By Rohan Murty
We, Indians, all want our country to be exceptional and better than the rest of the world. Democracy and pluralism are necessary but insufficient to achieve this goal. The foundation for all such exceptionalism, I believe, must be rooted in a culture of education that fosters a deep respect for curiosity, learning, and diverse views. Invariably such activity also leads to economic and cultural progress pushing the nation to its pinnacle. No doubt our primary education system needs significant revision. But in this article I will focus primarily on higher education, another critical lacuna in our education system.
I have a working hypothesis. In my limited understanding of history, I have found that every civilisation that achieved ‘greatness’ was also the intellectual center of the world at the time of its greatness. Such greatness attracted intellectuals across the known world who came to learn, discover, exchange, and preserve knowledge. With this crossfertilisation of knowledge came people who added more value to such civilisations. Such civilisations, at their pinnacle, fostered a deep culture of respect for curiosity and learning, all of which led to progress. They solved problems, improved life for its people, and generally created a more sustainable society. We will need to build a society that celebrates and reveres these traits. Why is this important? Simply put, I believe smart and motivated people want to be surrounded by other smart and motivated people.
Feeding off each other’s energy tends to produce significant discoveries and thought, which change societies. For example, between 16th – 20th century, Germany was one of the leading intellectual capitals of the world that produced a whole host of groundbreaking discoveries from the likes of Gauss, Kirchhoff, Jacobi, Dirichlet, and several others. No wonder Germany made significant progress in commerce, trade, culture and economics.
German universities were to the world then what American universities are today — a burgeoning intellectual capital that attracted the smartest people across the globe.
The Second World War changed that situation. Over the past century, America has taken a commanding lead in establishing itself as the undisputed intellectual capital of the world. I believe the American higher education system has almost single-handedly contributed to the rise and innovation in almost every sector across its industry and society.
Hence, we as a society and as a country must do our best to retain and celebrate our smartest researchers and educators — whether they are already in India today or attract such people from across the globe. A long time ago, India was such a place with leading universities like Nalanda, Taxila, Pushpagiri, and several others. It retained the likes of Aryabhatta, Panini, Varahamihira and even attracted intellectuals from abroad such as Hiuen Tsang, Alberuni, and several others across Asia.
In recent times, Vikram Sarabhai, during the early days of Indian science, understood this point better than most. He almost singlehandedly convinced several extraordinary researchers to come back to India. Not too long ago our intellectuals like Mahalanobis, VKRV Rao, Amartya Sen, Jagdish Bhagwati, Kosambi, Ashoke Sen, Jayant Narlikar and Roddam Narasimha moved back to India.
Similarly, today, wehave a small influx of some of our best people who have moved back to India hoping to contribute via their research work. Our challenge is to turn this trickle into a deluge and rebuild India as a place of burgeoning intellectual activity. Hence, it is incumbent upon us as a society and a country to motivate these people, encourage them, and support them. Here are a few ideas to strengthen our march towards this goal.
1. In every single transaction in higher education, our policy/decision makers must ask: how will the outcome of this decision encourage smart and young researchers to remain or come to India and flourish here?
2. Our young population that focuses on engineering, law, or medicine must also be trained in the humanities and social sciences to have a better appreciation of the consequences of their work on humanity. We can no longer afford to produce single-dimensional thought among your young people.
3. More public and private money must go into humanities, science, technology, engineering, and social sciences research.
4. We must create a meritocratic environment for young researchers to flourish and do away with vestiges of gerontocracy or nepotism in our higher education institutions.
5. Let us use a metric that we can use to measure our success. For example, each year, how many people who could get a job at a top-50 US university have moved back or stayed back in India to do their work? How many of our scientists publish papers and articles in the top-5 journals across the globe and what can we do to enable more such activities? George Bernard Shaw once wrote, ‘the reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” We must recreate an India where several unreasonable women and men across the globe will gather and build a progressive future.
(The author is Executive Assistant to Chairman, Infosys)
We, Indians, all want our country to be exceptional and better than the rest of the world. Democracy and pluralism are necessary but insufficient to achieve this goal. The foundation for all such exceptionalism, I believe, must be rooted in a culture of education that fosters a deep respect for curiosity, learning, and diverse views. Invariably such activity also leads to economic and cultural progress pushing the nation to its pinnacle. No doubt our primary education system needs significant revision. But in this article I will focus primarily on higher education, another critical lacuna in our education system.
I have a working hypothesis. In my limited understanding of history, I have found that every civilisation that achieved ‘greatness’ was also the intellectual center of the world at the time of its greatness. Such greatness attracted intellectuals across the known world who came to learn, discover, exchange, and preserve knowledge. With this crossfertilisation of knowledge came people who added more value to such civilisations. Such civilisations, at their pinnacle, fostered a deep culture of respect for curiosity and learning, all of which led to progress. They solved problems, improved life for its people, and generally created a more sustainable society. We will need to build a society that celebrates and reveres these traits. Why is this important? Simply put, I believe smart and motivated people want to be surrounded by other smart and motivated people.
Feeding off each other’s energy tends to produce significant discoveries and thought, which change societies. For example, between 16th – 20th century, Germany was one of the leading intellectual capitals of the world that produced a whole host of groundbreaking discoveries from the likes of Gauss, Kirchhoff, Jacobi, Dirichlet, and several others. No wonder Germany made significant progress in commerce, trade, culture and economics.
German universities were to the world then what American universities are today — a burgeoning intellectual capital that attracted the smartest people across the globe.
The Second World War changed that situation. Over the past century, America has taken a commanding lead in establishing itself as the undisputed intellectual capital of the world. I believe the American higher education system has almost single-handedly contributed to the rise and innovation in almost every sector across its industry and society.
Hence, we as a society and as a country must do our best to retain and celebrate our smartest researchers and educators — whether they are already in India today or attract such people from across the globe. A long time ago, India was such a place with leading universities like Nalanda, Taxila, Pushpagiri, and several others. It retained the likes of Aryabhatta, Panini, Varahamihira and even attracted intellectuals from abroad such as Hiuen Tsang, Alberuni, and several others across Asia.
In recent times, Vikram Sarabhai, during the early days of Indian science, understood this point better than most. He almost singlehandedly convinced several extraordinary researchers to come back to India. Not too long ago our intellectuals like Mahalanobis, VKRV Rao, Amartya Sen, Jagdish Bhagwati, Kosambi, Ashoke Sen, Jayant Narlikar and Roddam Narasimha moved back to India.
Similarly, today, wehave a small influx of some of our best people who have moved back to India hoping to contribute via their research work. Our challenge is to turn this trickle into a deluge and rebuild India as a place of burgeoning intellectual activity. Hence, it is incumbent upon us as a society and a country to motivate these people, encourage them, and support them. Here are a few ideas to strengthen our march towards this goal.
2. Our young population that focuses on engineering, law, or medicine must also be trained in the humanities and social sciences to have a better appreciation of the consequences of their work on humanity. We can no longer afford to produce single-dimensional thought among your young people.
3. More public and private money must go into humanities, science, technology, engineering, and social sciences research.
4. We must create a meritocratic environment for young researchers to flourish and do away with vestiges of gerontocracy or nepotism in our higher education institutions.
5. Let us use a metric that we can use to measure our success. For example, each year, how many people who could get a job at a top-50 US university have moved back or stayed back in India to do their work? How many of our scientists publish papers and articles in the top-5 journals across the globe and what can we do to enable more such activities? George Bernard Shaw once wrote, ‘the reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” We must recreate an India where several unreasonable women and men across the globe will gather and build a progressive future.
(The author is Executive Assistant to Chairman, Infosys)
