Innovation

I was recently appointed to the Health sector innovation council. The question that stared at me was - why India lacks innovation. India's track record is poor in building products and brands. Why is it so?

Traditionally Indians have used their ingenuity to find the ‘Jugaad’ that works around the paucity of resources and funds. Somehow we have lost it along the journey towards modernization and this Jugaad paradigm didn’t permeate into our modern education system and work ethic. In many ways our current paradigms don’t promote innovation.

In our modern life, Innovation is killed in a very organised manner starting from tender age. We got scolded by parents and were asked to 'shut up' when we asked too many questions. We were beaten with a ruler by the class teacher for being purely inquisitive. Our schools are still designed to produce clerks for empire. Professor threw us out of the class for challenging his/her hypothesis. The boss grossly lowered the annual appraisal rating because we had too much independent thinking!

The British tasked Thomas Babington Macaulay to create our so called "back-breaking" education system way back in 1835. The fossilized education system to which we still cling on to today is 180 years old! Obviously we could not do anything while the Brits were ruling us. But what about the 65 years after that? They called it quits in 1947. We sat back comfortably in our kursis, chewed paan and continued blaming the British for our woes. Still. 65 years after they quit having to do anything with India!

 

And now as a country we are wondering why we lack innovation! Our innovative spirit died long ago. Our parents, teachers and bosses are proud of rooting innovation out and making us worthy of modern society and rise up the ladder. Our education system, parenting philosophy and work ethics kill innovation rather than promote it.

We must change the paradigm today to expect some innovation emerging from our next generation in 20 years.

Also Read my blog: Higher Education System Suffers - http://healthcareitstrategy.blogspot.in/2014/10/shortage-of-teachers-higher-education.html

References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Commons_of_the_United_Kingdom
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/interviews/Our-schools-are-still-designed-to-produce-clerks-for-empire-Sugata-Mitra/articleshow/19113224.cms
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Education_Act_1835
http://vadakkus.com/2013/02/12/macaulayism-origin/