Chennai: India and the US should collaborate in higher education, technology and research areas to benefit mutually and foster a stronger bond of friendship between the two countries, Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy said on Friday.

Murthy further added that India and the US should work on an agreement to send 10,000 Indian students to the US to do their PhDs in important areas in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education, every year over the next fifty years. This would bring benefits in terms of creating lots of innovative solutions that can solve problems across sectors in India.

The agreement should specify that the students would not be given employment in the US once they finish their PhDs and they would have to come back to India and serve here for at least ten years, Murthy said.

The Infosys co-founder suggested that India should issue 10-year multiple-entry visas every year to hundreds of thousands of graduate students from the US. He said Indian and US academia should collaborate in developing solutions in emerging areas such as Internet of Things (IoT).