It’s the most hotly debated topic in India what with the Bhagats and Rashmi’s swarming all over the place having come through the great Indian education “system”. While I would be drawing comparison with the Education system in the US and Western nations, I would, for once, sympathize with the Indian Government. Yes you read that correct, sympathize.
Before I get on with it, lets us first highlight in short what is actually the difference in technology and research between India and the West. Technology as you already know is driven by high-powered intellectual research which in turn is driven by state-of-the-art technology and infrastructure. At every stage if you look into the depths you will find money written all over it. Go inside infrastructure and high-tech facilities and laboratories you shall find dollars powering them, Go inside top intellectuals and nobel lauterates and academicians you shall see that their retentivity in a particular university largely depends on money. What runs a top institute, a top R&D, the answer to everything lies in those green pieces of paper, as Douglas Adams had put it.
Now it is clear that in order to deliver and sustain such strata of innovation and technology on a regular basis we need money and lots of it. That is exactly where India lacks and why I sympathize with our government.
Now don’t get me wrong , I never meant to and do not say actually that India is impoverished. Those days are gone but then, India is still a developing country and is not a developed country. Hence all the money it has goes into healthcare and importing oil and coping with famines and what not. US has milligallons and billigallons of oil stored in its country and is more than self sufficient in all respects. India isn’t ! And whatever resources it has thanks to its huge population gets consumed so fast that we end up with lack of some.
The billions that get pumped into NASA missions and anti-cancer drugs by the US, do you think we can emulate that right now ? But something has to be done right . So our politicians opened some namesake IITs and IIMs which I doubt will become world class even in a decade. Most of the IITs and BITSP were set up with the aid of foreign governments, and lots and lots of money had to be pumped in, year after year, budget ater budget, for them to become world class. India cannot create 20 IITs all of a sudden . Its not a matter of “can but wont” but rather not suitable.
