Thats a big title! It stems from a few conversations I had on Wednesday that I found interesting. It started with a really interesting conversation with Ashwani over lunch on Wednesday. He is a program coordinator, which means he is the liaison between MSRI and 14 different universities here in India. He basically markets MSRI to them (i.e. gets good people to come do research) while also supporting research at the universities. He had some interesting commentary on why not a whole lot of world class research comes out of India. Apparently promotion at the IITs (Indian Institues of Technology, very good and very competitive schools) happens every 7 years, regardless of whether you publish or not, so there is no real motivation pushing people to publish. Another factor is that professors at government run universities (like the IITs) are paid horribly by the government. After a student graduates from an IIT they can go directly to industry and make something like 5 times what a professor is earning from the government!!! These salaries are determined government wide, and the body that changes the salaries only meets once every 10 years!
I had another, related, conversation with Christian later on the same day. The takeaway point was that India only switched away from a planned, government controlled economy in 1991. This creates a dichotomy in the current economy: the plodding and slow to change government run organizations versus the lightning fast and constantly evolving private sector (the tech industry). In just a few years India has become an international tech powerhouse. However, to give an example of the plodding government organizations, there is a road in northern India that connects to China. The Indian and Chinese governments started this road at the same time and had approximately equal amounts of construction to do. The Chinese finished the road in 6 months. India finished the road in 16 years! It interesting (and sometimes frustrating) to deal with these inefficiencies day to day.
Cheers,
Jason
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1 comment:
I know these in-efficiencies...but I think that means are sometimes as important as the ends...for if the growth and achievement is achieved with grievances in the minds of the people then sometimes this growth is not worth it!! well just an opinion..
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