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Comment by ssivark | Hacker News Reader

> No country without a basic civic sense can (in the immediate few years) have the R&D capabilities you speak of in a meaningful fashion.

LOL. Pray tell… Are you going to elaborate on your theory of technology development, or are you just bloviating your biases?

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And you know what? Even some of the Indian companies at the time were super good.

HCL was the Indian IBM. In fact, it's a one letter shift from IBM, and one of the earlier Indian tech companies. There were opportunities. People wanted money and things and didn't want to wait.

Yes. You need to have national unity, pride, and not be entirely selfish in order to have more engagement and participation in higher education and therefore in R&D. You need to be in a position in which you can inspire your citizens that there is a better life for them by engaging in that R&D and morale improving projects, but that attitude also needs to be seen on the streets, not just on TV.

India has some parts of the population in which that exists, but that's far from a large part of the population. Most people are very self interested, and you cannot blame them. People think of themselves. Why do you think there is a brain drain? People are educated at the government's expense at premier institutions and leave because they don't feel any sense of allegiance or civil responsibility to develop their country.

My math teach told me that during the Cold War, in the United States, the math that they learned was harder than it was now. It was your duty to become a scientist or engineer or something positive to push your country forward. That should be how it is for India, but aside from a smaller segment of the population (who are pretty loud and say some interesting things) people are more self interested. And you can't blame them. If your cousin moved to the United States and seems to be "living the life" why wouldn't you leave?

So a whole generation of scientists and engineers who were top notch educated at IIT at the government's expense under socialist India in the 80s basically left in the 90s and 00s because of more money, even though there were possibilities in India for them at the time (HP and IBM India, CDAC, CDOT, DRDO, ISRO, HAL, etc)

And sure, I am biased. That was my dad's life. That was his story. He made the call to leave India hoping to improve his career by moving to Australia and then the United States. He considered moving back multiple times, but could not bring himself to do so, not because of the lack of good opportunities, but because of the lack of civic sense.

There are people in India who work super hard (which he really likes), but then there are people who are so selfish, driving on the sidewalk in the opposite direction, get upset because the ambulance is speeding to the hospital and refuse to move and block it intentionally, taking all kinds of shortcuts and opportunities to cheat each other instead of conducting business honestly, etc. No good treatment of women.

It's messy and it needs to get more organized to do anything meaningful in terms of R&D in that country.

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