Book review
Since the early 1990s, India has witnessed great social, political and cultural change. As the world’s largest democracy, its most diverse nation and one of its fastest growing economies, India is now, sixty years after Independence, universally regarded as an emerging superpower.





Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani, who has been a key player in India’s growth story and was chosen by Time magazine as one of the hundred most influential people in the world, points out that the country’s future rests on more than simply economic growth; it also depends on reform and innovation in all sectors of public life. Looking closely at our recent history, he examines the ideas and attitudes that have evolved with the times and contributed to our progress, as also those that keep us shackled to old, unproductive and fundamentally undemocratic ways. He discusses how, despite good intentions and astonishing idealism, our early socialist policies stifled growth and weakened our democracy; how, contrary to received wisdom, India’s large and overwhelmingly young population has now become our greatest strength; how information technology is revolutionizing not just business but also governance in the everyday life of a vast majority of Indians; and how rapid urbanization is transforming both our society and our politics.





He also gets to the heart of charged debates about caste politics, labour reform, infrastructure, higher education, the English language in India and the role of the state in a globalized world where the wealth of big corporations exceeds that of some nations. And as he does this, 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 this growth affect – and be shaped by – the country’s young people?





India is in the middle of a huge transformational process, Nilekani argues, and only a safety net of ideas—from genuinely inclusive democracy to social security, from public health to sustainable energy—can transcend political agendas and safeguard the country’s future.







About the author On finishing his term at IIT, Bombay in 1978, Nandan did not, as was the practice then, try and find himself a job abroad – something he attributes to sheer inertia. He did consider applying for an MBA course, but even that fell through when he was taken ill on the eve of the IIM entrance exam. Instead, Nandan walked into the offices of the Mumbai-based Patni Computer Systems to try and find a job there. He was interviewed by N.R. Narayana Murthy – the rapport was immediate and Murthy hired the young engineer right away; neither suspected at the time that the relationship would last long, and get etched in India’s corporate history. “What attracted me to Patni was the fact that software was a sunrise industry in those days. The ’70s was the era of the mini-computer. In 1977, IBM had left India and the market seemed to be going through some sort of churn. It was an industry that was expected to grow rapidly. I was excited at the prospect of working at Patni with Murthy at the helm,” he recounts. Three years later, in 1981, Murthy walked out of Patni following a dis-agreement with one of the Patni brothers – and naturally, his entire division walked out with him. “He (Murthy) had extraordinary leadership skills and the entire division hero-worshipped him”, says Nandan. The defectors decided to start their own company with Murthy in the lead – the company, of course, was Infosys, and this decision effectively re-wrote the story of the Indian software industry. There were a lot of apprehensions about the future – “India was then a closed economy, with many foreign exchange restrictions, and the telecom infrastructure was not good. Venture capital was unheard of, and the risks were enormous,” recalls Nandan. Nandan’s brother Vijay talks about his initial doubts, “I was very skeptical of his (Nandan’s) plans to move to Bangalore to start Infosys with no money, no influential connections, only 5 or 6 people, a pledge to never foster corruption, etc. When I derided it as a ‘pipe dream’ that he may live to regret, Nandan just listened and smiled.” Infosys was registered as a private limited company on July 2, 1981. Infosys co-founder N S Raghavan’s house in Matunga, northcentral Mumbai, was its registered office. It was then known as Infosys Consultants Pvt Ltd. Later, Infosys set up its first office in Pune, at the Murthys’ home, moving to Bangalore in 1983 when they acquired their first client, Data Basics Corporation, from the USA. What happened next has been one of India’s most widely-chronicled and inspiring tales of entrepreneurial success.