Why isn’t modern India a hothouse of innovation?

Indian culture rewards obedience to accepted ideas and figures of authority, says Amrit Dhillon

India's software hub includes a GE Healthcare research and development facility, but some question the country's capacity to innovate. Danish Siddiqui / Reuters

When Narayan Murthy, one of India’s most respected businessmen, lamented recently that Indians had failed to come up with a single idea or innovation in the past 60 years, he was stating the obvious.

Speaking at the Indian Institute of Science, Mr Murthy listed a few of the inventions that had poured out of western research institutes before asking the audience: “Is there one invention from India that has become a household name in the globe?”

It’s a discomfiting fact. It’s not that Indians are not smart. When they go abroad, they do well in any number of fields. At home, however, stagnation reigns.

The reasons for the dearth of inventions are complex. At the risk of oversimplifying, I would suggest that culture is largely responsible – one that puts a premium on getting good grades, winning a place at a prestigious university, getting a decent job and doing what you’re told. There is nothing wrong with that, except that it leaves no space for young Indians to explore.

A partner at a US consulting firm in India once told me that he had a problem with their Indian recruits. They were exceptionally bright but they had a missing dimension. “Beyond studies and work, they have no other interests to offer,” he said.

Being conformist is prized. Being different is discouraged. In that sense, Indian culture rewards obedience to accepted ideas and figures of authority.

Young people are not encouraged to question anything, much less defy social codes of behaviour. Without such inquiry, how can anyone possibly bring forth something new? The culture is risk-averse. This has led to a dearth of free thinkers.

Funding and poor infrastructure are also causes of the less than vibrant intellectual ethos. Researchers have to contend with tight budgets and dilapidated equipment. The government needs to vastly increase research funding if it wants ideas to blossom. It also needs to ensure more trained science teachers.

There are plenty of Indians who manage to defy the risk-averse ethos around them to come up with clever inventions to India’s problems – solar-powered air conditioning, pedal-powered washing machines, automated seed planters – but lack the funding to make them marketable products.

Here, Indian corporations are also at fault for their disinclination to leap into the unknown. The big ones should scout around for good ideas in which to invest. In fact, businesses should also partner with government institutions to back promising research.

As industries mature, there are some signs that this is beginning to happen.

Already, some big drug companies and information technology giants are starting to open research centres.

However, if India is to be more creative, it has to end its fixation with the past. This complacency hinders fresh thinking and it is alarmingly widespread among some sections of society. By revelling in past achievements, no progress is possible.

A comment made on a newspaper website in response to Mr Murthy’s remarks reveals the extent of such cultural jingoism: “All modern technologies and inventions can be traced back to the ancient sacred Hindu scriptures ... they already contain the detailed technical specifications and blueprints for all key technologies like ... airplane, automobiles, rocket, satellite, radio, TV, radar, microprocessors, computers, mobile phones, MRI machines, CAT scan machine, internet, email, antibiotics, nuclear reactors, stealth aircraft, iPhone, iPad etc.”

Someone should have told Steve Jobs he was wasting his time. He’d already been beaten to it.

Joking apart, India may not produce an Apple or a Microsoft for a long time, but it does need solutions quickly to the problem of poverty and malnutrition.

That means that some Indians, sometimes, have to go out on a limb, maybe even indulge in a bit of daredevilry. The gains will be worth it.

Amrit Dhillon is a freelance journalist in New Delhi