Allow foreign varsities into India: N R Narayan Murthy

BENGALURU: He is known for calling a spade a spade. IT czar N R Narayana Murthy once told then Karnataka chief minister S M Krishna, “It’s morally wrong to send our children to English-medium schools and allow our drivers’ kids to go to Kannada-medium ones. Their aspirations are the same."
In an interview to TOI on Wednesday, he was as blunt on India’s reluctance to allow foreign universities.“There is no point in criticizing the IT industry for every problem in the city. Instead, others must be competitive and meet global standards,” he said.
Excerpts:
Students are leaving to study abroad right after class X.
We cannot blame the children or parents who send their children abroad right after class X. What’s wrong with that? All parents in this country want the best for their children. It’s a shame we haven’t opened our minds about allowing foreign universities into India. We’ve been talking about it since 2004. There’s so much aspiration among children in India to study in foreign universities. When the IT sector has allowed foreign companies, why can’t we have foreign universities? There’s no point in debating this trend. Why aren’t we allowing those institutions to come here? We have so much to learn from them.

You compare the IT industry to the education sector.
Yes. The Indian IT industry has proved that the positive way of finding solutions is to learn from foreign players and become as good as them. That’s exactly what we did. Look at Singapore, which has several foreign universities. At the same time, their universities are also world-class. Attracting them to India is a challenge. Foreign universities will come if you make it worth their while. We must make our cities livable. We must have English-medium schools and a good healthcare system. We have it all. Yet we cannot get them here.
You once said the quality of our IITians has deteriorated.
The flaw lies with us. We don’t encourage our young people to relate to the world they live. Right from primary school, the lessons they learn are disconnected from the real world. They learn by rote, and we don’t encourage children to experiment. We restrict their minds to what we think is good. In the US, children study history in context. Here, we read about what a king drank or ate. How is that relevant in the present world?
Renowned scientist CNR Rao says our research labs are getting empty because youngsters are not pursuing research.
I agree with him. The reality is that youngsters don’t opt for pure science and research. But we have to accept it and find solutions. How did the US handle it? They revised compensation for professors, involved youngsters in research, and sold themselves more aggressively. Bangalore has a vibrant IT industry. How many educational institutions go to IT companies and ask them, ‘What are your problems?’ We’re all solving the problems of other countries. If we have youngsters involved in problem-solving, they get interested in research. We must get our youngsters to grow in the problem-solving mindset. We must make it more attractive for them and have better career options.
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‘Modi virus should spread’
It will be great if the Modi virus spreads to all chief ministers in this country: the problem-solving mindset, the open-minded approach to issues, and the culture of learning from others.
— N R Narayana Murthy