Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy said that India must invest $1 billion annually for 20 years to train teachers, which in turn will accelerate the National Education Policy (NEP).

Delivering a lecture on November 15 on making India a respected nation in invention and innovation at the Infosys Prize announcement, Mr Murthy said, “One of the possible ways of accelerating NEP’s outcome is to invite 10,000 retired highly accomplished teachers from the developed world and from India in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) to create 2,500 ‘Train the Teacher’ colleges in our 28 States and eight Union Territories.

“The training programme should be year-long. Experts tell me that each set of four trainers can train 100 primary school teachers and 100 secondary school teachers a year. We will be able to train 25,000 primary school teachers, and 250,000 secondary school teachers every year by this method. These trained Indian teachers can become trainers over a period of five years.”

This 20-year programme will cost $1 billion a year, and $20 billion in total.

“Our nation, targeting a GDP of $5 trillion soon, will not find it a big financial burden. If you think this is expensive, you may recall the words of Derek Bok, a former president of Harvard University, who said — If you think education is expensive, try ignorance,” Mr Murthy said.

Training teachers alone is not sufficient.

“We must show much respect and pay better salaries to our teachers and researchers. We must also provide better facilities to our researchers. We must honour them. They are role models for our youngsters,” Mr Murthy said.

He said that there are four stages of invention.

“In stage one, a nation generally does not invent and innovate. In stage two, a nation generally starts producing products and services using innovations. In stage three, a nation generally leverages higher education and research to innovate and improve on other nations for better productivity, quality, cost and comfort. Stage four is when a nation becomes an inventor of new processes, products and services,” he said.

India’s success in atomic energy, certain aspects of space exploration, vaccine production and distribution, green revolution, electric cars and generic medicines put us in stage two in most areas, and in stage 3 in a few areas.

“We are still in stage one in some important areas, like design of livable cities, in pollution management, in traffic management, and in providing clean and safe water for our citizens.”

Mr Murthy said that India must aspire to move to stage 4 in every area that affects the lives of our poorest citizens in the remotest part of the country.