Imagining India: Ideas For The New Century - Tapa dura

Indian software entrepreneur Nandan Nilekani has written the definitive book about modern India.

Nilekani gives us a fascinating new perspective for the twenty-first century, defying received and imported wisdom, and showing us what is really at stake in the world's largest democracy. He reveals why India's huge population has now become her greatest strength; how information technology is bringing the benefits of globalization; why rapid urbanization is transforming social and political life; and how we can learn from India's difficult journey towards a single internal market.

He also gets to the heart of debates about labour reform, the social security system, higher education and the role of the state. And he asks the key questions of the future: how will India as a global power avoid the mistakes of earlier development models? Will further access to the open market continue to stimulate such extraordinary growth? And how will all this affect - and be shaped by - her young people.

'Seattle has Bill. Bangalore has Nandan. He is a founder, and currently president, of Infosys Technologies Ltd., based in Bangalore - India's Silicon Valley. Infosys, Wipro and Tata Consultancy Services are the Microsoft, IBM and Sun Microsystems of India.

What makes Nilekani unique? For me it comes down to one phrase: great explainer. Yes, he and N.R. Narayana Murthy, Infosys' legendary chairman, have built a great global company from scratch. But the reason Nilekani, 50, is so sought out is that he has a unique ability not simply to program software but also to explain how that program fits into the emerging trends in computing, how those trends will transform the computing business and how that transformation will affect global politics and economics. It was his insight that the global playing field was being "leveled" by technology that inspired me to write the book The World Is Flat.

In this era of mounting complexity - with more people, systems and products entwined in a bewildering web of global networks - explaining is an enormously valuable skill. And it explains why, if you sit outside his office for a day, you notice that half the people going in are employees looking for instructions or customers looking for deals; the other half are politicians, journalists and ministers from around the world looking for an explanation of what it all means.'
Thomas L. Friedman, Time