Comment by thewisedude

I am also a person who did most of his schooling/college in India. I also have a masters degree from here in the US.

First of all $150 seems meager from the standard of living seen here in America, but an average Indian much makes less per month and food and groceries are dirt cheap in India compared to US, so 150$ is not as bad as it seems to be. In many towns you can have a fantastic meal for under $1. However, teachers are probably paid lesser than they should be in India compared to its standard of living!

Now, to tackle the other question : Does India's school system stifle interest and creativity? To a certain extent Yes. There is not as much emphasis on rational thinking and creativity as you would hope to see. Its getting better, but, to be fair, many people do quite well in spite of such a system. For one - Text books are not inaccurate like how Feynman experienced in Brazil. Most of them are scientifically correct even though I am not sure how well it is broken down so that an ordinary person can understand it.

In India, there is a system in place to provide benefits for "backward castes". This includes reservations in Colleges/Universities and in various other places. So what is happening is that there are disproportionately large number of people trying to compete for those seats that are not reserved(<50%). These people who manage to get to the top tend to be very competent. [Think about it as a billion people fighting for resources that have reservation]. So in a way that explains why India is still producing top class Engineers or scientists but an average Engineer or a scientist may not fare very well globally.