IBM quit semiconductor manufacture but continued R&D in the area. It made money by licensing the know-how. Maybe India can find a small niche like that. This is an industry that requires PhDs to sit in the lab and debug problems. Even if we produce those PhDs, we will most likely lose them to brain-flight. This is a brutally competitive industry that requires protection, stealth subsidies and guarantees from govt.
"In a sense, India has lost an entire generation of mechanical engineers (and civil engineers) because they were all absorbed by the IT industry to do offshored services work"
Not just engineers, even estate owners in Chikmagalur left their estates and moved to cities and eventually settled abroad due to IT jobs. Kerala evangelicals moved in. Tragedy, indeed.
IBM quit semiconductor manufacture but continued R&D in the area. It made money by licensing the know-how. Maybe India can find a small niche like that. This is an industry that requires PhDs to sit in the lab and debug problems. Even if we produce those PhDs, we will most likely lose them to brain-flight. This is a brutally competitive industry that requires protection, stealth subsidies and guarantees from govt.
"In a sense, India has lost an entire generation of mechanical engineers (and civil engineers) because they were all absorbed by the IT industry to do offshored services work"
Not just engineers, even estate owners in Chikmagalur left their estates and moved to cities and eventually settled abroad due to IT jobs. Kerala evangelicals moved in. Tragedy, indeed.