Everybody in India knows that we do not innovate, we just follow the west.
But have you ever thought why?
Just think about a couple of inventions that changed the world.
Telescope, gravity, clock, telephone,electric power, bulb, rail, bus, train, bicycle, camera, computers, mobile phones, internet, Unix, windows, Facebook.if we go on listing...there are too many..
The question is why none of these come from India. Why not? Don't have have 5000 years of history, brilliant people, and the greatest education system in the world.
If your answer is excuses like, British colonization or poor country, bad politicians etc in the past. I am sorry...We have everything now.We are well connected with the rest of the world. We have educated people,money, power everything. Still we do not innovate..
Even now, world is seeing a lot of innovations every now and then, whether we realize it of not.
During a coffee break, I discussed this with my friends and a our initial guess was that western countries are developed, rich. So they can afford to fund these inventions.Then we thought about Thomas Alva Edison. Who funded him? There was no money or govt. support for him.Then we thought their brain is genetically more creative than ours. But there was no basis to believe that because we are not that far behind.
Then we looked at it from a different angle. What is different between the west and India? Cultural difference!! But how cultural difference can be come the seed for innovations We digged further... Innovations required a lot of focused and persistent effort. And the less limiting factors that you have, the more focused you become and that leads to innovations. When I talk about "focused", it doesn't mean focusing on one thing for 40 hours a weeks for 1 or 2 years. I am talking about focusing 24x7 for several years, may be 10 or more years.
Indians simply can't do that because of the close kit family structure we have. We have to support our wife, children, father, mother, sometime even grand parents. If I go on inventing something..90% chance that I loose family...which I can't afford to loose. I may have to struggle with limited resources with several years. I may not earn during there 10 years.
Indians care a lot about family life. Our system of single marriage, supporting children up to adult age supporting parent at old age. These limit freedom of thought and act. So our brains are tuned to live a balanced life. The society expects that their children will keep this balance. We rarely take risks.
We always try to play safe. We never walk the way untraveled.
Disclaimer: This is just my personal view and should not be treated otherwise.
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