Recreate the magic of 60s: Narayana Murthy to IISc

BENGALURU: Infosys cofounder NR Narayana Murthy said the Indian Institute of Science is yet to meet higher expectations and that there is "work to be done".

Delivering IISc's convocation address on Wednesday, Murthy said he agrees with Prof CNR Rao, who expressed similar views recently . "IISc is the leader in engineering and research in India. Therefore, expectations are higher. IISc can do better even by Indian standards. We all want IISc to be one of the top institutions in the world and there is work to be done."

Urging higher educational institutes to incentivise focused research, Murthy said, academicians, politicians, and corporate leaders should pitch in to enable impactful work in the real world.

Compared to western universities, India has had no earth-shaking invention, he said.

Claiming that scientific research has not received enough attention of prime ministers since Jawaharlal Nehru, he said Nehru's exhortation to Indian researchers in the US to come back to India (in 1962) resulted in the green revolution, white revolution, advances in atomic energy and the space programme. "We have to recreate the magic of the sixties," he said.

Many researchers at the convocation agreed with Murthy. Vijay Kumar Sutrakar, a DRDO scientist who won the gold medal for his PhD thesis in aerospace engineering, said IISc lacks instrumentation and testing facilities for advanced research. "We have to synchronise our syllabus with next-generation aircraft."

Dr Sheik Rehana, assistant professor with IIIT Hyderabad and gold medalist in civil engineering, told ET: "We need to deal with real problems like drainage issues in our research to learn how to solve it in real life."