We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.

Thursday, June 26, 2014

Academic Papers vs Industrial Products ...


Academic research vs Industrial Products ...What is the correct way to go? In this blog post I discuss related questions.

How to quantify the success of a researcher, vs the success of a person in Industry? Are academic papers the only way to justify the success of a researcher? What are the other ways to judge the merits of a successful industrial person?

Paper writing is an industry in itself. So what is the difference between this and the traditional industry?

I will write more soon.....

Sunday, June 22, 2014

Indian renaissance

Will India ever have its renaissance moment? I came across this question while discussing the latest Indian developments....

Indians are getting prosperous, Indian middle-class is driven more and more consumerism driven, anti-corruption movements are happening, elections are getting largest voter turn around to provide a stable government and economic prosperity mandate, technology awareness is spreading even in Indian villages. In short India is going through a lot of churning.

The fundamental question to ask is will this churning bring out a totally new India in coming decades? Will India see its own renaissance moment in coming times? For a brief recap, Renaissance was the period in European history when there were artistic and cultural revolutions that threw away age old customs, and shackles to bring in new perspective to understand the role of art, science, religion, etc in society's perspectives. Out of this arrives new philosophies to look at the traditional way of doing things.

If we look at Indian history since Independence, one of the major societial revolution that we saw was related to technology transfer revolution where due to market liberalization outsourcing and software aligned technology jobs got transferred to India and gave Indians a new economic liberation as it opened up western society access in terms of technology. However, unfortunately this revolution did not percolate deep into Indian society to bring out rapid fundamental changes in terms of creating some fundamental values of its own in terms of home grown technologies which could be respected world-wide and aligned things. So in my opinion transforming the outsourcing technology revolution to aligned revolutions that would change socio-economic dynamics went missing in the Indian context.

What would be the implications of this in coming times on Indian society? Will the new government which has a huge stable mandate be able to turn India into a new fundamental socio-economic change that would bring renaissance kind of feeling to drive the current India to a new India?

Only time will tell...but I so hope that India gets its moment of Indian renaissance, so that this huge country with such a young population will be able to exploit its true potential....