Imagining India: The Idea of a Renewed Nation.

• Author: Baldyga, Leonard J.
• Position: Book review

Nandan Nilekani, Imagining India: The Idea of a Renewed Nation, New York: The Penguin Press HC; 2009, ISBN-10: 1594202044 and ISBN-13: 978-1594202049, $29.95, 528 pp.

With the good fortune of having served in the country some 20 years ago, I had no difficulty imagining the India Nandan Nilekani portrays in his voluminous and superbly written book: Imagining India: The Idea of a Renewed Nation. In visits to Bangalore I saw the huge satellite dishes Texas Instruments had installed to beam the R&D created by the talented and innovative Indian engineers and technicians to its headquarters in the United States. And it is no surprise to me that Nandan Nilekani, the software entrepreneur, founded his highly successful Infosys Technologies Company in Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India. At the U.S. Information Agency offices in New Delhi, we also recognized the benefits of hiring the same Indian Ph.D.s to develop our programming and budgeting computer software for USIA operations throughout South Asia.

Nanden Nilekani's book is a compact history of India's difficult transformation from its colonialist past, the heroic struggle for independence, the agonizing efforts to create a Democratic nation where there are 22 official languages, continual Muslim-Hindu strife, persistent societal issues stemming from the caste system, a carryover socialist/Fabian economic mindset hindering business development, immense bureaucratic roadblocks, widespread corruption and ongoing governance issues between the central and state governments--into a global giant in the IT (information technology) field. And for Nilekani, India's future will depend on IT and the reformist ideas he promotes throughout the book.

Nilekani structures his narrative into four distinct sections. The first deals with "Ideas That Have Arrived" and includes (1) the recognition that English is critical if India is to remain globally competitive and he points out the massive efforts underway to teach English in rural as well as urban communities; and (2) the radical attitudinal change toward business and entrepreneurship that has allowed improvements tied to IT in banking, agriculture, railways, the stock market, and even the running of Indian elections. And while there are skeptics, Nilekani argues that India is and will be benefiting from the "demographic dividend" and is "a young, fresh-faced nation in a graying world." India, he points out, already has the "largest reservoir of skilled...