The world has witnessed some 40 years of US hegemony (dominance). They have been dominating almost every commercial field ranging from food, agriculture, medicine, engineering and many other fields not only in terms of quantity but also in quality. US has been the pioneering nation in taking the first step towards a novel field. Of course, in the case of space exploration it was the Russians who took the lead but the Americans quickly caught up and now they lead the research in exploring the space and beyond. When it comes to engineering, the premier engineering institutes are located in the American states, MIT, Stanford, University of California-Berkley ( Which pioneered in creating the socket concept used in Internet programming) are to name a few. Not to forget the mind boggling basic sciences research at Harvard!
The Film industry of the US based at Hollywood rocks the World with its awesome movies that keep the people dumb struck for ages. The music bands that originate from this Western country have got fans larger than any personality in this world! I can hear you readers grumbling as to why I am iterating the points that everyone knows! rite? Well the scope of this post is to analyze the cause for US' success and to discuss the possible measure that we could take as Indians to rise in par with this country.
To start with, lets analyze a common man's attitude. Every single person on this earth wants to do only things that interest him. When he is forced to do something that doesn't rejuvenate him, he naturally produces a bad result and this would invite poor impression on the person from his superior, be it in school, college, work place or sport coach. Now, in the US nobody does that doesn't interest them. A swimmer in the US is never forced to take up a course at Stanford rather he is advocated to take part in World Aquatics Championships, a rock star finds his way by producing albums that mesmerize the crowd, by the same token a math student finds his way into top notch institutes only because he does what that "interests" him.
Now the problem with Indian educational system is that we look upon education as a lucrative and a easy option to earn money. The success rate as a sports person in India is much lower when compared to an engineer in India. A gifted singer has to struggle through unbearable hurdles to project himself to the selectors. Education in India is looked upon as a mandatory asset to everyone which is good from one point of view but at the same time it deters the hopes of children gifted with some other talents. A child with some other talent like painting, is not encouraged to pursue it as his career rather is asked to keep it as an extra-curricular talent and study some blah blah degree course. The pain of not being allowed to paint through his life will reflect on his studies where the dissatisfaction will lead to poor grades and ultimately he will perform sub-optimally.
The only way to alleviate this delicate problem that has crept into our intellectual society is to allow children to pursue their ambition right from their childhood. The US dominance clearly teaches us this lesson. The people in every department in the US are those who have pursued their passion as their career. Some examples from multifarious fields include Michael Phelps, Pete Sampras, famous music bands like Blue, Backstreet Boys, Beatles, Pink Floyd, educationists like Paul Krugman, inventors like Charles Babbage, entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet to name a few. I accept that our country too boasts of people who have anchored their names in many fields but there would have been many such ones had our people be allowed to pursue the song of their heart, their passion. So, lets think on this and bring in a intellectual revolution that would surely put India far ahead of its competitors.
