Indian intstitutions have nothing to boast about: Narayana Murthy

While some of the greatest modern inventions and innovations have been developed in Western educational institutions, Indian institutions sadly have nothing to boast about, said Infosys co-founder, N R Narayan Murthy.

Speaking at the second formal convocation of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) here on Wednesday, Murthy said, “Let us pause and ask what the contributions of higher learning, particularly IISc and IITs, have been over the last sixty-plus years to make our society and the world a better place? Is there any invention from India that has become a household name in the globe?... The reality is that there is no contribution from India in the last sixty years.”

Murthy however did not shy away from highlighting Infosys’ own contribution to improving productivity of global corporations in the form of the ‘global delivery model’ and the ‘24 hour workday’.

Driving the point further, he took the example of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in USA, highlighting only ten of the numerous other inventions that were developed, such as the global position system, e-mail, text/speech recognition and fax machine.

Murthy said he does not find any difference in intellect, enthusiasm, energy and confidence between students of IISc and in Western Universities.
However, he rued that students here tend to not do impactful work in their field of research.

He said even people at the helm of power have largely ignored this problem. “This is an issue that the elders of the society – academicians and politicians – must debate deeply... It has not received the attention of our prime ministers since the time of Nehru,” he said.

Convocation
As many as 571 students from the institute received their degrees. Of these, 229 are PhD Science and Engineering students, 75 from MSc (Engineering) and MS (Master of Science), 249 from ME (Master’s in Engineering), MTech, MDes (Master of Design) and MMgt (Master’s in Management) departments.

Around 28 students received medals for topping their respective courses.
Mohit Dhingra an MS student from the Supercomputer Education and Research Centre (SERC), who received the Subramanian Rajalakshmi Medal said, “It is a happy occasion. Presently, I am working for Nvidia, a US based company, but I definitely plan to study further,” he said.