Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy said that India needs to invest at least one billion dollars annually for the next twenty years to train its primary and secondary school teachers, thereby leading to better outcomes.
He was speaking at the Infosys Prize ceremony, hosted by the Infosys Science Foundation. The awards are given across six categories annually to scientists, researchers, professors, and economists from India and around the world.
While talking about the New Education Policy (NEP) introduced by the Modi government, Murthy said steps should be taken to accelerate its outcome.
"One possible way of accelerating NEP’s outcome is to invite 10,000 retired highly accomplished teachers from the developed world and from India in STEM areas (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) to create 2,500 “Train the Teacher” colleges in our 28 states and 8 union territories. The training programme should be year-long", Murthy said.
He added that each set of four trainers can train 100 primary school teachers and 100 secondary school teachers a year.
"We will be able to train 250,000 primary school teachers and 250,000 secondary school teachers every year by this method. These trained Indian teachers can themselves become trainers over a period of 5 years."
"We should pay about $100,000 a year", he said
He said the twenty-year programme will cost India $1 billion a year and $20 billion over twenty years.
"Our nation, targeting a GDP of $5 trillion soon, will not find it a big financial burden", Murthy said.
Murthy, a son of a teacher himself, said India must show respect and pay better salaries to its teachers and researchers.
He further said India must aspire for stage 4 in innovation and invention, where it becomes an inventor of new processes, products, and services, mirroring the success of countries such as the US, most EU nations, Japan, and Australia.
Outlining the four stages in the invention and innovation lifecycle of a nation, Murthy explained that a nation generally does not innovate or invent in stage one. In stage two, it begins producing products and services using the inventions and innovations of other countries.
In stage three, it leverages higher education and research to innovate and improve upon those from other nations, aiming for better productivity, quality, cost, and comfort. Stage four is when a nation becomes an inventor of new processes, products, and services.
"We are still in stage 01 in some important areas like design of livable cities, pollution management, traffic management, and providing clean and safe water. India must aspire to move to stage 04 in every area that affects the lives of our poorest citizens in the remotest part of the country," Murthy said while speaking at the Infosys Prize 2023 awards in Bengaluru on November 15.
"Excellence in speed in idea generation and in the execution of those ideas comes from a culture of high aspiration, curious and inquiring minds, a desire to achieve the best global standard of work productivity, the most stringent discipline and hard work, and the mindset of a nation that respects better-performing cultures and is ready to learn from them," he said.
He said this would require improving the quality of primary, secondary, and higher educational institutions to embrace independent, critical, and analytical thinking.
Infosys Science Foundation (ISF) announced the winners of the Infosys Prize 2023 in six categories – Engineering and Computer Science, Humanities, Life Sciences, Mathematical Sciences, Physical Sciences, and Social Sciences. The Infosys Prize for each category comprises a gold medal, a citation, and a prize purse of USD 100,000 (or its equivalent in INR). The event was hosted at the Infosys Science Foundation’s office in Bengaluru.
The laureates of the Infosys Prize 2023 were shortlisted from 224 nominations by an international panel of jurors.
The winners of the Infosys Prize 2023 were announced by the trustees of Infosys Science Foundation – Kris Gopalakrishnan (President, Board of Trustees), Narayana Murthy, Srinath Batni, K. Dinesh, and S. D. Shibulal.
The Infosys Prize 2023 recipients in the six categories are:
The Infosys Prize 2023 in the ‘Engineering and Computer Science’ category was awarded to Sachchida Nand Tripathi, Professor of Sustainable Energy Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT-Kanpur).
The award for ‘Humanities’ went to Jahnavi Phalkey, Founding Director of Science Gallery Bengaluru.
The ‘Life Sciences’ award was presented to Arun Kumar Shukla, Professor of Biological Sciences and Bioengineering at IIT-Kanpur.
In the ‘Mathematical Sciences’ category, the prize was bestowed upon Bhargav Bhatt, Fernholz Joint Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study and Princeton University.
The prize in ‘Physical Sciences’ was awarded to Mukund Thattai, Professor of Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Bioinformatics at the National Centre for Biological Sciences.
Karuna Mantena, Professor of Political Science at Columbia University, received the award for the ‘Social Sciences’ category.
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