60 Minutes transcript
60 Minutes transcript
Date: Monday, January 13, 2003 11:30 AM
H-1B and JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER
www.ZaZona.com
This is the official transcript of the 1/12/2003 "60 Minutes" show. Reading
it won't allow you to get the visuals of Lesley Stahl's pandering or the
arrogant attitude of the interviewees. Perhaps that's a blessing.
Be sure to check out what these IIT (Bomaby University) boosters have to say
about WASPS, Cornell University, and the new hot export - human capital.
Most of the interview was between Stahl and Marayana Murthy, founder of the
Indian owned bodyshop Infosys. Murthy is ballyhooed as "the Bill Gates of
India."
The only saving grace about this show is that it wasn't aired on the East
coast. It may have been cut because of a long football game that was
scheduled to end earlier.
STAHL:
THE UNITED STATES IMPORTS OIL FROM SAUDI ARABIA, CARS FROM JAPAN, TV'S FROM
KOREA, AND WHISKEY FROM SCOTLAND. SO WHAT DO WE IMPORT FROM INDIA? WE IMPORT
PEOPLE.REALLY SMART PEOPLE.
AND AS YOU'RE ABOUT TO SEE, THE SMARTEST, MOST SUCCESSFUL, MOST INFLUENTIAL
INDIANS WHO'VE MIGRATED TO THE U.S. SEEM TO SHARE A COMMON CREDENTIAL:
THEY'RE GRADUATES OF THE INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, BETTER KNOWN AS
IIT.
MADE UP OF 7 CAMPUSES THROUGHOUT INDIA, IIT MAY BE THE MOST IMPORTANT
UNIVERSITY YOU'VE NEVER HEARD OF.
60 MINUTES
"IMPORTED FROM INDIA"
VOL. XXXV, No. 16
January 12, 2003
LESLEY STAHL:
This is IIT Bombay. Put Harvard, MIT and Princeton together, and you begin
to get an idea of the status of this school in India. IIT is dedicated to
producing world-class chemical, electrical and computer engineers, with a
curriculum that may be the most rigorous in the world. Just outside the
campus gates, the slums, congestion, and chaos of Bombay are overwhelming.
Inside, it's quiet, uncrowded, and by Indian standards, very well-equipped.
Getting here is the fervent dream of nearly every schoolboy.
With a population of over a billion people in India, competition to get into
the IIT is ferocious. Last year 178 thousand high school seniors took the
entrance exam, called the Jee. Just 3,500 were accepted, or less than two
percent. Compare that to, say, Harvard, which accepts about ten percent of
its applicants.
VINOD KHOSLA:
The IIT's probably are the hardest school in the world to get into.
LESLEY STAHL:
In the whole world?
VINOD KHOSLA:
To the best of my knowledge.
LESLEY STAHL:
Vinod Khosla got into IIT about 30 years ago. After graduating, he came to
the U.S., co-founded Sun Microsystems, and became one of Silicon Valley's
most important venture capitalists. He's one of thousands of IIT graduates
who've made it big in the U.S.
How significant would you say the impact of IIT graduates has been on the
American technology revolution?
VINOD KHOSLA:
It's far greater than most people realize. Microsoft, Intel, PC's - Sun
Microsystems - you name it, I can't imagine a major area where Indian IIT
engineers haven't played a leading role.
LESLEY STAHL:
Leading role?
VINOD KHOSLA:
A leading role. And of course, the American consumer and the American
business in the end is the beneficiary of that.
LESLEY STAHL:
It isn't just high tech; the head of the giant consulting firm McKinsey &
Company is an IIT grad, so is the vice-chairman of Citigroup, and the former
CEO of US Airways. Fortune 500 head hunters are always on the lookout for
that IIT degree.
VINOD KHOSLA:
They are favored over almost anybody else. If you are a Wasp walking in for
a job, you wouldn't have as much pre-assigned credibility as you do if
you're an engineer from IIT.
LESLEY STAHL:
Ninety percent of IIT students are male, and the young men we met in Bombay
know they're hot commodities. The American companies love the kids from IIT.
RAVI:
We hope so.
DHRUV:
Thank goodness.
LESLEY STAHL:
That's what we heard.
RAVI:
That's what we heard too. After I leave IIT Bombay, I hope to get a good
job.
LESLEY STAHL:
So it can be a ticket to another way of life?
RAVI:
Definitely…(ALL SAY YES TOGETHER)…
LESLEY STAHL:
And a ticket out of India.
Well, how many of you think that you're gonna end up in the United States?
RAVI:
For a while I think all of us would be there maybe, for work.
LESLEY STAHL:
At some stage?
RAVI:
At some stage.
LESLEY STAHL:
That's not the way it was supposed to be.
PRIME MINISTER NEHRU:
"I want my country to be strong."
LESLEY STAHL:
Nehru, India's first Prime Minister, created IIT 50 years ago, just after
independence, to train the scientists and engineers he knew the nation would
need to move from medieval to modern. He never imagined India would be
supplying brain-power to the whole world.
Would you say that IIT graduates are India's most valuable export?
N. RAM:
Yes, undoubtedly.
LESLEY STAHL:
N. Ram, one of India's leading journalists, says that because the stakes are
so high, a kid starts preparing early.
N. RAM:
Age seven, eight, ten.
LESLEY STAHL:
Wow!
N. RAM:
By ten, you know whether you're made, you're made for it or not.
LESLEY STAHL:
And at least half of these ten year olds told us they think they're made for
it.
But just standing out in school won't be enough; at about 16, they enroll in
a prep class where they're drilled for the IIT entrance exam. There are even
pre-dawn tutoring classes.
N. RAM:
To about eight, they're grilled, and then they go to school.
LESLEY STAHL:
Regular school.
N. RAM:
Regular school.
LESLEY STAHL:
Four thirty to eight a.m.? Are you saying they do that every day?
N. RAM:
Yes. Every day for that period.
LESLEY STAHL:
Two years?
N. RAM:
Two years. Classes 11 and 12 you do nothing but study.
LESLEY STAHL:
…and parents hover, and push, and fret.
SOURABH:
I NORMALLY STAY UP ALL NIGHT AND STUDY FOR MY EXAMS. So during this
preparation my mother never used to let me prepare my own cup of tea.
LESLEY STAHL:
So if you stayed up all night, she stayed up all night to make you tea?
SOURABH:
She used to stay up with me, yeah.
LESLEY STAHL:
After years of preparation, a day they and their families believe will make
or break the future, finally arrives.
SOURABH:
On the day of the exam, my Dad, my Mom, and my younger brother, they all
accompanied me to the center. I said okay, now you can leave, I'll come home
on my own. But I was literally amazed when I came back from the center and
see my parents and brother still waiting for me outside the center.
LESLEY STAHL:
How many hours?
SOURABH:
It was close to six hours.
LESLEY STAHL:
Six hours of testing, then an excruciating month-long wait for the results.
DRUV:
They put them on the web and you can call them up, and after ten days you
get a letter.
LESLEY STAHL:
But it's on the web so everybody knows?
DRUV:
Yeah. You don't get your marks. You just get your all-India rank.
LESLEY STAHL:
Ranks? Are you 1st, 2nd, 3rd in the country?
GUY:
Right. So it goes from 1 to 3,000 roughly.
LESLEY STAHL:
So if you were 2,999 everybody knows.
RAVI:
Everyone knows. And you're considered really lucky… (LAUGHS)…
DRUV:
The top rankers get their photographs in the paper also.
LESLEY STAHL:
The high ranks. You were one of them?
DRUV:
Yes, Somewhat, yes.
LESLEY STAHL:
What number?
DRUV:
I was 196.
LESLEY STAHL:
So did you get your picture in the paper?
DRUV:
Oh yeah.
LESLEY STAHL:
The ranking isn't just an ego trip; the top kids get to choose which campus
they want, and which major.
MARAYANA MURTHY:
It's a big deal in India. It is.
LESLEY STAHL:
Marayana Murthy, founder of the huge software company, Infosys, is known as
"the Bill Gates of India."
MARAYANA MURTHY:
It's very easy to lose hope in this country. It's very easy to set your
aspirations low in this country. But amidst all this, this competition,
among high quality students, this institution of IIT sets your aspiration
much higher.
LESLEY STAHL:
Now what about your own son?
MARAYANA MURTHY:
Well, my son, he wanted, probably wanted to do computer science at IIT. To
do computer science at IIT you had to be in the top 200, and he couldn't do
that, so he went to Cornell instead.
LESLEY STAHL:
Think about that for a minute: a kid from India using an Ivy League
university as a safety school! That's how smart these guys are.
MARAYANA MURTHY:
I do know cases where students who couldn't get into computer science at
IIT's, they have gotten scholarships at MIT, at Princeton, at Cal Tech. Yes,
sure.
LESLEY STAHL:
You wouldn't mistake this for MIT or Cal Tech. It's the final exam of metal
fabrication class, required for every IIT freshman. Call it shop class on
steroids: using just a saw and a file, students have to cut quarter-inch
steel into an assigned shape…measured to the millimeter. It's an
illustration of IIT's emphasis on engineering basics, precision, and
discipline.
Nobody majors in music at IIT. The education is not well-rounded, but in
science and technology, IIT undergrads leave their American counterparts in
the dust.
VINOD KHOSLA:
When I finished IIT-Delhi and went to Carnegie Mellon for my Masters, I
thought I was cruising all the way through Carnegie-Mellon because it was so
easy relative to the education I had gotten at IIT Dehli.
LESLEY STAHL:
If you think of engineering students as nerds, not particularly bold or
creative, IIT somehow breaks the mold. It turns computer geeks into
risk-takers and leaders.
I'm wondering why so many IIT graduates are entrepreneurs. Why so many start
their own companies?
RAVI:
I think it's because of the confidence. We're lucky enough to be told by
people around us that we're good and that we have a bright future. And that
gives us a lot of confidence.
LESLEY STAHL:
There's something else: students act like entrepreneurs the whole time
they're at IIT. They run everything in the dorms, which might be mistaken
for cellblocks if not for all the Pentium 4 PC's. They organize the sports
themselves…they even hire the chefs and pick the food in the mess halls. And
unlike so many other institutions in India, they all know they're here
because they deserve to be here.
Can you slip somebody a couple of rupees and say "come on, get my son in?"
MARAYANA MURTHY:
No, no. Never.
LESLEY STAHL:
Impossible?
MARAYANA MURTHY:
Impossible. Impossible. There is no corruption. It is a pure meritocracy.
LESLEY STAHL:
IIT may also be one of the best educational bargains in the world. It costs
a family just about $700 dollars a year for room, board and tuition. That's
less than 20% of the true cost; the Indian Government subsidizes all the
rest.
While some of its grads stay, and have helped build India's flourishing
high-tech sector, almost two-thirds, up to 2,000 people, leave every year,
most for the U.S.
N. RAM:
Some people would say you're subsidizing factories which produce largely for
the higher end of the American employment market.
LESLEY STAHL:
So there's this debate here that says why are we spending so much money to
educate these brilliant young men who just leave?
N. RAM:
You don't have to be crudely nationalistic to raise this question. There's a
need here. There's a demand here, and these guys are simply not available!
LESLEY STAHL:
How many of them ever come back?
MARAYANA MURTHY:
A very small percentage. But my view is that we also have to work harder
here to make it attractive for them to come back.
LESLEY STAHL:
Murthy is doing his part. His software company, Infosys, hires about 150 IIT
graduates every year to stay and work in India. He says the brain drain
doesn't worry him.
MARAYANA MURTHY:
Sure, Nehru wanted all these men and women to contribute to the success of
India. And they are contributing to the success of India in some way.
Because today the respect for the Indian professional is much higher in the
United States than what it was in the 50's.
LESLEY STAHL:
But does that translate into investment money coming into India?
MARAYANA MURTHY:
Some of these people who have reached the higher echelons in the corporate
world in the U.S., you know, they have persuaded their corporations to start
operations in India. Whether it's Texas Instruments or whether it's General
Electric, whether it's Citibank.
LESLEY STAHL:
So it does mean investment back here?
MARAYANA MURTHY:
Oh yes, it does mean.
VINOD KHOSLA:
I have no question that India now is benefiting significantly from the
cycling of knowledge, the back and forth. No question about it.
LESLEY STAHL:
And individual IIT grads are sending lots of money back home, too. But the
U.S. still gets the better end of the bargain.
VINOD KHOSLA:
How many jobs have entrepreneurs, Indian entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley
created for the last 15-20 years? Hundreds of thousands, I would guess.
LESLEY STAHL:
For this society.
VINOD KHOSLA:
For this society, here in America. For America to be able to pick off this
human capital, these well-trained engineers with great minds, is a great
deal.
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