Addressing students at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Bombay, during the recently held “Techfest”, Nobel laureate professor Venkatraman Ramakrishnan expressed his disappointment with really smart students, including IITians, joining finance and management jobs and wasting their talents. “One needs to be sufficiently smart to get into finance or management professions. One cannot be an idiot and be successful in finance or management. I agree with that. But, one does not need to be in the top 0.1 per cent, which is what you IITians are; but, you guys getting into finance or management is a total waste of your talents. Why is the government spending all this money in IITs to create engineering and science graduates? It is not for you to go and become an accountant for a multinational company,” he said. “So, what you guys should do is think big! Don’t settle for corporate jobs. If you aim high and say to yourself that you want to invent new technologies and new sources of energy or technologies that save lives, you will make fundamental discoveries for a better tomorrow; this is what top people should aim for and not settle for mediocre corporate lives.”

India, which is branded as an “argumentative society”, immediately engaged in discussions on the points raised by Ramakrishnan through use of all social networking sites — Facebook and Twitter, to name a few. The views expressed ranged from one extreme to another. One statement said, “India should remove all reservations from education and jobs market. After that only, can we talk about inventions.” A liberal statement said, “Career is not all about money. It is about people too. One needs to ponder about where one can utilise one’s full potential with passion, curiosity and happiness. I believe, family and society are the places where we live, so we should not compromise these only for the sake of money. One cannot buy happiness with money.”

From the observations ma­de by Ramakrishnan, two aspects come into focus. The first one is that through teaching, we are not creating and nurturing curiosity in the minds of students, so they do not get attracted to jobs that would lead to research and innovations; and secondly, our IIT graduates still feel that corporate jobs, which pay good money and also bring fame, are best bets. In the early ’60s, ’70s and even the ’80s, these issues never were a point of discussion because a majority IITians were going to the US or Canada for higher education and getting jobs in different domains. It is interesting to note that all of them did not pursue science and/or engineering research, but, many of them graduated from management programmes in Harvard or Kellogg and joined corporate sectors. The information and communication technology (ICT) revolution in the past two decades of the 20th century proved to be a great boon not only for IITians, but also for engineering and computer graduates from other public universities and deemed-to-be-unive­rs­ities as well. Thus, getting a job was an easy proposition in the US. The same story was true in India too because both ICT and the manufacturing industries in India were on the upward move. Many talented Indians were and still are the backbone of the technology industry in developed nations where innovations are the path for survival. It was only in the first decade of the 21st century that two factors forced Indian graduates to think in a different way. The recessions in developed countries reduced job opportunities and citizens, be it Americans or Europeans, started to feel that Indian graduates are encroaching on their jobs space and, hence, there were social tensions during that time and continues today as well. Hence, in recent times, many senior people of Indian origin are returning to India and this augers well for the growing Indian industry in different fields. However, all those who are involved in high-tech industries in developed countries still continue to be in demand and each and every country is looking for such talent. In India, our industries are still riding on the path of demand-supply at competitive rates rather than spending time and money on innovations. Few product-driven industries, such as two-wheeler manufacturers and automakers, are developing new products, but, this is abysmally low for a big country like India. We are still not concentrating on innovations in the broader spectrum of agriculture, manufacturing and many other industries that touch human lives. The service sector in consumer products, telecommunications, aviation, healthcare, finance and banking is on a growth path and corporate India is offering competitive and attractive pay packages and the young graduates, whether from IITs or other universities, are finding these opportunities worth pursuing.

Indian industry should realise that the challenges of the future to become competitive not only in India but globally would require a strong research and development base both at the fundamental and also at the applications levels. This can only be done if our industries initiate a meaningful dialogue with the IITs and universities to establish and create a strong research and development (R&D) base and also blend the curriculum with threads of research and innovations.

(The writer is a former chairman of UGC and former VC of University of Pune)

arun.nigavekar@mydigitalfc.com