When Venkatraman Ramakrishnan bagged the 2009 Nobel prize for chemistry along with two others, India and Tamil Nadu was jumping with joy – Indian bags Nobel Prize, person born in Tamil Nadu, in our Chidambaram.

Is this something to rejoice? I don’t think so. Lets accept it. He is not an Indian. He is not from India. He was born in India, yes. But 1976 to 2010 is a pretty long time. He is a US citizen. So was Kalpana Chawla.

The Nobel laureate still has contacts with India, and has helped a minority girl in Vadodara, he even inquires about the old servant at his house whenever he calls friends here. I agree and have the same feeling as most of us to when we hear that – I am happy that someone still remembers India, his home town and all.

But lets not convince ourselves that they are Indian. They are Indian born. That is it. Their higher education, which was the major reason for their achievements, was not in India. Perhaps they were intelligent right from birth. But that did not contribute to their achievements as much as their higher education and research environments did.

It was the United States that provided them with the environment. It is almost impossible to find such an environment in India, at least for the common man. Its a long way to go. A very long way when we would have such facilities and all students have their choice to study their passion*.

They say that the Indian has the best brain in the world. Of course its mostly said only in India. I have not heard any other acclaimed sources claiming that, except for one forwarded mail quoting Bill Gates from an anonymous source that South Indians are the second most intelligent lot in the world after the Chinese. I don’t remember reading this from any reliable source (BTW, how do you define a South Indian? From one of the southern states? Everyone south of the tropic of cancer?)

Well, I don’t say that Indians are not intelligent. Perhaps they are the most intelligent in the world when they enter it, due to a perfect combination of genes, latitude, longitude, some stars and planets, but when they complete high school or college, they are almost devoid of their thinking power . Our education system seldom fosters thinking and research, and even when it rarely allows, that particular part is ignored (choiceல் விடப்படும் – literally translated leave it in choice) from the syllabus.

(If you still think otherwise, just take a break and look around: especially at the little girl picking rags and the old lady cleaning human soil from the railway tracks, when this problem can be solved by the ubiquitous flush toilet)

We have never seen any great inventions from India (except for the mooligai petrol (herbal petrol), of course) in the recent years. And I don,t think we will, anytime soon, unless we restructure our education system. But no one seems to be worried about this. (I know that there is a initiative for uniform education across India and to abolish 10th std exams, but this is no way restructuring. This is perhaps good, but definitely not sufficient).

So when someone claims that Kalpana Chawla is an Indian question their tenses (Chawla’s last visit to India was during the 1991–1992 new year holiday when she and her husband spent time with her family, says Wikipedia).

In the same lines Aishwarya Rai is no longer a Bangalorean, and Rajinikanth not a Kannadiga (BTW, will Raj Thackeray claim him to be a Maratha owing to his name?).

* For the record, I did have choice. Fortunately my passion was computers and programming, I studied computers and that is my career. But if my passion were vehicles and engines, high probability that I would have studied that, but also high probability that I will still be programming for a living. And cribbing.