The Hindu Business Line : Real and imagined

In 2008 it should seem fantastical, and more so to our teens and 20-somethings, that in 1984 “the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, the BJP-affiliated trade union, observed Labour day as ‘anti-computer day’. Rajiv Gandhi’s idea of electronification ‘as a tool for the removal of poverty’ attracted wide disdain.”

Predictably, the most interesting and incisive portions of Nandan Nilekani’s Imagining India (Penguin-Allen Lane) are those that talk about India’s IT strengths. As a cofounder of Infosys the author is uniquely placed to bring us nuggets that inform, startle, amaze you. And also make you laugh.

But then, in the early 1980s, it was no laughing matter for the author and his co-entrepreneurs that they were not even recognised as entrepreneurs by the government. Until India’s 1984 IT policy, “software did not qualify as a business and we were ineligible for bank loans, and our start-up capital was a pile of crumpled bills that were our pooled savings. We struggled to get hold of a computer,” says Nilekani.

The attempt in 1986 to computerise the passport department met with stiff resistance. “Across public sector offices, computers that arrived were often dumped in a corner and forgotten.”

Even those daunted by the 500-odd pages of the book, would do well to read at least three chapters — ‘India, by its People’, ‘From Rejection to Open Arms’ (entrepreneurs) and ‘From Maneaters to Enablers’ (IT). Another must-read portion of this book — which the author has managed to keep remarkably readable through a simple style, clarity of thought, interesting anecdotes and not shying away from calling a spade a spade — is the one relating to English language providing “upward mobility” to a chunk of our people.

With the IT sector, particularly BPOs, requiring English-speaking ability, thousands of English-medium private schools have mushroomed in our villages and urban slums, some bearing titles such as Oxford and Cambridge! And “English training in India has surged to a $100 million industry in annual revenues.”

Equity market investors, even though now in a daze thanks to plunging markets, will find interesting the part detailing how some brokers who duped their clients during paper trading, resisted technology entering this sphere but were later brought on board. In Indian Railways, IT “freed up passengers from long queues, the mercy of touts and tickets being sold in the black”, as pointed out by Sudhir Kumar, the famous IAS officer in Lalu Prasad’s ministry.

Tipping point

Nilekani says it was the rise of the telecom sector that provided the tipping point to transform IT attitudes across the country. The platforms for banking, mobile phone, Internet and railway reservation came together to provide an unprecedented convenience and speed of operation for consumers. The rural agri sector is now its beneficiary through commodity trading terminals in vegetable mandis across the country.

The book takes us through the “cold dark years” of socialist India where entrepreneurs were looked at with suspicion, to the “arrival” of India at Davos in 2006 (India everywhere campaign) or New York in 2007 (Incredible India@60). But striking a sombre note, the author says that even while the world acknowledges “India’s new promise, the opportunity of the global economy has highlighted our internal differences — between the educated and illiterate, the public and private sectors, between the well and the poorly governed,” and the poor and the rich.

He cautions us on India’s internal divisions: “Never have the external circumstances for India been so fortunate. And never has the need for resolving the internal conflicts been so urgent. The challenge for India is really within — in the decisions that will emerge out of our political struggles, our debate and our tempestuous democracy.”

Nilekani also relates the story of India’s economic reforms in a narrative laced with anecdotes, sometimes wry humour and often with a rare insight. These are the racy portions of the book. Giving an interesting face and form to numbers is another of his positives.

But this IT wizard’s endeavour was to go “beyond what was very easy for me” to write… and hence he ventures into our political system, caste system and caste politics, regional and religious divides, grassroots democracy as well as labour reforms. True you cannot “imagine” India’s story, promise and potential without dissecting crucial aspects of the various factors that make us what we are today and can deliver us to a higher plane or plunge us into a pit.

Young India

An “excellent research associate” and detailed interactions with 126 experts in various fields have made this book a good reference point for students of history or India. Nilekani talks about the fantastic “demographic dividend” that India can reap from the largest young population in the world, but only if it is well educated and empowered.

But he also cautions us about the reservations expressed by many of those he talked to; of the “risks and pitfall” that could derail our journey, including the failure to quickly bridge the gap between the haves and have-nots. “India’s time as a dynamic, growing economy will pass quickly, as more and more people are shut out of the dream, and promise of growth,” says the author.

But then, India — with the chaos of democracy, brimming possibilities of its people and the despicable designs of its politicians who connive to divide and rule — has been a story of both hope and despair. Nilekani sums it up neatly: “India now stands evenly balanced, between our reluctance to change in the face of immense challenges and the possibilities we have if we do tackle these issues head-on. The consequences of these two choices are in extremes — in the long term we will either become a country that greatly disappoints when compared to our potential or one that beats all expectations.”

Some harsh editing, or meethi chhuri, as we journos call it, would have made it a more readable book and reached a wider audience.

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