As India moves towards its Developed India@2047 goal of becoming a $30 trillion economy, one resource remains worryingly underdeveloped – curiosity. Achieving that ambition will require more than cost advantages in manufacturing and services; This will demand innovation – and innovation starts with curiosity.
Helping my children study rekindled my curiosity about curiosity – and how many of us lose it early. India’s education system, though richer in content than before, still suppresses inquiry. This is no small flaw: curiosity powers innovation, and innovation powers nations. As automation and global fragmentation reshape economies, India cannot rely solely on low-cost advantages. We must nurture problem-solvers who ask “why”, not just follow SOPs.
Fixing this will require patience, better schools, industry involvement, and – to make sure it doesn’t increase inequality – greater respect and value for skilled work. Rekindling curiosity in classrooms today may well define our competitiveness tomorrow. Over the past few years, I have spent time helping my children study for their 12th and 9th science courses. While this experience was enjoyable, it also awakened some insights in me. First of all, both NCERT and ICSE books are very well written. Since I was a student a few decades ago, books have become more rich in real-life, relevant examples that help children understand a concept before delving into theory or mathematics. As a result, for the most part the text doesn’t feel esoteric or boring.
Secondly, children are naturally curious. There is just a need to hone this ability. My 14-year-old has probably never heard of the “5 Whys” framework, but he certainly applies it.
When we were discussing basic electricity his third or fourth question was: “Where does the negative charge on the electron come from?” While I vaguely remembered that it had something to do with conferences and quantum theory, I had to shamefully admit that I didn’t know. He was extremely dissatisfied with that answer.
Third, teachers – for reasons I don’t fully understand – are unable or unwilling to foster this curiosity. Perhaps it is the teacher-student ratio that is low to keep education affordable, the unattractiveness of teachers’ salaries, or simply that teachers themselves are products of the same “curiosity-killing” pedagogy they now uphold. My experiences are definitely tier-1 and metro-contrary, whereas most of our students live in small towns and rural areas where the infrastructure is very weak. It is the failure of our education system that is perhaps most serious and requires immediate reform. Nurturing curiosity, rewarding skills.
Curiosity is lost in youth, and the spark rarely comes back. The habit of asking “why” – why something works, or why it doesn’t – is like a muscle. Stretch it daily and it will become stronger. Leave it idle, and it will wither, until even the simplest “why” feels overwhelming to raise. Of course, there are exceptions: we all know talented, curious people who thrived despite the system.
But step into most classrooms and you’ll see the opposite. Older students rarely raise their hands to ask “why.” Fresh graduates from our best universities often struggle when a problem demands more than memorized answers. The pattern is clear: The longer curiosity is ignored, the more it fades. Solution is also necessary for India’s prosperity. So far, our focus has been on scaling up both services and manufacturing; For example, the Make-in-India initiative continues to strive to bring more manufacturing enterprises to the country. In my work in manufacturing and services, I have often seen how employees follow established SOPs, yet rarely question or improve them. Part of this stems from a culture that values compliance over creativity – a mindset I once shared myself, having worked in a regulated industry where compliance ensured quality and reliability. The unintended consequence was that reforms became dependent on senior leaders who had little time for practical innovation. Over time, I have come to understand the importance of giving employees a structured outlet for thinking and problem-solving. When organizations succeed in doing this, the rewards are amazing – higher productivity, better yields and safer, more sustainable operations.
However, if the reader will pardon the generalization, I find it incredibly difficult to bring thinking back into the equation. I realize that the problem is often a systemic lack of curiosity and problem-solving skills. By strengthening these skills, our companies can become more efficient, competitive at home and abroad and help India grow.
By the beginning of this decade, we lived in a world that was committed to becoming more multilateral and globalized than ever before. But this is changing rapidly. The reasons are many and are not the subject of this note. Yet tariff and non-tariff barriers generated by each country have already affected trade in goods and may affect trade in services as well. The factor-cost benefits that fueled globalization have also proven fleeting – look no further than China’s rapid wage inflation over the past two decades. India can no longer depend on low-cost manufacturing and services to sustain economic growth in the medium to long term. So, what can help us overcome these obstacles? In a word – innovation. The path for a country to become a developed nation from a developing one is paved only through innovation. If the earlier geopolitical order had persisted; It may have taken us decades to get there. But with recent global turmoil, we must move faster – fostering real innovation in science, technology and application.
But it requires a workforce with deep curiosity and a different level of problem-solving.
We often point with pride to the Indian diaspora that contributes to IP creation in the US and Europe, and believe that we simply need to provide the “right conditions” to foster curiosity and reward skill outcomes at home. But many of our graduates remain in India, and very few are truly innovative. Given the diversity of the companies they join, the issue is not in their employers but in their skills and training.
The context in which we live makes it more difficult to recover this capacity.
We live in the era of “discovery” and “solutions” at the touch of a button; This is already having an impact on how quickly curiosity and problem-solving abilities are being lost. A few decades ago, as a student, any “why” required discussion with a guide, reference books, explanations, and applying the learnings to the problem at hand – all harnessing the power of curiosity. Today, a quick search provides the exact solution. The student reads it and “understands” it, but the ability to apply that knowledge to a new question rarely persists. And with the advent of LLM, some logic can now also be outsourced, and LLM capabilities and accuracy are increasing rapidly. If uncontrolled and uncontrolled use of LLMs, especially by children, goes unchecked, each succeeding generation may also lose their problem-solving skills and curiosity, and become more dependent on “discovery and solution”. This does not mean that we abandon the use of such tools altogether, but rather thoughtfully integrate them into learning frameworks – through controlled experiments that limit the risk of them completely dominating children’s thinking at a time in their learning journey when they need to build their own reasoning and inquisitive skills.
The importance of rekindling curiosity in our children should be clear by now. But achieving this will require sustained effort and patience. Our primary and secondary schools must improve the quality, salaries and pedagogy of teachers. They should collaborate with educational institutions that have “cracked the code” of inspiring first-principles thinking and learning by experimentation. And this should be at an affordable cost to the common man, not just the expensive IB schools. To ensure this, companies can potentially play an important role – by adopting schools, funding facilities, helping to pay attractive salaries to returning members of the Indian diaspora and teachers in general, and sponsoring academics to guide courses that foster curiosity and application. The government can support this by providing tax benefits or CSR funding status for such educational expenditure. High-school students may be required to do internships with companies and local city/district administration to solve small, real-life problems. Competitions at the city, state, and national levels can make learning exciting and strengthen problem-solving. These efforts will prove to be no big feat, but will gradually raise the average level of inquiry among our students – and create a steady stream of true problem-solvers.
As this talent pool grows, universities will need to evolve their admission criteria to value curiosity and creative thinking, not just marks. As global disruptions rise and opportunities expand in India, it will become easier to retain such talent. If we stay on this path, we could see visible impacts within 10-15 years, and transformative changes within a generation or two – driving innovation across our institutions and industries.
Sadly, this solution will not be justified in the short term; We need to balance this with respect for the skilled worker. We must be realistic. Broad-based change across all sectors of India will take longer. Thus, in the short run, investments and returns will not be uniform across society.
For the nation, success will come from being selective and thoughtful rather than spreading ourselves too thin. While equality in educational outcomes is a long-term goal, in the short term we need to strive for equal opportunities in society. And for this, we have to promote, distinguish and make vocational skills attractive as a career option.
In India, skilled professions still lack the social respect that they get in developed countries. A degree is not the only path to a dignified life – elsewhere factory workers, plumbers, electricians and carpenters live well and are valued. Here, such businesses often rely on low-paid apprenticeships and face barriers to self-employment. Labor is undervalued, not integrated with society at large and looked down upon by those fortunate enough to be educated graduates. As a result, young people see degrees – and often low-powered degrees – as their only way to survive, even when job opportunities are few. The result is that the number of undereducated and underemployed, depressed people is increasing. The government’s renewed focus on skills development is a timely step – but its success will depend on three simple things: increasing apprenticeship stipends, making certificates truly portable, and signaling parity of esteem and growth-opportunities with degrees.
To justify progress, India needs to improve the way it educates, trains and values its workforce – whether they have degrees or the tools. True innovation demands both thinkers and doers. Only when curiosity meets craftsmanship will we see the kind of richness that lasts for generations.
Bringing back the curiosity in our children is crucial if India is to reclaim its place as an innovation-driven economy in the coming decades. Since we cannot achieve this overnight, we must also restore respect for skilled workers, ensuring they earn dignified lives, have opportunities to advance and are valued members of society. Achieving this will require a concerted effort between industry, academia, government and the wider community.
This article is written by Vikram Janakiraman, India Leader, Industrial Goods Practice, Boston Consulting Group.
