For a country that has a civilization dating back to 5000 B.C, and which has given the world the concept of Civilization, Zero, astronomy, astrology, upanishads,vedas, arthasasthra, vedic mathematics ..... it is amazing that we have been reduced to a bunch of ordinary guys good at copying/importing concepts, ideas and technologies.
And we dont even bother to follow the Japanese 3A philosophy - Adopt, Adapt and Adept (Japanese are not original thinkers. What they are good at is Adopting ideas from elsewhere, then Adapting them to suit their/global needs to perfection, and then become Adept at using the adapted technology). We, in India, just use the imported concept technology/ideas as it is.
We have ceased to be original thinkers. Forget about the industrial sector (who have not spent enough on R&D), even our much vaunted IT sector cannot be accused of being innovative. At best they are sweat shops churning out programs and products which are nothing original or path breaking. When was the last time we heard of a truly original, earth shattering product concept emanating from Bengaluru or Cyberabad?
We claim that our ivy league institutions like IIT's and IIM's are at par with the best in the World (though of late the government has systemmatically tried to downgrade these institutions by increasing the number of IITs and IIMs rather than on improving the quality of the programs). But when was the last time these esteemed institutions have produced an invention? They have concentrated on churning out Engineers and MBAs by the numbers but have hardly seem to have done any original work. And sadly it has to do with the curriculum and the professors. We have hardly seen any article of our esteemed professors published in Harvard Business Review for example. Nor have we created a think tank that shall develop an Indian Management Style. True that we had a leading management thinker from India C K Prahlad. But he became famous after he went to US, and we have little to do with his wonderful contributions. Occassionally we hear about some India specific technological innovations from an odd IITian, but none of them have become commercially successful.
The root cause of this problem had to do with India retaining the education system we inherited from the British.The British system was designed to create a bunch of people who will lack creativity, innovativeness but will work hard, long hours without questioning the system. It suited our political leaders to keep our population not dynamic, lest they become wise to the shenanigans of the leaders. And damn the consequences.
When the world is moving towards a truly knowledge economy, we, Indians, should have been the thought leaders considering our long history of original thinking, as depicted in Vedas and Upanishads. But a 'secular' education system, a fetish for following blindly the Western Education System (which was developed to suit the Western culture) ensured that we sacrificed our competitive advantage of universal knowledge and moral superiority at the altar of white man's self preserving interests.
Gandhiji got us territorial independence in 1947, but where is the messiah who will get us intellectual independence?
