He’s absolutely right. You ask any elite UG student what their northstar is and it’s usually the highest paying job. You have your outliers that go on to start unicorns but even those are nothing more than copies of American companies and models
I struggle to think of an Indian company that has made something truly new and unique
Scarcity mentality at its finest
Indian companies can build something great provided investment is made into it. Just look at UPI, it has put us miles ahead of other countries and it’s pretty robust because the government invested properly into it.
Now, Indian companies and shareholders are very value driven, they don’t invest unless they see immediate ROI in some way or the other. Only when this mindset changes, real research will happen in India.
UPI was not the product of the elite UG fraternity. It was govt mandated and god bless its soul for what it’s done for this country.
Agree that value driven building will keep us followers only. We need huge influx of research to pivot our innovation compass
We’ll be able to move mountains once we stop obsessing with IITians. They work their asses off to get into IITs to get high paying jobs, it’s as simple as that. Train tier-2,3 college students who have nothing to lose. You’ll achieve 100x more optimal results with 100x less investment.
Most IITians who want these high paying job end up leaving India anyways for whatever reasons. So we have a situation where the best and brightest minds end up leaving the country never to return. How then shall we make progress?
Except it's not 100x less investment, it's more than educating someone at a decent starting point compared to basically starting from scratch.
Why this prof isn’t building cutting edge AI in India? We all know the reasons. Start with yourself prof sahib .. 🤦♂️
Apna pet paalega ya research karega admi baith ke.
Koi paisa hi nahi de raha research ka. Major fundings are happening in Europe and USA.
Phd schedule in India is horrible. People are pressurised alot in the curriculum.
As a former researcher let me tell you the problem. The MTech scholarship is 12k pm, the JRF is 31k pm
These are entry level salaries for non-elite students. And for the PhD you need to spend minimum 5 years in that salary bracket and you still won't get funding.
Plus there's a lack of great computers and software in the universities. Noone gets a mac or a powerful laptop to run the numbers at the hostel.
Plus publishing has a huge bias against Indians
We need to overhaul the research infra before we ask students to participate.
Also as a professor you're probably making 1.5l at the highest level. You get a lot of other money but that's the cap for you after 30ish years in the profession.
A good software engineer makes that while starting
Thanks for sharing, appreciate your insight. I guess we can start with demanding more R&D funding and ancillary programs from regulators for universities.
But funding crunch is a problem everywhere from what I've seen. Even doctors get barely anything for the amount of work they put in while studying and doing residencies.
Is it not possible for people to do independent research on the side?
Yep funding crunch is a worldwide problem but, people mitigate it with grants. Our grants are pretty low too. I agree some independent research is possible but, I worked with AI and it requires compute. I was training a specific computer vision AI and it used to take around 3 days to train and re-train alone. Now, if there were centres with databases from the government that would allow us to use them and research, maybe, but that will cost an insane amount of money, something the government probably won't give for a pipe dream