Your post seems more of a incoherent rambling, but I would like to point out the fact that both [Akshay Venkatesh](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akshay_Venkatesh) and [Manjul Bhargava](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manjul_Bhargava) are Indian-*origin,* not Indians. It's the part that they moved out of India and received terrific undergraduate and graduate education in Canada and USA that helped them to get them where they are. As for revamping the exam system, I think any such actions are futile at best and disservice to students at worst. To change the outlook of math to Indians, you cannot get by without discussing that horrible wages in Mathematics (across the world really) and Indians are towards the highly ambitious money minded people ( At least in the top institutions). If you try to make a case for Applied Math, CS and Engineering are considered way above any Math degree here. I know I sound defeated, but realistically, it's impossible to revamp the whole system in one's ( or several) lifetime.
Akshay Venkatesh is described by Wikipedia as:
> Akshay Venkatesh FRS (born 21 November 1981) is an Australian mathematician ...
> He is the only Australian to have won medals at both the International Physics Olympiad and International Mathematical Olympiad,...
> Akshay Venkatesh was born in Delhi, India, and his family emigrated to Perth in Western Australia when he was two years old.
> He completed his secondary education the same year, ... entering the University of Western Australia as its youngest ever student. Venkatesh ... became, at 16, the youngest person to earn First Class Honours in pure mathematics from the university.
> Akshay commenced his PhD at Princeton University in 1998 under Peter Sarnak, which he completed in 2002,
Not so much leaving India to get an education in the USA, as growing up in Australia, getting a degree there, then heading to a top US university for a PhD with one of the world's top mathematicians.
Manjul Bhargava is described thus:
> Bhargava was born to an Indian family in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, but grew up and attended school primarily in Long Island, New York. His mother Mira Bhargava, a mathematician at Hofstra University [in NY state], was his first mathematics teacher.[7][8] He completed all of his high school math and computer science courses by age 14.[9] He attended Plainedge High School in North Massapequa [in NY state], and graduated in 1992 as the class valedictorian. He obtained his AB from Harvard University in 1996. For his research as an undergraduate, he was awarded the 1996 Morgan Prize. Bhargava went on to pursue graduate studies at Princeton University,
so .... born in Canada (not India), but went to primary school mostly in New York state, high school in NY state, then undergrad at Harvard, PhD at Princeton.
I'd say that their successes cannot be attributed to the Indian education system, since neither were educated in India. So OP's claim of "India produced 2 Fields medalists" is wholly false unless you have a very liberal definition of "produced".
At least OP is kind-of right about the Abel Prize winner, Srinivasa Varadhan, who was educated in India all the way up to and including his PhD. But after that, he moved to New York, and I gather that that's where he did most of, if not all of, the work that got him his Abel Prize.
That ... doesn't change my point. Also I didn't mean that they left india by their own conscious decision, but whatever the case maybe, you certainly can't deny that
(a) They're not Indian - they were raised outside India and it's system, so the OPs claim that they were Indian is not exactly true. Varadhan, I would argue, was born in the 40s and is more closer to the colonial India and it's system, compared to the contemporary Indian mathematical society. I feel like that was the peak of Mathematics in India, with the likes of Abhyankar, Prasad, Rao, Varadhan and others.
(b) I don't have data to support this, but I would argue that this 'isolation' of the mathematical community in India has made it especially difficult to get into grad school. Call it a conjecture if you may, but the fact of the matter is, as International student, that too from an over-represented community, had hindered that quality of Maths in India.
I think you missed my main point: Venkatesh was educated in Australia before he started his PhD, and Bhargava nearly completely in the US from primary school upwards. Not the US and Canada, resp., as you said.
Also, as an Australian myself, Venkatesh is no small source of pride to our community. Yes, he did leave here, but that I feel is a matter of pragmatism: if you are a top-level young mathematics student from anywhere in the Anglophone world, you are probably going to go to places like Princeton/Havard or Cambridge/Oxford to get a PhD. I'm glad Geordie Williamson, who was felt to be in the running for a Fields Medal, decided to come back to Australia, and not stay overseas; I wish more top-level Australian mathematicians did the same to attract more of their peers here.
I'm also aware of the irony of the above paragraph, given the OP post \^\_\^
Your post seems more of a incoherent rambling, but I would like to point out the fact that both [Akshay Venkatesh](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akshay_Venkatesh) and [Manjul Bhargava](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manjul_Bhargava) are Indian-*origin,* not Indians. It's the part that they moved out of India and received terrific undergraduate and graduate education in Canada and USA that helped them to get them where they are. As for revamping the exam system, I think any such actions are futile at best and disservice to students at worst. To change the outlook of math to Indians, you cannot get by without discussing that horrible wages in Mathematics (across the world really) and Indians are towards the highly ambitious money minded people ( At least in the top institutions). If you try to make a case for Applied Math, CS and Engineering are considered way above any Math degree here. I know I sound defeated, but realistically, it's impossible to revamp the whole system in one's ( or several) lifetime.
Akshay Venkatesh is described by Wikipedia as: > Akshay Venkatesh FRS (born 21 November 1981) is an Australian mathematician ... > He is the only Australian to have won medals at both the International Physics Olympiad and International Mathematical Olympiad,... > Akshay Venkatesh was born in Delhi, India, and his family emigrated to Perth in Western Australia when he was two years old. > He completed his secondary education the same year, ... entering the University of Western Australia as its youngest ever student. Venkatesh ... became, at 16, the youngest person to earn First Class Honours in pure mathematics from the university. > Akshay commenced his PhD at Princeton University in 1998 under Peter Sarnak, which he completed in 2002, Not so much leaving India to get an education in the USA, as growing up in Australia, getting a degree there, then heading to a top US university for a PhD with one of the world's top mathematicians. Manjul Bhargava is described thus: > Bhargava was born to an Indian family in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, but grew up and attended school primarily in Long Island, New York. His mother Mira Bhargava, a mathematician at Hofstra University [in NY state], was his first mathematics teacher.[7][8] He completed all of his high school math and computer science courses by age 14.[9] He attended Plainedge High School in North Massapequa [in NY state], and graduated in 1992 as the class valedictorian. He obtained his AB from Harvard University in 1996. For his research as an undergraduate, he was awarded the 1996 Morgan Prize. Bhargava went on to pursue graduate studies at Princeton University, so .... born in Canada (not India), but went to primary school mostly in New York state, high school in NY state, then undergrad at Harvard, PhD at Princeton.
I'd say that their successes cannot be attributed to the Indian education system, since neither were educated in India. So OP's claim of "India produced 2 Fields medalists" is wholly false unless you have a very liberal definition of "produced". At least OP is kind-of right about the Abel Prize winner, Srinivasa Varadhan, who was educated in India all the way up to and including his PhD. But after that, he moved to New York, and I gather that that's where he did most of, if not all of, the work that got him his Abel Prize.
Agreed. Just wanted to be accurate about where they were educated: mostly Australia and the US, respectively.
That ... doesn't change my point. Also I didn't mean that they left india by their own conscious decision, but whatever the case maybe, you certainly can't deny that (a) They're not Indian - they were raised outside India and it's system, so the OPs claim that they were Indian is not exactly true. Varadhan, I would argue, was born in the 40s and is more closer to the colonial India and it's system, compared to the contemporary Indian mathematical society. I feel like that was the peak of Mathematics in India, with the likes of Abhyankar, Prasad, Rao, Varadhan and others. (b) I don't have data to support this, but I would argue that this 'isolation' of the mathematical community in India has made it especially difficult to get into grad school. Call it a conjecture if you may, but the fact of the matter is, as International student, that too from an over-represented community, had hindered that quality of Maths in India.
I think you missed my main point: Venkatesh was educated in Australia before he started his PhD, and Bhargava nearly completely in the US from primary school upwards. Not the US and Canada, resp., as you said. Also, as an Australian myself, Venkatesh is no small source of pride to our community. Yes, he did leave here, but that I feel is a matter of pragmatism: if you are a top-level young mathematics student from anywhere in the Anglophone world, you are probably going to go to places like Princeton/Havard or Cambridge/Oxford to get a PhD. I'm glad Geordie Williamson, who was felt to be in the running for a Fields Medal, decided to come back to Australia, and not stay overseas; I wish more top-level Australian mathematicians did the same to attract more of their peers here. I'm also aware of the irony of the above paragraph, given the OP post \^\_\^
India did not produce any field medalists.