India has had no earth-shaking invention, claims Narayana Murthy

Infosys cofounder NR Narayana Murthy shares the same sentiments as that of Bharat Ratna Professor CNR Rao and believes that the Indian Institute of Science is yet to meet higher expectations and that there is work to be done.

While delivering a gathering during the convocation of the IISc, Murthy on Wednesday said that as compared to western universities, India had no earth-shaking invention and urged higher educational institutes to incentivise focused research.

"IISc is the leader in engineering and research in India. Therefore, expectations are higher. IISc can do better even by Indian standards. We all want IISc to be one of the top institutions in the world and there is work to be done,” said Murthy.

Murthy said that the scientific research had not received enough attention of prime ministers since Jawaharlal Nehru. “Nehru's exhortation to Indian researchers in the US to come back to India (in 1962) resulted in the green revolution, white revolution, advances in atomic energy and the space programme. We have to recreate the magic of the sixties," he said.

Murthy called on academicians, politicians, and corporate leaders and urged them to pitch in to enable impactful work in the real world.

Many researchers agreed with Murthy.

Vijay Kumar Sutrakar, a DRDO scientist who won the gold medal for his PhD thesis in aerospace engineering, said, “IISc lacks instrumentation and testing facilities for advanced research. We have to synchronise our syllabus with next-generation aircraft,” said Sutrakar.

Dr Sheik Rehana, assistant professor with IIIT Hyderabad and gold medalist in civil engineering, told ET: "We need to deal with real problems like drainage issues in our research to learn how to solve it in real life."

(Image: Indiatimes)