‘Engineers who have never touched a machine’: Sabeer Bhatia slams India’s broken system
In a searing critique of India’s rigid education and work culture, Hotmail founder Sabeer Bhatia warned that the country is producing a generation wired to take orders—not to innovate. Speaking on the NNP podcast, Bhatia said India’s schooling system continues to reward rote memorisation over original thinking, creating a workforce that’s ill-equipped for the future.
“We’re not teaching kids how to think—we’re teaching them how to follow,” Bhatia said. “Teachers themselves don’t know why they’re teaching something. They haven’t experienced it, haven’t understood it. They’ve just become teachers because the system needs obedient workers.”
He argued that this mentality might have made sense in the 1900s, during the Industrial Revolution, when factories needed compliance and repetition. “But today, machines can do that better than humans. What we need now are thinking people—critical thinkers—who can create massive value. That only comes from doing, from hands-on experience, from asking: can this be done differently?”
India, he noted, is not using its brightest minds for the right purposes. “How many mechanical engineers have actually built something with their hands? How many have touched a production line? Everyone wants to be a manager. But where’s the innovation in that?”
Bhatia stressed that innovation demands rule-breaking and bold experimentation—traits India suppresses. “Every time someone tries something new here, there’s a chorus of ‘No’. You tell a kid ‘no’ ten times, he won’t ask the 11th. But innovation is born from that 11th question.”
He compared India’s deeply conformist culture with America’s unapologetic individualism. “Look at Donald Trump. To hell with what the world thinks—he does what he wants. That mindset, good or bad, is what enables out-of-the-box ideas to survive. In India, if you break one rule, it’s treated like a heinous crime.”
Bhatia believes that until India learns to value critical thinking over compliance, it will continue to squander its intellectual capital. “We have to stop creating a culture where safety, status and obedience are everything. The future belongs to those who dare to do things differently.”
