R'n'D in India II

This continues from my last Blog. This weekend on Sunday ToI Mumbai edition(March 12.2006) carried out an article titled "Spot the Indian Nuke Scientist". The article is a nice way to emphasize my last point, namely, that of "Life after" a P.hD. There are very few options available to P.hD's in India. The opportunity cost of doing research in India Vis-a-Vis being a Tom,Dick and Harry in a TCS or Infosys is very high(As discussed in my previous blog).
The article talks about the fact that most of the people who work at BARC and related intitutes come from the heartlands of India, from places like Barelliy etc. etc. But it misses analysing the plight of the Urban youth. (By Urban youth, i mean the upwardly mobile class.) who have have the issue of the opportunity cost coming in.
To get into TCS, Infosys or Wipro you do not need to be some geek or exceptionally talented guy. But confidence and sophistication are given a lot of weightage. These are the qualities of the urban youth who easily land up in such 'cool' jobs.
But on the other hand the so called, Rural youth (However stud, he might be in his/her field) is low on self confidence, self-esteem and sophistication. It is because of these issues plus idea of a government job that they land up at such a place.
Another factor that keeps smart people at bay from these institutions is the fact that the work culture is pathetic to say the least. People have the perception that there is Red Tapism everywhere (It exists even in IITs.) The system is not meriocratic at all. At places like research institutes, Human Resources is a very big thing. It is infact the single biggest thing. And at such places you do not reward sucess and penalize faliure the system is definitely going to crash. Thats exactly what has happened in these research intitutions.
One of my friend after his 3rd year had gone for a Practical Training at GTRE, Bangalore. He was appalled to see that the engineers over there did'nt even know how to multiply imaginary numbers. He had to teach them!!!
It is great to see that we have some very great institutions for research like TIFR, ISRO,BARC which make me feel proud as an Indian. But the foundations of these institutions is in a deep mess right now and if nothing is done, you should stop dreaming about competing with china, leave along US.