India of his dreams

It is not as if Indians aren’t dreamers; it’s just that parental, peer and social pressures wouldn’t let our brilliant minds deviate, in pursuit of their dream, from a straight-jacket education system.Writing in The Hindu Open Page E C Thomas poses the question: Have you come across any young person who is prepared to drop out of an IIT or IIM to throw himself into unknown waters to follow a dream?

These institutions produce excellent managers, to execute other people’s dreams, elsewhere in the world. Mr Thomas would like to know if India in recent times has invented any product that can be said to have revolutionized the world scene ? We are emerging as the biggest market for cell phone, a product that we haven’t created. Nor have we created digital camera, plasma TV, iPod or DVD. In engineering India makes products engineered by others. Our IT majors, says Thomas, are in effect sub-contractors to elite corporations. We haven’t created an innovative company such as Google, Apple or Microsoft. But Indians are prized for their execution of designs of foreign innovators. The Hindu article cites the instance of Google chief scientist Krishna Bharat who joined the company in 1999.

Mr Thomas would like to see, what he terms, a holly alliance of parents, universities, private enterprise and the state, with a hidden agenda to keep the fire of innovative spirit burning in our brilliant young minds. We must ensure that the best of us do not become available to the highest bidder... More on thes lines in Open Page.. . .

Arguing India

Argumentative Indians are everywhere. Four of them - from New Delhi, New York, Toronto and Reading, UK – have clubbed up to set up a blog to argue it out. They are drawn from varied fields – college teacher (Debjani), chartered accountant (Kaiser), university professor (Ananya) and newspaper woman (Ishani). A four-line statement of purpose that goes with their group blog – Arguing India – says the idea is to understand India, appreciate her myriad contradictions through arguments and contestations.

My contact in this argumentative group is Ananya Mukherjee Reed, Associate Professor (political science) and Director, International Secretariat for Human Development, York University, Toronto. I have been in touch with her, in the sense I keep sending her alert mail on posts I wish to share with others, and Ananya has been unfailingly prompt in appreciation of my gesture. I haven’t got to argue with her, yet. The professor is said to be ‘passionate about arguing’.

Her group blog, in its statement of purpose, raises provocative questions:Is India a democracy (at all)? Is she booming (in real terms)? Does the caste system still exist? Come on, Ananya; the real argument is over the quota system, which, some would argue, represents a radical role reversal of castes in political terms. Brahmins are now the quiet ones, with so-called lesser castes making all the noise.

And then, the arguing bloggers ask, ‘Is ‘Water’ an accurate representation of India’s reality? If it were so, why wouldn’t India have adopted the movie as the country’s official Oscar nominee? I have flogged my prejudices in my blog, and in Desicritics. Perhaps,Ananya could make a reference to my take on ‘Water’, to only put a bit of polemics in Arguing India.