Hotmail founder Sabeer Bhatia triggered a debate over India’s social and economic direction, criticizing what he calls a national tendency to prioritize religious and regional identity over individual merit, and questioning whether India’s celebrated growth is translating into real progress for its people.
“The fundamental problem in India,” Bhatia posted on X, “we see each other first as members of a religion or region—Hindu, Muslim, Tamil, Punjabi—before we see the individual. Until we shift this mindset and celebrate individual identity and freedom, real progress will remain out of reach.”
His remarks follow a series of podcast appearances where Bhatia painted a bleak picture of India’s innovation ecosystem. He argued that a cultural fear of failure, coupled with academic pressure to pursue conventional careers, prevents young Indians from thinking independently or taking creative risks.
“Even the best students are funneled into engineering or medicine,” he said, “not because it’s their passion, but because it’s safe.”
Bhatia has been particularly critical of the education system’s emphasis on theory over practice. “Indian engineers often graduate without having built a single project,” he noted, contrasting this with hands-on approaches in the West and China. He also pointed to how Chinese policy subsidizes education and values technical skill, while India’s model, he said, treats education as a gateway to prestige rather than a foundation for learning.
On India’s economic performance, Bhatia took aim at the celebration of GDP milestones, calling them “vanity metrics” that mask deeper inequalities.
“What good is being the world’s fourth-largest economy if basic quality of life hasn’t improved?” he asked.
He warned that growth without wide distribution is “just inflation in disguise,” highlighting that millions still live in poverty and many continue to seek opportunities abroad.
The real priority, he argued, should be mass education and the development of intellectual property rooted in original thought.
