BENGALURU: India must move beyond adopting inventions developed elsewhere and become a nation that creates them, Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy said Thursday, stressing that this transition would require greater respect for teachers and researchers, better pay and sustained investment in education and research.In a recorded address at the Infosys Prize announcement in Bengaluru, Murthy argued that while India had made progress in areas such as space, atomic energy, vaccines and generic medicines, it continued to lag in several areas that directly affect citizens’ lives.The country needs to build a culture of innovation, backed by strong schools, better-trained teachers and researchers who are equipped and recognised for their work, he said.“A nation becomes economically powerful when it uses invention and continuous innovation to raise its per-capita income and improve the lives of its citizens. Invention and innovation are the two children of an inquiring mind, fortified by higher education and research,” he said.Murthy outlined four stages of economic development through invention and innovation. In the first, a nation neither invents nor innovates, and does not even use others’ ideas to improve its people’s lives. In the second, it adopts inventions and innovations made elsewhere without improving them. In the third, it uses higher education and research to improve existing ideas. The fourth is when a nation develops its own inventions.Assessing India’s position, he said its achievements in atomic energy, space, vaccines, the Green Revolution and generic medicines placed it in the second stage in most areas, while its Global Delivery Model represented the third. However, in making cities liveable, pollution-free and free of traffic congestion, and in providing clean, safe water, India remained at the first stage.He cited the US, western Europe, China and Japan as countries that had reached the fourth stage, and said India must aspire to do the same in every area affecting the lives of its poorest citizens, including those in remote villages.The transformation, he said, must begin in classrooms. Schools need to encourage independent, critical and analytical thinking, Socratic questioning and the ability to relate theory to the real world. While the National Education Policy (NEP) had started this journey, Murthy proposed a way to accelerate it by bringing in 10,000 accomplished retired science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) teachers from India and developed countries.They could run 2,500 ‘Train the Teacher’ colleges across states and Union territories. Each team of four could train 100 primary and 100 secondary schoolteachers annually, taking the total to 5 lakh teachers a year. Within five years, those trained would themselves become trainers.Estimating the cost at about $100,000 per trainer a year, or $1 billion annually and $20 billion over 20 years, he said the investment was affordable for a country aspiring to become a $5-trillion economy. Invoking a line attributed to former Harvard president Derek Bok, he said: “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”
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But training alone would not suffice. “We must respect our teachers and researchers, pay them better, equip them well, and honour them. They are the role models for our young people,” he said.Murthy also recalled that Infosys instituted the Infosys Prize in 2009 to support research in India. Congratulating this year’s laureates, he said the award was not a lifetime achievement recognition but was intended to spur them towards bigger work and greater honours.He urged India to cultivate global standards of productivity, discipline and hard work, while retaining the humility to learn from cultures that perform better.
