The Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, is certainly no rocket scientist or even computer whiz-kid. But he understands the potential of technology in solving many of India’s governance problems. Alas, his bureaucracy and his ministers seem to just not come up with the building blocks for translating his ideas on ground. Take for example the state of education in India. Even elite schools seem to be only interested in creating Macaulay’s children – glorified clerks. Just ask kids what they are taught in computers and they’ll tell you Word, Excel and Powerpoint, something they would learn even if they were just pottering around a computer! There is virtually nothing being taught to them which would challenge and unleash their creativity, and arouse their curiosity and interest. There are of course some bright kids who learn stuff on their own, but that’s despite the Indian education system, not because of it. Even the stuff being taught in engineering colleges is so 20th Century that there is virtually no cutting edge stuff coming out of Indian universities. Sure, Indian students go abroad and crack it, but again that is more because most of them are naturally brilliant and get the environment that makes them high achievers (in India, even if they were to win a Nobel prize their salary would be indexed to the salary of some obscure Cabinet Secretary or some eminently worthless IAS officer who is worth nothing to nobody), and not because they had a solid grounding through excellent education. And if this is the state of affairs in the so-called elite private schools and top colleges, one shudders to think what the state of affairs is in less privileged schools and colleges.