BENGALURU: IT czar N.R. Narayana Murthy’s comment that India should send 10,000 students to the US to pursue their PhDs, but they should not be allowed to work in that country for the next 10 years has left the techies and student fraternity shocked.
An overseas job means experiencing a better quality of life, better perspective, professional ethics, discipline and knowledge.
For long, Indian students have been going to the West for higher studies and professional exposure after which they decide to stay on or come back home, which is purely a personal choice. Mr Murthy’s statement asking the US to enforce a law against such a practice seems draconian and retrograde.
We caught up with two techies, Anshul Pant and Shardendu Jha, who were in the midst of a heated debate over the issue.
Anshul says, “In my view, there are two points here. First, if Mr Murthy stops at saying that India should send 10,000 or 50,000 students for PhD or higher studies and the US should not allow them to study there and send them back immediately, then it is not fair.
“However, if he goes on to say that in the fields like mathematics, research and IT there are better opportunities in India and he is ready to invest, then it is fine.”
However, after a brief pause, he says that if Mr Murthy believes that the Indian government should provide for these PhD scholars, then it doesn’t lead anywhere.
“Everyone has been debating about it. Everybody wants to pursue higher education. Look at the condition of IITs, whose quality is going down every year. I don’t think it is the right way. First, of all, he thinks the Indian education system is not good enough", Anshul, a resident of Whitefield.
"Most of the people who have worked or working in his company have studied in India. His statement will make them look foolish and stupid. In my view, most of the people he hires for his company are from IITs. But that is only a small percentage, as majority of them don’t stay in the country,” said Anshul.
