In a searing critique of India’s inflexible training and work tradition, Hotmail founder Sabeer Bhatia warned that the nation is producing a era wired to take orders—to not innovate. Talking on the NNP podcast, Bhatia mentioned India’s education system continues to reward rote memorisation over unique considering, making a workforce that’s ill-equipped for the long run.
“We’re not educating youngsters how you can suppose—we’re educating them how you can comply with,” Bhatia mentioned. “Lecturers themselves don’t know why they’re educating one thing. They haven’t skilled it, haven’t understood it. They’ve simply grow to be lecturers as a result of the system wants obedient employees.”
He argued that this mentality might need made sense within the 1900s, through the Industrial Revolution, when factories wanted compliance and repetition. “However right this moment, machines can try this higher than people. What we’d like now are considering folks—vital thinkers—who can create large worth. That solely comes from doing, from hands-on expertise, from asking: can this be achieved in a different way?”
India, he famous, just isn’t utilizing its brightest minds for the proper functions. “What number of mechanical engineers have really constructed one thing with their arms? What number of have touched a manufacturing line? Everybody needs to be a supervisor. However the place’s the innovation in that?”
Bhatia burdened that innovation calls for rule-breaking and daring experimentation—traits India suppresses. “Each time somebody tries one thing new right here, there’s a refrain of ‘No’. You inform a child ‘no’ ten occasions, he gained’t ask the eleventh. However innovation is born from that eleventh query.”
He in contrast India’s deeply conformist tradition with America’s unapologetic individualism. “Take a look at Donald Trump. To hell with what the world thinks—he does what he needs. That mindset, good or unhealthy, is what allows out-of-the-box concepts to outlive. In India, in case you break one rule, it’s handled like a heinous crime.”
Bhatia believes that till India learns to worth vital considering over compliance, it should proceed to squander its mental capital. “Now we have to cease making a tradition the place security, standing and obedience are every thing. The longer term belongs to those that dare to do issues in a different way.”
