live air-power capabilities in front of the highest elite audience of the President of India, Prime Minister, Cabinet Committee of Security, Defence Minister, Defence Attaches from over 60 countries and is live-telecast across the globe. His contribution included from designing the logo, First-Day-Cover, Grand-Stand to handling a major part of the events, commentary, crisis management, air and road transportation, security, designing and distribution of humungous quantities and varieties of memorabilia, accounts, planning and execution. For dedicated involvement his citation was raised for Presidential awards thrice.

His strategic understanding and natural quick decision making based on “connecting the dots” found him being part of several important and vital decision making teams. He was considered a “one-man-army” of decision making as he was always ahead in gathering information and could piece together several fields instantly. This saw him working closely with the Indian Army and Indian Navy through several joint exercises. As a key member in strategic planning of Indian Air Force, Indian Army and Indian Navy he assisted in providing unprecedented reduction in time frames of casualty evacuation leading to saving of 100s of lives. This won him several citations and commendation medals from the Army and Navy.

=Disaster Management= It was during this HQ tenure that he was seconded to assist the state governments of Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra during various natural disasters. Wing Commander Dinesh Vaswani got into the root causes of why so many lives were being lost and went about developing methods on how to maximize saving of lives. This started the deepening of bonds with various civilian government depatments including some top educational institutions. With his in-depth researches and humble approach, he broke through various channels of bureaucracy and red-tapism and integrated the armed forces seamlessly with the disaster management systems. This led to reduction in air-borne rescue missions being launched in just under 45 minutes from the earlier over several hours. This coordinated methods and introduction of joint training camps and capsules with civilian government authorities led to direct rescue of over 5,000 lives and over 40,000 lives by indirect support provided to other regions across India and during April 2015 Nepal earthquake.

The state governments of Rajasthan and Gujarat requested the IAF HQ to take his guidance as a core-committee member for managing all forms of crisis. His valuable inputs led to his being recognized by both the governments awarding him citations. His pro-active pioneering and prodigious methodology saw him giving lectures and addressing international gatherings in the field of disaster management. Everyone wanted to understand this new movement of “Last Mile Connectivity” during all phases of the disaster management cycle which he started. He was invited by Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, CEPT University , National Institute of Design, Nirma University and Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. Gujarat Institute of Disaster Management appointed him as permanent Resource Person, Gujarat Forensic Sciences University and CEPT appointed him as visiting faculty, NID appointed as project guide for masters students’ final projects. Institute of Seismological Research launched him on international forums by way of Sympoisia. While addressing the international experts at these symposia, he received standing ovations and was approached by some country heads of disaster management to assist them in vetting their national plans. All major educational institutes of Architecture, Forensics, Management, Engineering and Design have appreciated and recognized in writing his contributions towards humanity. Most of them have included this as part of the syllabi.

=Further Education and Educator= Coming from non-science background and being appreciated in specialised fields of various sciences encouraged Wing Commander Dinesh Vaswani to further accrue his understanding of various disciplines and thus he started on another journey of further education. He would do his office work during and well beyond office hours finding time late into the night or on weekends to catch up with higher education. He went on to complete several under-graduation, post-graduation and doctoral degrees including – Masters Programme in Human Rights, MBA in Human Resource Management, Bachelors and Masters in Architecture from JAS Australia and Doctoral in Management. He also received the Gold Medal from New York University for International Relations. He completed several short courses on disaster management, design thinking for innovation from University of Virginia and Darden School of Business, Green architecture, Sustainability, mediation & negotiation, conflict management, Area Studies of Africa, Latin America and Africa from United Nations Peace Operation Training Institute (POTI) , Six Sigma Green Belt, Women & Child Development POTI, Operations Management from IIM-B, Smart Grids from IEEE, Strategic Management from Copenhagen Business School.

He converted this continuous gain of knowledge into deeper principles of philosophy towards furthering the “connecting the dots” and initiated imparting professional and pro-bono education. For the institutions it was professional and for individual students it was pro-bono. He decided to take educating students to the next level by using simple methods of child psychology – he would become more of a friend than of a Professor or Instructor. This way the students would share their inhibitions and he could go to the basic root explanations to help them build strong base for the specialised field. Several recommendations from seniors, juniors and peers on his LinkedIn profile (https://wwww.LinkedIn.com/in/sr-fellow-dinesh-vaswani-2877098) are a testimony of his approach towards work, society and humanity.

=Post Retirement= His early personal life at home, at school and then after marriage was full of severe down-hills, however he had decided to divert his attention towards better things in life such as work, education and humanity. Having reached the peak performance in his career and education he took the big decision of calling it a day from the [http://IAF IAF]. He requested for early retirement which was finally granted and he hung his boots on mid-night of 31 March 2017. As part of re-settlement he joined Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad and completed the fully residential Business Management Studies which has one of the most grueling Masters Program in the world. Post-retirement he was awarded Veer-Soldier Award of Gujarat along with a few others by the Defence Minister at a grand function held on the river-front banks of Sabarmati. This grand ceremony was attended by over 30,000 people. He has been invited by some leading schools and colleges (SGVP, Gujarat Institute of Technology, LD College of Engineering, etc) as the Chief Guest and given the honours for his contributions towards the nation and humanity.

He has started on a fresh journey trying to walk the path of architecture. He combines technology with practicality, nature with modernism, culture, tradition with realism. He has given a completely different meaning to green and sustainable architecture by adding re-generative as the most significant element to it. His belief that architecture is not just about creating a design, but about adding a heart and soul to the structure and then living that structure before submitting it to a jury has taken him from philosophy to spiritualism in architecture. It is this thought that has inspired him to prove to the world at large that the world does not need only sustainability (sustain implying maintaining status-quo). The world needs to go back several hundred years in terms of clean air and water and give back nature what has been wrongly destroyed in search of modernism. And while undertaking this belief he continues to integrate re-generative methodologies with modernism and realism showing how erstwhile surrealism thinkers mocking had a deeper meaning for the betterment of humanity.

During his now long free hours in the day, he started painting. Having never held a paint brush he started with acrylic on stretched canvas and has made about 20 paintings which he plans to use to decorate the walls of his upcoming house designed by him with mixed belief principles of RE-GENERATIVE SUSTAINABILITY and realism. He recently ventured into an old art form of painting on leaf skeletons, thus adding nature even to paintings.

=See also= a. Indian Air Force

b. Mayo College

c. B.V Doshi

d. Zaha Hadid

e. Frank Llyod Wright

f. Falling Waters

=References=