What we Indians should be doing to achieve our potential
In hindi movie "Mission Mangal" actor Akshay Kumar speaks about the Indians at the top of corporate ladder in US. Be in Sundar Pichai of Google, or Satya Nadella of Microsoft or India Nooyi of Pepsico etc. There are many more Indians who have reached to pinnacle in their fields be it Amartaya Sen for economics or HarGobind Khorana in biochemistry but mostly out of India. It is not that Individuals in India didn't achieve anything, Raman got Raman effect on his name, Aryabhatta got Zero and there are more such names but they achieved much more when they were living and working outside India and we Indians didn't do justice to our potential. I wonder what makes Indians to shine outside and covered with dirt while staying India. I can't doubt our brilliance and issue can't be with individual it has to be collective systematic failure.
Many centuries or millennial back, when the things were not complex, individual intelligence was probably enough for a society to reach to higher level but in today's world when things are getting so complex that multiple countries are getting involved for experiments, for e.g. SPIRAL2 experiment being done in France to find what nuclei is made of, much more is required along with individual brilliance. It requires systems to be cohesive and work together as a team to move up.
In US to get a PhD or MS one has to do the basic research and publish their research papers in renowned journals which inculcate in them the culture of doing hard work to come-up with something new, but in India we don't have such conditions and we don't look to get anything new and once out of college we are either clueless what to do or find ourselves in companies doing back-end work for other countries. Our unique selling point became low cost not high tech/knowledge. This is what hurts and make us wobble whole life. Our institutions have to change and make research as part of basic curriculum.
At corporate level we wanted to increase profits quickly and generate huge RoI in short term. Since India is big market, many of us became traders. We buy from outside and sell here. No hassle of running any factory or managing labor and profits keep ringing or we continue to do whatever we are doing for ages without investing in future and technologies. Let me give one example which we Indian can relate quickly.
In around 2010 when India had number of telecom operators, 4G spectrum was auctioned. Reliance, Airtel, an US company Qualcomm and other operators bought the spectrum. Qualcomm wanted India to move to 4G ASAP and they partnered with Airtel to push for 4G deployment. Airtel walked thru at pace slower than a tortoise. They didn't see any reason to invest money in future technologies and they continued to mint money from 3G services, expensive data for some time. They didn't invest as they believed that reliance can't have only 4G network and other operators like Vodafone, idea were also not investing. Fast forward to 2017, reliance launched 4G NW(network) with VoLTE(Voice over LTE,4G) without need of 2G or 3G NW and rest is history, many operators winded down their operations, some got merged and they are still struggling.
Our political parties just want to grab power and keep findings ways to engage people to reach their aim without making any difference in status quo. Once one get government in one state, either he wants to keep it for ever or expand to other states or move to center.
In short for most Indians, we want to get rich fast, without putting much efforts. This is what needs to be changed.
When America refused to give us the red wheat in mid 60s that time our central government put their acts together and invested in doing research for high yield crops which led to green revolution and we became self sufficient in grains. Similar effort is required at govt, corporate and individual level to reduce our dependence on other counties for electronics, weapons, high tech machinery etc. We need to strike at the roots and start from the basics, prepare culture for research, innovation and support the institutions who does so be it academic or corporate or government.
Many centuries or millennial back, when the things were not complex, individual intelligence was probably enough for a society to reach to higher level but in today's world when things are getting so complex that multiple countries are getting involved for experiments, for e.g. SPIRAL2 experiment being done in France to find what nuclei is made of, much more is required along with individual brilliance. It requires systems to be cohesive and work together as a team to move up.
Individual might be leading the effort but it the team which excels and this is where India lacks in my view. We have brilliant minds and somehow if we could make a team of like minded individuals also but mostly we still fails. What is ailing us? It is too simplistic to put but one of the reason is our desire to move higher and higher without doing much and once we reach at the top we want to stay there by any means. This is true for academia or corporate world or politics or any other institution.
In US to get a PhD or MS one has to do the basic research and publish their research papers in renowned journals which inculcate in them the culture of doing hard work to come-up with something new, but in India we don't have such conditions and we don't look to get anything new and once out of college we are either clueless what to do or find ourselves in companies doing back-end work for other countries. Our unique selling point became low cost not high tech/knowledge. This is what hurts and make us wobble whole life. Our institutions have to change and make research as part of basic curriculum.
At corporate level we wanted to increase profits quickly and generate huge RoI in short term. Since India is big market, many of us became traders. We buy from outside and sell here. No hassle of running any factory or managing labor and profits keep ringing or we continue to do whatever we are doing for ages without investing in future and technologies. Let me give one example which we Indian can relate quickly.
In around 2010 when India had number of telecom operators, 4G spectrum was auctioned. Reliance, Airtel, an US company Qualcomm and other operators bought the spectrum. Qualcomm wanted India to move to 4G ASAP and they partnered with Airtel to push for 4G deployment. Airtel walked thru at pace slower than a tortoise. They didn't see any reason to invest money in future technologies and they continued to mint money from 3G services, expensive data for some time. They didn't invest as they believed that reliance can't have only 4G network and other operators like Vodafone, idea were also not investing. Fast forward to 2017, reliance launched 4G NW(network) with VoLTE(Voice over LTE,4G) without need of 2G or 3G NW and rest is history, many operators winded down their operations, some got merged and they are still struggling.
We had many trading companies like Micromax, Lava, Karbonn etc who just got the mobile phones and tablets from china & rebranded and sold in India after some testing. It is fine to have Infosys, TCS or Wipro or Micromax but we also need to have Google, Apple, Netflix or Microsoft or Intel to born in India.
Our political parties just want to grab power and keep findings ways to engage people to reach their aim without making any difference in status quo. Once one get government in one state, either he wants to keep it for ever or expand to other states or move to center.
In short for most Indians, we want to get rich fast, without putting much efforts. This is what needs to be changed.
When America refused to give us the red wheat in mid 60s that time our central government put their acts together and invested in doing research for high yield crops which led to green revolution and we became self sufficient in grains. Similar effort is required at govt, corporate and individual level to reduce our dependence on other counties for electronics, weapons, high tech machinery etc. We need to strike at the roots and start from the basics, prepare culture for research, innovation and support the institutions who does so be it academic or corporate or government.
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