Bengaluru: IT industry veteran N R Narayana Murthy on Wednesday emphasised the need to strengthen India’s national and institutional focus on research, saying it is the only path to make the country and the world a better place. He called on India to create an aspirational, meritocratic, and competitive research ecosystem that offers a rewarding environment for scientists, engineers, economists, mathematicians and humanists.

Speaking at the announcement of the Infosys Prize 2025 here, Murthy quoted Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, and said research represents “the broadening of the mind” that leads to unravelling the mysteries of nature, seeing what others have not yet seen, and finding plausibly impossible solutions to the problems faced by humankind. “The need of the day for our country is to strengthen our national and institutional focus on research for a better India and for a better world,” he said.

Murthy cited former US President Franklin D Roosevelt’s letter to Dr Vannevar Bush, head of the Office of Scientific Research and Development under his administration, saying it led to a monumental report titled “Science — The Endless Frontier” and to the formation of the National Science Foundation in the US. He further said the report paved the way for America’s leadership in scientific and engineering research productivity, its space explorations, uninterrupted research funding, and the success of its universities, laboratories and corporations — making the US a superpower.

Quoting a range of thinkers from Jawaharlal Nehru to Richard Feynman, Alan Turing, Thomas Alva Edison and Jennifer Doudna, Murthy said curiosity, imagination and persistence form the bedrock of scientific discovery. “Research in universities, laboratories, libraries and companies is born from such curiosity, imagination, Socratic questioning, daring and humility. Research effort needs audacity, daring, unbridled imagination and the ability not to be cowed down by failures,” he said. He emphasised that research is also about not feeling defeated by failures, learning from them, avoiding mistakes in the future and improving continuously.

Murthy recalled that the much-respected economist-philosopher Dr Amartya Sen believed that development is freedom and conducted extensive research on how these two ideas are linked. “Research in economics and social sciences guides us to understand how science and technology translate into prosperity, justice, equity, freedom and dignity. Research in the humanities reminds us that knowledge must always serve an ethical purpose.” According to him, the voices of Franklin Roosevelt and Vannevar Bush, Jawaharlal Nehru and Richard Feynman, Alan Turing and Thomas Edison, Joseph Fourier and Manjul Bhargava, Milton Friedman and Amartya Sen and Charles Darwin and Jennifer Doudna underline a common theme — that research is humanity’s noblest collective enterprise. “It demands courage, persistence and imagination. It bridges science and society, reason and values, and ethics and dignity,” he said.

Murthy said India must recommit itself to nurturing research ecosystems. “Such nurturing requires us to make this country an aspirational, meritocratic, competitive, welcoming, exciting, comfortable, rewarding and enjoyable place for researchers and their families — among our young scientists, engineers, economists, mathematicians and humanists,” he said. “It is our sacred duty to ensure that these role models find a highly competitive intellectual environment that reveres a hierarchy of ideas rather than a hierarchy of titles and offices.”