science driven by curiosity is virtually written off as conspicuous consumption.

Pitroda was sidelined upon the defeat of the Manmohan Singh regime. But the IT idea of innovation continued in the lionizing of Nandan Nilekani and Narayan Murthy of Infosys, both of whom played out the technological mana of IT. In his convocation speech to the Indian Institute of Science at Bangalore, Murthy challenged Indian science by asking whether institutions such as the Indian Institute of Science or the Indian Institute of Technology have created even one invention that has become a household name around the globe.

Murthy was clear that success in science needed a technological project, that discovery and invention were less major than innovation, the commercialization of a product. Success was now to be measured in money and social impact, and the older ideas of creativity in science looked outmoded. Even the research paper had to be measured in terms of bibliometric impact factors rather than the sheer creativity of the idea. Success, and success in science, is now seen through corporate eyes, and science driven by curiosity is virtually written off as conspicuous consumption. The impact of Murthy's speech was confusing. First, the idea of public good now yielded to corporate projects. More critically, it created a schizophrenic split in the idea of Bangalore as a science center. The old legacy of the Raman era seems remote. Bangalore now evokes a corporate world where science as the pursuit of ideas is as obsolete as the Bakelite insulator. Murthy was seeing success as a return on investment while ignoring the creative sense of science as a knowledge-producing activity.