[teslageek]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Aadhar and UPI. These two have paved way to lots of services delivered directly to citizens.

That's true. However, Aadhaar has been a complete failure when it comes to protecting citizens' private data. Its effectiveness is only as strong as the privacy it can maintain.

[deehunk]

An ex-colleague at Honeywell, a mechanical engineer with a master's degree from the prestigious Purdue University, was unaware of the existence of a turbocharger in his diesel car. This is how the majority of people learn in India: just concentrate on marks, percentages, ranking, and college Even the best brains in India have to work with illiterate labour to develop even a prototype, this is reality. India will lag as long as the R&D is in the hands of the elite class of so-called toppers.

[dragracer567]

As someone from the science field and working in a company dedicated to contract R&D for 3-4 years now, I think I can provide some meaningful insights to this discussion:

1) When you are in the state of development where India is, R&D is certainly a luxury. The thing about R&D is, you need lots of capital, spending for years if not decades with no guarantee that something profitable will come out of it. Even if the research is purely theoretical, you still have to pay the salaries for the researchers, research assistants etc, the cost for training & educating them in the first place all of which adds up. So, it's certainly easier for India to bring the tech already developed elsewhere but figure out a way to do it cheaper / more efficiently. This is something that India has been particularly good at given that cost-effective inventions (or rather improvements of inventions) have been the primary goal. Necessity is the mother of inventions, a lot of the technological leaps in the west happened because of the second world war.

2) There are some cultural aspects to this, if anything, India is generally doing a better job than most Gulf countries (I'm not at liberty to publicly discuss why). We've noticed that even developing countries with struggling economies like Turkey spend millions on R&D, while whatever research funding (if any) that's available in the Gulf tends to be more useful for 'portraying an image' rather than achieving anything meaningful. Infact, Indian companies (who may tie up with Indian universities) are doing very well lately in the Gulf as they are able to outcompete local, Western and at times even Chinese companies when it comes to contract R&D services.

[androdev]

Not related to Indian R&D but here is a very insightful video on the current status of research at universities (with an engaging discussion in the comments):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKiBlGDfRU8

One of the comments:

After finishing my PhD I went to a university-led session on ‘What Comes Next.’ What I heard sounded a lot like “now, you beg for money.” It was so depressing to think about all the very clever people in that room who had worked so very hard only to find out they had no financial security and would be spending most of their days asking for money...

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by androdev

Not related to Indian R&D but here is a very insightful video on the current status of research at universities (with an engaging discussion in the comments)

Yup. I had posted this video some time ago in the Phd thread, so I didn't think the funding/grants situation was any different abroad.

[DAYDREAMER]

Many reasons are coming to my mind . One is that there is no coordination between researcher/scientist community and corporate world. I myself am managing an industry whose technology was developed by an English engineer in 1876 and is now obsolete in most of the world. Its banned even in Bangladesh.

I have tried many times for minor adjustments but I was not able to make it a success.
What I observed is that there is total lack of willingness on Part of labour, management and owners.

Labour is totally illiterate and technically nil. They just know the process from their elders and afraid to change anything. Rather they try to make sure that any change is not successful.
For owners there is too much risk involved and the competition in market is so intense that even survival is difficult. There are already too many problems surrounding him that he cannot afford a new one.

[dragracer567]

Originally Posted by DAYDREAMER

Many reasons are coming to my mind . One is that there is no coordination between resercher/scientist community and corporate world.
.

Ah, that's an important one. R&D in India primarily happens in silos where the academia and the research community are not at all aligned with the requirements of the industry. Infact, universities and research institutes have no coordination amongst themselves due to politics and ego-clashes.

This is very different from Europe where it's not uncommon to delegate work or collaborate with other universities or research institutes across the continent. Even courses may be conducted across universities or at least specific courses might be taught in other universities with specific expertise in that field. This allows the universities and research institutes to build on their strengths rather than duplicate resources as it often happens in India. This requires specific frameworks that are absent in India. Back when I was studying, I could literally connect to the wifi network instantly in any university or research institute I visit within Europe using the Eduroam network, where the wifi connects automatically using the credentials of my home university/institute.

Building such a system in India is a challenge (but possible), least because Indian academia is littered with bad politics and giant egos of scientists & professors. ISRO is the exception rather than the norm.

[Alfresco]

As usual, almost all our focus is on the higher education level. Most of the discussion is centered around the lack of research facilities in IITs, etc.

The problem starts at the primary level in the schools.

A vast majority of children are studying in govt. schools and I think most of the forum members would rather home-school their children than send them to govt schools.

Next is the viral disease of coaching. Parents start sending children for tuition at the age of 3. Our schools start writing and memorising the alphabet at the age of 2/3.
Then, all our education is totally based on memorisation. The schools promote it, the parents promote it, the teachers promote it, the govt promotes it and the media promotes it.

Some of the IB curriculum schools say that they are promoting critical thinking but
a. Their teachers studied under the same memorisation-based, non-questioning system.
b. The students are from very affluent background so do not have the requisite drive.

Where is the learning freedom that is essential for having a questioning mind, which would lead you to develop solutions for problems, i.e. research.?

It is a wonder that we are at whatever level we are, despite all the weights that we tie to our children.

[McLaren Rulez]

Just to provide some balance, India has some pretty great examples of R&D too.

ISRO is an example of fantastic outputs despite being hamstrung by a tight budget. Our nuclear program is another one - it's very existence is tale of ingenuity despite overwhelming odds. Replicating these success stories in other avenues should be the goal as India gets to the point where we finally have time and money for such ventures.

[JediKnight]

India may be bad at R&D. But Indians are doing pretty well in R&D. But our best and brightest work for U.S. Corporations.

I have now close to 21 years experience doing R&D for a U.S. company. Many critical pieces of technology which find application worldwide were done quietly in a U.S. owned R&D center from India. Many people do not know about it.

If you ask what makes these centers so effective. Simple Dollar power. They are able to pay top rupee and get the best talent.

Our lousy HR firms masquerading as tech companies ( Read: Infosys/TCS etc ) will never pay an engineer decent salary, in-spite of sitting on hoards of cash. No wonder they were never able to develop serious R&D capability. It is very sad that Narayan Murthy is still relevant today. And is giving gyan that Indians have never really invented anything. Apologies for the rant and if I offended anybody.

[dileepcm]

From my personal experience, R&D is a mindset to begin with. It needs a totally different type of thinking, investment, lack of fear of failure, a social system that accepts R&D as a value etc.

For the most part, Education system in India is not tuned to build curiosity and exploration skills. Schools are very strictly driven by what appears to be a very orthodox system to me where for the most part, its a framework to create a very typical doctor/engineer type of outcome (though there are some changes). So for the most part, the idea of R&D does not exist or get experienced enough to prove the value of it. On top, we also never get trained to take risks. Our society rule simply says that number 1 priority is to secure a govt job and settle ASAP for rest of your life .

[raviemailid]

We are improving.

WIPO(World Intellectual Property Organization) publishes the Global Innovation Index every year and for 2024, India ranked 39th out of 133 countries. We were at 81st place in 2015, so our improvement in the last 10 years is very commendable. Switzerland topped the list for 14 consecutive years.

India is 1st among the 38 lower-middle-income group economies and again at the top for Central and South Asia economies. Review this link for the detailed report - https://www.wipo.int/gii-ranking/en/india

No country is perfect and is skilled in everything. While we have our flaws, I do feel that we are very innovative and a world leader in many areas like -

1. Space Technology - ISRO is a marvel in itself and it doesn't get its due credit all the time.

2. Pharmaceuticals - India is nicknamed the pharmacy of the world, there are some great success stories there.

3. Fintech - India masters in Fintech. People in the thread have already spoken about Adhaar, UPI and NEFT etc. Its practical, useful and right in front of us. The western world is far behind in Digital Infra or Fintech products compared to India.

4. Other segments like Renewable Energy, Software exports are very innovative and highly contributing areas indicating how good we are doing.

[IC_Morningstar]

I would like to add my personal experience aligning with the title of this thread.

I used to work as an Area Manager at Amazon but due to the extreme lack of job satisfaction there, I wanted to switch to my core research-oriented jobs as a mechanical engineer. I am in the final sem in a tier-1 institute with 3 patents in my resume but still not getting decent R&D jobs. The company that hires for R&D are paying peanuts which results in a lack of interest in students to pursue core research. The HR of one of the premiere automotive company of India said that research is not a typical job, it's like fulfilling your hobby hence the lower salary than jobs like supply chain and marketing, like seriously. If in case you do PhD in India, then you probably have to end up as an academician because no companies pay the PhD scholars the salary they deserve.

With a country that has this kind of mindset in addition to long hours means better and more efficient work how can we even expect to do wonders in R&D, we will end up our lives seeing India begging for tech from Russia, France, Germany and USA whose R&D are ironically being run by Indians.

[kiku007]

Originally Posted by Mystic

India historically was contributing to 1/3 rd of world GDP.

That's a gross over estimation. Could you please share the source for this information?

I'm afraid you might be sighting one of those viral but incorrect Whatsapp and You Tube University posts from a couple of years ago that made this false claim. Even Wikipedia hasn't been spared.

It has been fact checked and dubunked here,

Maddison's data itself is based on estimates and the irony is that people have added masala to it to trigger the now sought after "nationalistic pride".

Anyways, for anyone interested in reading the full report, it is available here.

Some snippets:
Use a calculator to do the math on India's share of estimated world GDP in 1700s. It ain't 1/3rd.


Estimated GDP/Capita might be a worthwhile data point to look at.







Coming to the OP's question. I don't know what to say when the Director of IIT peddles animal urine as anti-bacterial and anti-fungal.

India may not be doing great R&D, but people of Indian heritage are certainly contributing and pioneering R&D across the world.

[Mystic]

Originally Posted by kiku007

That's a gross over estimation. Could you please share the source for this information?

I'm afraid you might be sighting one of those viral but incorrect Whatsapp and You Tube University posts from a couple of years ago that made this false claim. Even Wikipedia hasn't been

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_India

Originally Posted by Mystic

Our Professors don't work closely with Industry .

Better be late than never. Good move in the right direction finally. I worked for more than a decade in university doing research in structural engineering for various agencies sponsoring our research. In those days we pioneered a trend collaborating with industry. If this decision was taken 4 decades back, I would not have jumped to IT ditching my core area of engineering and academia.

https://indianexpress.com/article/ci...ience-9855997/