Imagining India - Ideas For the New Century

I learned quite a bit from this book, as someone outside India and the Indian community, and thoroughly enjoyed Nilekani's writing. It's a wide-ranging treatise with many big agendas; it covers education, infrastructure, environmental challenges, government intervention, and the role of historical narrative, among other things. Biggest among its agenda--and the one that I wager will generate the most debate--is Nilekani's own version of what I'd call a modern combination of neoliberalism and neoprogressivism that seems to be gaining ground. The general idea is that governments should take a leading role to promote social progress by creating an infrastructure that allows individuals to form their own destinies (good education, good health care, good physical infrastructure, a light-touch form of regulation that ensures quality, and occasional direct welfare payments) rather than preserving oases of protection and easily abused subsidies for particular interest groups, notably unions, small businesses, and disadvantaged castes.

It is not often that an engineer writes a book about his country. It is even rarer if that engineer is from IIT and is also the CEO of a company with over 80,000 employees. So when I first heard about this book, my reaction was the same when I saw an advertisement in which Hema Malini models for a water filter. The question that arose was does she really have to do this? Similarly I asked does Mr.Nilekani really have to do this? Keeping in mind the author's illustrious background, a forward by Thomas Friedman and the backing of a "stellar team of editors", my expectations from this book went sky high. In order to understand it, enjoy it and do full justice to it, I read this book for no more than an hour each day. If one were to sum up the essence of this book in one word, then it would be "heavy". This book is heavy in weight, in content and full of heavy weights (i.e. experts in different fields). The gist of the book is that it explores the growth of India from the era of Nehru to Manmohan Singh and beyond. In 1991 economic reforms were introduced in India and with that says Mr. Nilekani "the baton for growth passed from the government to the human spirit of creativity, adventure and enterprise". Beautiful words! The author explains this by exploring different issues. He has put in a lot of effort to study each issue, discuss it with the local experts and then write about it. For a writer it is one thing to understand a complex issue but what requires extraordinary skill is to break it into simple blocks of past, present and future and then write about it in simple words, so that the common man can fully understand it. Thomas Friedman calls Mr.Nilekani "an explainer" and I couldn't agree with him more. The structure of the book is well defined by organizing these issues into four sections in the book. Richard Carlson in his book ' Don't Sweat The Small Stuff' says that the single greatest discovery by mankind is the fact that you can change the world by changing your attitude. Nothing demonstrates this better than the first section of this book which deals with issues "where attitudes have changed radically and are at the heart of Indian dynamism today". These include family planning, acceptance of English language by masses, IT etc. I especially enjoyed reading the way Mr.Nilekani has explained how IT has brought about a revolution in banking, farming, stock market, elections, railways etc. For example he tells you about ICICI, a small and weak bank initially. It was the first to adopt IT and then the bank was able to efficiently deal with 250,000 transactions a day, with a staff of only five employees! Its common in the west but this is what Malcolm Gladwell calls a 'tipping point'. Another great story was about how the common man started investing in the Indian stock market once the wealth tax was eliminated and IT brought it efficiency. This is a huge attitude change for the common man, from investing in only gold to a vibrant stock ma

Nandan Nilekani is a technocrat. Not surprising for the guy who founded Infosys after graduating from IIT, but still worth remembering. So of course he sees problems as having technological solutions. The thing is, he also describes how the absence of technology has created these problems, so it's not unreasonable for him to suggest that they could be solved with technology. His review of the development of Indian democracy and society is very educational to a non-Indian reader. It's tough for those of us who aren't from India to understand how things got to be the way they are. Nilekani wreaks order onto the chaos in a comprehensible manner. Nilekani has obviously had access to many government officials and academics in writing this book and it shows. If you are looking to gain deeper knowledge without being flooded with detail, this book will get you there. I read this book just after Nilekani was named to the Indian cabinet to implement a national ID card system. Apparently he insisted on having a cabinet-level position because he perceived a lot of upcoming problems with implementing his proposals. After reading this book I know why he thinks that way. And if he really believes what he wrote here, good luck...

Author Nanden Nilekani, co-founder of Infosys, traces the ideas that shaped India's past and present, and looks forward into its future. India's socialist ethos is still dominant, rooted in abuses from early British rule, memories of the Great Depression, and greatly exaggerated growth statistics from the Soviet Union's early days. Initially, after gaining independence, entry into industries set aside for the private sector was regulated through a licensing system, and the government controlled pricing of commodities. This spawned massive expansion of a slow-moving bureaucracy, the opportunity for corruption, and eventual change. Until that change occurred, businesses procured multiple licenses to preempt competition, resulting in most industries having just 1-2 competitors, poor quality, and high prices. The 1980s and 1990s brought change out of frustration and a nearly bankrupt government treasury. De-licensing, dismantling price controls in some industries, lowering tariffs, and changed tax policy that no longer sapped profits brought reinvestment, growth, and a 5X multiplication in government revenues (aka Arthur Laffer) in ten years. Annual growth has exceeded 6% since the early 1990s, a record in history exceeded only by China. Nilekani, however, conceded that much more remains to be done - India still ranks below China and Pakistan in ease of doing businesses (especially new start-ups), and he doubts any businessman could be elected to high office. Nilekani has no doubts that India's Democracy is superior to China's government, and cites China's tumult under Mao and even since as evidence. However, his contention that India's laissez faire approach to birth control will be more effective than China's mandated "one-child" rule is not compelling. India has endured 30 famines between 1770 and 1950 - entire provinces saw a third of their population disappear; 50% of its population is too young to vote. Growth has decreased, mostly due to reduced infant mortality, but still exceeds that in China. Both nations have significant selective births - 925 females vs. 1,000 males in India, and 855 vs. 1,000 in China. India has the largest number of official languages - 22. The total number of languages used ranges from 150 to 1,500, depending on the definition. The English language, like capitalism, has gone through ups and downs in India. The British first encouraged it as a means of employing locals to replace high-cost British civil servants. This tainted the language with an association to imperialism. Then it was promoted as a means of blocking Hinduism and its caste system. Now outsourcing has made English the entry ticket to a global economy, as well as a unifying factor within India. About 30% are literate in English; overall, about 1/3 the population is illiterate in any language. IT in India has been opposed by unions - especially in banking. This changed in 1993 when foreign banks and their IT were allowed in. Scandal in India's then ma

I am half way through the book. The book is well-written and very easy to read. It presents great insight into the factors that brought India to where it currently is and what needs to be done to achieve prosperity in coming decades. Though it is not a historical account of India, it presents a nice summary of events since India's independence and presents some intuitive (and interesting) answers to questions such as "how did India manage to survive as a multi-party democracy?". A must read!!