Last month, Shrinivas R. Kulkarni, an Indian-origin professor at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), was awarded the prestigious 2024 Shaw Prize in astronomy.

Kulkarni is the latest from a long list of emigrant scientists, economists, authors and academics who have made notable and significant contribution to the creation, advancement and dissemination of new knowledge and perspectives for improvement of the condition of humankind. The contribution of our own scientists, economists and intellectuals has clearly been inadequate because 75 years after the country attained independence, India continues to be ranked among the poorest countries worldwide in per capita income, UNDP’s Human Development Index, Oxford University’s World Happiness Report and Ease of Doing Business Index. The only indices in which it is high ranked are corruption and the law’s delay.

In particular, a striking non-achievement is that none of India’s 45,473 colleges and 1,167 universities — some of them of over 150 years vintage — have produced a unique sock-it-to-em invention in over seven decades since independence. All the world’s wonder products and inventions which have transformed human lives, livelihoods, cultures and mores — motor car, telephone, jet plane, the internet, cell phones, farm tractors, and chemical fertilisers etc — have been invented and commercialised abroad. The country’s estimated 1.5 million engineering graduates per year have not been able to invent a light-weight metal plough which would leapfrog farm productivity.

Curiously, India’s millions of scientists and engineers have failed and/or neglected to invent even noteworthy kitchen appliances to lessen the back-breaking work of hundreds of millions of housewives and women. On the other hand in America, an automatic dishwasher was patented in 1850, Stephen Poplawski invented the mixer-blender in 1922 and William Cullen, the refrigerator in 1748.

The prime cause of intellectual inertia and lack of originality in Indian society is rooted in rote learning which persists across the spectrum from pre-primary to higher education. A copy-paste and plagiaristic education system can never innovate products and services that will compel the world to beat a path to our doors.

The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 exhorts educators to develop dormant critical thinking, innovation and problem-solving skills of our children from early years. This necessitates a concerted, national drive to promote the learning of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects not merely to excel in examinations, but to apply learning to resolve common challenges and problems confronting society. This requires a societal mindset revolution that’s not visible as yet.

Also read: Famous Indian scientists and their inventions