Why is India lagging behind other countries in research and development, even though we have talented people like the IITians?

为什么印度即使有像印度理工学院毕业生这样的人才，依然在研发方面落后于其他国家?

Quora读者的评论：

Anonymous

Originally Answered: Why is India lagging behind other countries in research and development?

1.The Aura of placements- Nobody wanna study higher but all want a handsome salary as early as possible

2. Too much gloom and melodrama- Even if dad is rich he prefers his kid to join top NIT/ IIT and get high pay job quickly. He could have gone to research field but money wins again. The atmosphere is like that research scientist lives a gloomy life.
3. Less government funding and no setting of priorities- Bharat Ratna Rao has said recently govt spends very less on scientific research and corruption reduces it further. Scientists get only 10% of what they should, Thatsy Labs in poor conditions
4. Attitude/ Class / Ego - Aunties and relatives taunt you for not being in TCS/ Infosys and such companies. Would you like to be in a lab doing crucial cancer research when nobody gives it value!

最初的问题是:为什么印度在研发方面落后于其他国家?

1.早点工作的观念—没有人想要通过深造来获得更高的薪水，但所有人都想尽早拿到一份丰厚的薪水

2. 太多的黑暗面和闹剧——即使爸爸很有钱，他也喜欢让他的孩子进入顶尖的国家技术学院/印度理工学院，快点找一份高薪的工作。他本可以进入研究领域，但在这里钱又赢了。大家都觉得科学家生活挺凄凉。
3. 政府资金少，没有设定优先次序——Bharat Ratna Rao最近说，政府在科学研究上的花费非常少，腐败又进一步缩减了投入金额。科学家们收入不高，只能拿到他们应得的10%
4. 态度/阶级/自我认同—七大姑八大姨都会嘲笑你没能进入TCS/ Infosys等公司。你会愿意在一个没人重视的实验室里做重要的癌症研究吗?
5. Lack of education and aptitude tests- Children from childhood are pampered to be engineers and doctors regardless of interest or aptitude. other countries have periodic aptitude tests to analyse which field the child excels but here the child is still not sure what to do after getting degree !
6. Education not research oriented- Schools lack proper labs and practicals are explained in theory class itself. How will interest come ?

There are many more like Govt not investing in research and less GDP spending on Education, Worsening R&D industries etc

5. 缺乏教育和能力测试—不管孩子的兴趣和能力如何，他们从小就被往工程师和医生方向培养。其他国家有定期的能力倾向测试来分析孩子会在哪个领域表现更出色，但在印度，孩子们拿到学位后还是不知道该做什么!
6. 不以研究为导向的教育体系—学校缺乏合适的实验室，用理论课来解释。怎么可能让学生产生兴趣？

还有很多，比如政府不对研究领域进行投资，减少GDP对教育的支出，研发产业形势越来越差等等。

Manik Sikka, works at Microsoft

I have studied in both American and Indian universities, so let me try and give my take.

First of all to make anything successful what you need is consumers, people who care for it. As an example you might be the best singer in the world but if no one likes to listen to music, it doesn’t matter. Ex India has good cricket team but not a good football team. Because football doesn’t sell.

With that principle, research is also a product that universities produce. They’ll spend more money and time on it if there are more consumers for it. If they’ll spend more time and money obviosuly it’ll come out better.

Now, who are the consumers of research. It’s the industry. And not the traditional kinds who like to keep repeating the same things over and over but the ones who need to compete in global markets. They need to innovate and change quickly to remain relevant in market. These are the kinds which will “buy” research from Universities, improving their standard.

The university that I was in India, did decent enough job with research projects but most of the profs. will forget about it soon and get busy with other things. Next student coming in will start from ground zero on the same problem.

译文来源：三泰虎   http://www.santaihu.com/47279.html 译者：Joyceliu

我在美国大学和印度大学都学习过，所以我试着谈谈我的看法。

首先，任何事情想要成功，都需要消费者，也就是关心这个事的人。举个例子，你可能是世界上最好的歌手，但是如果没有人喜欢听音乐，那也没用。印度有很好的板球队，但没有很好的足球队。因为没人关心足球。

基于这一原则，科研也是大学生产的产品。如果有更多的消费者，他们会投入更多的金钱和时间。如果他们投入了更多的时间和金钱，结果肯定会更好。

现在，谁是科研的消费者呢？工业。不是那些喜欢一遍一遍重复同样事情的传统人士，而是那些需要在全球市场上竞争的人士。他们需要快速创新和改变来保持自己在市场中的地位。这些公司会从大学“购买”研究成果，完善他们的产品。

我在印度就读的那所大学在研究项目上成绩相当不错，但大多数教授很快就会忘记这件事，开始忙其他事情。下一学生又得从零起点解决同样的问题。

The prof. I worked with in US was more of a salesman then a professor. Even before he started a project he was more concerned about how he can sell it. Which conference can he publish the paper in? Can he spin off a start up from it. He was in fact on board of many start-ups which he helped start.

This is where India has lacked. In terms of market predicatbility, law framework etc. Anything can happen in India anytime. A start up like uber in which you might have spent years can suddenly become an illegal business, innovative idea like drones can suddenly be made illegal. You never know.

As a consequence industry has less appetite for innovation, less consumption of research, less investment and hence not the quality that you’d expect.

But things are changing, I am pretty positive and excited about the future of research in India.

我在美事的那位教授与其说是一位教授，不如说是一位推销员。在他开始一个项目之前，他就更关心如何将项目成果销售出去。他可以在哪个会议上发表论文？他能借此创业吗？事实上，他加入了许多他帮助成立的初创企业。

这正是印度所缺乏的。在市场可预测性、法律框架等方面都缺乏。在印度，任何事情都可能随时发生。像优步这样的初创公司，你可能已经在此工作了多年，但它可能会突然变成非法企业，像无人机这样的创新想法可能会突然变成非法项目。你很难预料的。

因此，工业对创新的需求小了，对研究成果的应用少了，投资少了，因此研究成果也达不到你所期望的那样。

但这个情况正在改变，我对印度未来的研究非常乐观和兴奋。

The voice, Engineer by profession Writer by passion

Very simple answer is Hindi.

Students in IITs are very studious and are mostly from lower to medium class family. They read in school in Hindi medium and with hard work they got admission in IITs, where they got technical knowledge in English. And finally when they are graduated they become hybrid of English and Hindi, who are comfortable in speaking Hindi but writing English. This is story of maxmum hardworking students studying across various prestigious institutes all over the India.

Now come to the point, After graduation, when they become ready for research they have no innovation and creativity left in their mind. Creative thoughts come in mind in our own language not in English but we have taken technical knowledge in English. It is proven fact that when we work in other language our efficiency of mind reduced. Hence we lag behind.

We can learn from Japan, , Russia and other Countries which are at the top in terms of technological innovation. Do they take education in english???? Ofcourse not, they have not left their mother language, their education system(school to college) is in their own language (Japanese, , Russian etc.), Infact lots of top researchers cant speak English there.

Till our education system wont change, we will keep lagging behind like in recent World University Rankings 2018, No Indian institute in top 200.

答案非常简单，就是印地语。

印度理工学院的学生勤奋好学，大多来自中下阶层家庭。他们在学校用印地语学习，通过努力，他们被印度理工学院录取，在那里他们学到了英语技术知识。最后毕业时，他们掌握了英语和印地语，他们在说印地语时很自如，但英语写作有些问题。这就是最勤奋的学生在印度各所著名学府学习的故事。

现在关键点来了，毕业后，当他们为研究做好准备时，他们的头脑中已经没有创新和创造力了。创造性思维是用我们自己的母语进行的，不是英语，但我们学过了英语的技术知识。事实证明，当我们用其他语言工作时，我们的思维效率会降低。因此我们落后了。

我们可以向日本、、俄罗斯等技术创新水平居世界前列的国家学习。他们接受英语教育吗?当然没有，他们没有放弃他们的母语，他们的教育体系(从学校到大学)都是用的他们自己的语言(日语、汉语、俄语等)，事实上很多顶尖的研究人员并不会说英语。

除非我们的教育体系进行改革，否则我们将继续落后，就像最近2018年世界大学的排名那样，印度没有一所大学进入前200名。

Sunit Raut, studies Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering (2020)

Talent alone is not enough. Yes, you heard it right !

Talent either requires opportunity or creation of opportunity if it does not exst.

This opportunity or creation of opportunity comes from the policies of government and social setup of the country.

To be frank, India isn’t a research country yet. Nor is it an export country. We don’t have as many research institutes or Multi national tech companies that innovate/inspire.

We need to nourish a generation of youth that is interested in research, innovation and excellence.

However, currently, that is not on India’s priority list. There are other issues that take away the attention of government, media and society. Ever heard a news cover on research ?

India either needs to shift its focus towards research or else develop a parallel community of researchers / academicians / educators that would setup a system that nurtures research and development, rather than grades.

Another important factor is that research is risky. You may end up spending a lot of money and still get nothing substantial in the end (No Return on investment if things go wrong).

光有天赋是不够的。是的，你没听错!

天赋需要机会，或者要创造机会，不然天赋不复存在。

这种机会或机会创造就源自政府的政策和国家的社会体制。

坦率地说，印度还不是一个重视研究的国家。它也不是出口型国家。我们没有那么多的研究机构或跨国科技公司进行创新/激励。

我们需要培养对研究、创新和卓越感兴趣的一代青年。

然而目前而言，这并不在印度的优先考虑之列。其他问题分散了政府、媒体和社会的注意力。你们之前听说过关于科研的新闻吗?

印度要么需要把重点转向研究，要么发展一个由研究人员/学者/教育者组成的社区，建立一个培育研究和发展的体系。

另一个重要因素是研究是有风险的。你可能最终花了很多钱，但最终仍然得不到任何实质性的回报(如果出了问题，投资就没有回报)。

With other issues cree up, India wouldn’t want to spend carelessly on research and that we still need to depend on research from countries that -

1.have a system set up that encourages research.

2.that have investors , government funds in abundance for research.

Due to these reasons, such countries also attract talent from other countries like India.

因为有其他问题的出现，印度不会轻易在研究上投入金钱，我们就需要继续依赖某些国家的研究，这些国家：

1.已经建立了鼓励科研的体系。

2.有充足的投资者和政府资金，用于科研领域。

由于这些原因，这些国家也吸引了其他国家的人才，包括印度。

Rushikesh Wadurkar, former Studying in D.Y.Patil SOET

Let us assume we have two persons, A & B. Both are individually kept at different surroundings.

Let’s assume person A is forced to put into the western countries like USA, England. Whereas the person B is in India. Now what interesting happens?

Let’s first talk about our country India. Indians have always been fallen into the worship, pray and mostly tend to force themselves into the obligation of the religious activities. Due to this do you know what kind of their thinking is? They see the world as what it is! They even don’t bother to change the current situations by adopting new ideas, making any innovation for the well-being of societies. No, Not at all!

Instead they rely on imaginary, pseudo faith of so called God that he is the superior power in the universe and that’s it!

Another interesting probability is that if any one dares to change the current system, he will be regarded as breaking the rules against destiny. Alas! What a great mishap he has done! (Here assume I’m talking about old days)

Such type of surrounding is affected by person B. So hell that inventions, innovations, get down to hell this shit!

假设我们有两个人，A和B，他们分别处在不同的环境中。

假设把A置于西方国家中，比如美国，英国。而B留在印度。现在会发生什么有趣的事情？

首先我们谈谈印度。印度人一直都沉溺于礼拜、祈祷之中，大多会投身于宗教活动之中。正因为如此，你知道他们是怎么想的吗？他们把眼前的世界视为理所应当！他们甚至不屑于通过采纳新思想来改变现状，为社会的福祉做出任何创新。不，一点都不要想！

相反，他们依赖于所谓的宇宙中最强大的神的想象，虚幻的信仰！

另一个有趣的可能性是，如果有人胆敢改变当前的制度，他就违背了天命。唉！他闯下了多大的祸端！(假设我说的是过去的事)

这种环境会对B产生影响。所以什么发明，创新，都去下地狱吧!

Next come here in case of person A. In western countries they were also following rules, regulations led by their ancestors like us, but instead of this they were ought to solve the problems by develo new ways. Here what made the difference? They never relate their innovations, ideas to destiny, faith & so. Instead they adopt growing faster in making, in providing necessities to societies, providing them new ways to solve problems. They carried over inventions; apply every possible thing in real life and obviously educating the upcoming young generations to do similar.

Hence person A will surely be superior to that of B!

接着我们以A为例进行说明。在西方国家，他们也遵循像我们这样的祖先所制定的规章制度，但他们并不是这样做，而是通过开创新的方式来解决问题。这有什么区别？他们从不把自己的创新、想法与命运、信仰等联系在一起。相反，他们在制造、为社会提供必需品、为他们提供解决问题的新方法方面加快了速度。他们把发明转为成果，在现实生活中进行应用，并且教育下一代年轻人继续这么做。

因此，A肯定比B强！

Samved Iyer

You know what? I see people saying, “Oh look at Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai and others rising to great name and fame. We are definitely talented”. Of course, I am proud that this proves the smartness of Indians, but I am not at all happy because we are feeding the technological and economic boom of other nations, not our own.

Indians excel everywhere except India and people like me, who tend to keep thinking about the future and love modernism, feel outright frustrated at the sorry state of conditions in our country.

Our education system is an utter failure:

(1) Excessive importance is given to memorization. I, for one, am very bad at so much memorization. But let me keep a sheet of necessary formulas and basic points related to a particular topic in Science, and I am all set to conduct further research enthusiastically. Who knows, I may be a Science genius just struggling to do things in the right manner.

(2) No encouragement when it comes to creativity. Students are forced to stick to a particular syllabus and discouraged to think beyond that. I feel that our traditional exam-based-on-syllabus system is too outdated. Our exams mostly revolve around formula-oriented questions. The exams should also contain several questions that check how much the student is able to apply his or her knowledge to explore further. Also, I think classwork activities should include not only problem solving related to formulas, but also piling up research on the topic taught. Now this needs infrastructural changes. Modern education system must make schools provide laptops to students, after the school is paid the amount for that. Only school libraries may not be sufficient for research.

你知道吗？我听到人们说：“哦，看看萨蒂亚·纳德拉，桑达尔·皮查伊和其他一些人，他们的名气越来越大。我们绝对是天赋卓然的人。”当然，我很自豪这证明了印度人的聪明，但我一点也不高兴，因为我们正在推动其他国家的技术和经济繁荣，而不是我们自己国家的繁荣。

除了印度本国，印度人在其他国家都很优秀，像我这样的人总是思考未来，热爱现代主义，对我们国家糟糕的状况感到失望透顶。

我们的教育体系完全失败了:

(1)过分重视记忆。我不擅长记忆那么多内容。但是让我存一张跟某个科学主题相关的必要公式的纸吧，我已经准备好满怀热情进行进一步的研究。谁知道呢，我也许是个科学天才，想用正确的方式做事。

(2)不鼓励创造性。学生们被迫局限在一个特定的教学大纲里，不鼓励思考。我觉得我们传统的以考试为基础的教学大纲体系太过时了。我们的考试主要围绕着以公式为导向的问题。考试还应包含几个问题来检查学生能在多大程度上应用他或她学到的知识，进一步探索。此外，我认为课堂作业活动不仅应该包括解决与公式有关的问题，还应该对所教的主题进行研究。现在需要改进基础设施。现代教育系统必须让学校为学生提供笔记本电脑。只有学校图书馆是不足以进行研究的。

(3) Lack of meaningful interaction makes the topics very dull and boring. The teaching is mostly one-sided, with the teacher speaking on and on, barely pausing and this makes students drift off to sleep!! There is a pressing need for interactive sessions on the topics taught, just like a debate mode. This allows students grasp the topic more easily, since participation in debate makes the student focus on the topic going on.

But the problems are not restricted to the school system alone. There also comes the problem called public mentality.

A vast majority of the people want their children to become Engineers, or Doctors, or Chartered Accountants or get a work in a government office, most of which look dull anyway. Most of the Indian families do not think beyond that. A Scientist, working in a research institute, seems to be too boring and dull for them. The same goes for students. They immediately want a high-paying job.

A researcher can do his work without hindrance if there are state-of-the-art facilities and zero political interference. This is especially true for organizations like DRDO and HAL. There is too much politics involved. ISRO is the only political organization with nearly zero political interference.

Our investment on research is very, very low. We need to be investing more on new labs and need to change the backward mindset of the people who believe that life is restricted only to software engineering.

These are the reasons why we lag behind in research. We need to take reformative steps, SOON!!

(3)缺乏有意义的互动，教学枯燥无味。上课基本上是老师自己讲个不停，几乎没有停顿，学生昏昏欲睡!!我们迫切需要就老师教授的话题进行互动讨论。这样学生更容易掌握主题，因为辩论能让学生更专注。

但这些问题并不仅限于学校系统。还有一个问题叫做公众心态。

大多数人都希望他们的孩子成为工程师、医生、特许会计师或在政府部门工作，而这些工作大部分看起来都很枯燥。大多数印度家庭都没有意识到这一点。一个科学家在研究所工作，似乎太枯燥无味了。学生也是如此。他们想要立刻找到一份高薪的工作。

如果有最先进的设备，没有政治干预，研究人员可以不受阻碍地开展工作。对于DRDO和HAL这样的机构尤其如此。涉及的政治因素太多了。ISRO是唯一一个几乎没有任何政治干预的政治组织。

我们在研究上的投资非常非常少。我们需要加大对新实验室的投资，改变那些认为生活只有软件工程的落后心态。

这就是我们在科研方面落后的原因。我们需要采取改革措施，立即，马上!!

Shawn D'silva, lived in India

Originally Answered: Why does India lag behind in technological innovation?

Innovation is a vague buzzword, more specific next time.

If you mean in terms of “inventing” a new product or service or a new category of an exsting product or service, then we simply lack the infrastructure and ecosystem here to support such inventions, the universities are absolute garbage tier when compared to their foreign counter-parts, the government spends very little on Research and Development, You will struggle to get either government or investor funding for a new and un-proved product.

And once any foreign company has a “first movers” benefit in any product or service or category you are screwed, no wonder how better your product is because it simply came too late.

One way to get around this is by your government straight up ban non-essential yet replicate-able technologies, like how has a ban on Google,Facebook,Twitter and makes life hard for Amazon.

Of course Bharat Sarkar is run by people who do not care about National Interest, only about filling their pockets every 5 years they get in power, or how to win the next election .

If you mean “innovation” in context of why our country doesn’t make any kind of Integrated Circuit( basically the category for CPUs, RAM chips, SSD chips etc )or passenger jets or gas turbines or any other “high technology” product, it is because the Corporates see no point in investing in these capital intensive sectors, and neither does the government for some reason, as a result even outside investors don’t want to put forth money for such ventures, and as mentioned above even our IITs don’t put out the kind of people you will need for high-technology sectors.

最初的问题是：为什么印度在技术创新方面落后了?

创新是一个模糊的热门词汇，下次再来具体分析。

如果你的意思是“发明”一种新产品或服务或一个现有产品或服务的新品类，那么我们缺乏基础设施和生态系统来支持这样的发明，大学跟国外大学比都是垃圾，政府为研究和开发投入的费用很低，你很难得到政府或投资者的资助来开发一个新产品。

一旦某家外国公司在任何产品、服务或类别中具备了“先行者”优势，你就完蛋了，不管你的产品是不是更优秀都没用，因为它出现得太晚了。

解决这一问题的一个方法是由你们的政府直接禁止非必要但可复制的技术，比如如何禁止谷歌、Facebook、Twitter，让亚马逊的日子很不好过。

当然，巴拉特·萨卡尔是由那些不关心国家利益的人控制的，他们只关心每隔5年上台掌权时如何填满自己的荷包，或者如何赢得下一次选举。

如果你说的“创新”是指我国为什么生产不出任何类型的集成电路（基本上是CPU、RAM芯片、SSD芯片等）、客机、燃气轮机或任何其他“高科技”产品，那是因为企业认为投资这些资本密集型行业毫无意义，政府也一样，因此，连外部投资者也不想为此类风险投资提供资金，正如上文所述，即使是印度理工学院也无法为高科技行业提供所需要的人才。

Lokanath Reddy, Pediatrician by profession, music lover and travellar by passion

In India the first thing is survival, second is family, last is the research and development. Here it is what i think about research as a middle class student.

1.First I should be able to survive to take a branch as my career. so obviously many will choose to be engineers or doctors or teachers to earn and try to lift up the family from middle class to upper middle class. because your life as a research student is not stable here.

2.Second is parents and family you should marry and have children and lots of family problems to solve. No time to do research. All parents want their children to become IITians, NITs, doctors, IAS IPS etc…to earn a lot. Very few can leave them to their passion and this also happens only in well to do families because they can support him financially even if he fails. Middle class parents no thought of research.

3.Governments: No proper support for the merit. 50% seats are reserved (again survival first) .

4.Mindset: Many Indian students don’t like to work hard unless it is profitable either for name or money. Every body wants to work less and earn more. so is the status of our government schools and govt jobs. We always try to copy what already done by western people. Every thing is piracy. 90% of the thesis work done by our students in our universities will be copy paste with some modification from a western author or senior.

5.Comfort zone: Every body wants to lie in a comfort zone. no body want to take risk. they are afraid of failures and people who will be speaking more about your failures than your success.

在印度，生存是最重要的，其次是家庭，最后才是科研。这就是我作为一个中产阶级学生对科研的看法。

1.首先，我应该要先能谋一份职业来生存。所以很明显，很多人会选择成为工程师、医生或教师来挣钱，并努力把家庭从中产阶级提升到中上层阶级。因为你在这里搞科研，生活并不稳定。

2.其次是父母和家庭，你得结婚，生孩子，还要解决许多家庭问题。没有时间做研究。所有的父母都希望他们的孩子成为印度理工学院学生、国家技术学院学生、医生、国际认证师、国际会计师等……赚很多钱。很少有人能让他们跟随自己的兴趣，这也只有在富裕的家庭中才会发生，因为即使他没成功，家人也能在经济上支持他。中产阶级的父母根本不会考虑科研。

3.政府:没有足够的支持。50%的席位都留给了预留制(同样要优先考虑生存问题)。

4.心态:很多印度学生并不喜欢用功学习，除非是为了名利或金钱。每个人都想少干活多挣钱。我们的公立学校和政府工作的状况也是如此。我们总是试图抄袭西方人已经做过的事情。什么都抄。我们大学学生90%的论文都是抄袭的，加点西方人或高年级学生的修改。

5.舒适区:每个人都想呆在舒适区。没有人愿意冒险。他们害怕失败，害怕那些人谈论你的失败多于你的成功。