Sunday, October 02, 2011

Rough cuts: Innovation and Education in India


Post-Brahma, India has had no creators. Only slaves. Production en-masse.
Watching The Social Network for the third time - second time in the same day - I couldn't help but wonder if innovation needs anthropological studies, to see how culture and the culture of innovation go hand-in-hand. D and I agreed to a common envy for Mark Zuckerburg, and also cursed our low-key college days at NIEC that now makes us feel kinda losers. But I bet that even the IIT-ans feel the same way. After all, India is a huge sweatshop: we dont invent, we replicate. (really cheap, too!) All the 'young talent' that graduates in this country, is a bunch of jerks. We don't have any Angel Investors here, because nobody wants to invest in a bunch of jerks.

Education-wise India is in a stalemate. Every education in India has a political context.
Take an example of PhDs: that the way PhDs are done is an insult to the academic process. Most people who enroll for a PhD do have their PhDs successfully finished, but it isn't because they end up learning on what they started their research on, but because they end up learning the exact science of 'successfully finishing a PhD in India'. Yes, 'Successfully finishing a PhD in India' needs inclusion as an official course in our Universities, since most will actually end up with that for majors, going through the same curriculum of:
- bending over to superiors,
- false co-authorship of papers,
- twisting outcomes,
- adjusting to external expectations,
- and basically just "doing as they're told".
We make friggin' Nobel Laureates of such people! Hah!

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