Why a lot of Engineering talent or Startups can’t solve any real life problems in India

I am at Bangalore airport after a 4 day stay here attending the Surge Tech Conference. If people like Dave Mclure of 500 Start Ups thinks 80% of Indians write code for computer programming, he may be correct. Yes, we have more engineers than anywhere else in the world. But the fact is they are useless to the country.

I am a Vodafone customer. For the last 4 days, I am trying to connect to my 3G and my phone shows no service. 2G data is as good as a NO and the Surge Organisers may have thought Bangalore, with its huge engineering prowess, also has the best of infrastructure.

They were in for some rude shock. The wi fi at the venue went flat. So we were technologically handicapped. We faced one of the worst traffic nightmares. So much so, the founder of Surge, Paddy had to send an apology letter on the first day asking not to expect too much in terms of infrastructure.

That’s really bullshit. Why are we building smart cities with no basic infrastructure as low as basic bandwidth. What are we going to do with so much of engineering solutions and start ups that completely rely on internet with no internet connectivity?

Yeah, I know this is a government domain and the private players are helpless. But as the saying goes everybody pulls for David, nobody roots for Goliath.

Transcribed from my Anchor Rantings https://anchor.fm/w/9AB2DC