India and Globalisation

Book review: Imagining India: Ideas for the New Century
Review by James Lamont in New Delhi

Published: January 30 2009 02:22 | Last updated: January 30 2009 02:22

Imagining India: Ideas for the New Century
By Nandan Nilekani, 2008
Penguin Books

Asked to vet a shortlist of global Indians, Nandan Nilekani helped pick authors Salman Rushdie and Arvand Adiga, Dev Patel, the actor in the newly released film Slumdog Millionaire, Swraj Paul, the deputy speaker in the UK's House of Lords and Sanjay Gupta, the Obama administration's choice as head of the US surgeon-general's office.

A modest omission was Mr Nilekani himself, the co-chairman of Infosys, the IT outsourcing company. His book, Imagining India; Ideas for the New Century, is unlikely to cause the stir of Mr Adiga's Booker Prize-winning The White Tiger or Golden Globe-acclaimed Slumdog Millionaire.

But for corporate India, the IT executive has become a philosopher king, pondering the challenges for society and business of India's development as it rises in the global order and integrates more with the world.

Mr Nilekani’s discussions about India's inner debates have become highlights of business conferences since his book was launched locally last November. Would-be foreign investors make a beeline for his company's Bangalore campus – modelled on what Bill Gates built in Seattle for Microsoft – to see how India might be without its poor infrastructure and large social deficit. Many more will read his book.

It is not hard to see why. Mr Nilekani mixes personal anecdote with the optimism that India, alongside China, can return to somewhere near to the dominant position it once held in the world economy before the 18th century. Then, the two countries accounted for more than half of the world's GDP.

His book, a guidebook to India’s globalisation, is reassuring about the country's future; a view shared by some of his economist friends like Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University and Montek Singh Ahluwalia, the deputy chairman of India's planning commission, who crop up in his pages.

Mr Nilekani was one of the founding members of Infosys in 1981, after studying at the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay. The foreign-driven growth of the company, from capital of just $250 to today's multi-billion dollar market capitalisation, is in itself a case study of India's globalisation.

The author, however, says he was never interested in writing about himself or penning a biography of the company he helped build. His turn to writing, he insists, also has nothing to do with political ambitions to gain a seat in India's Upper House, nor does he plan to take up the pen again for a sequel.

The book possibly qualifies him to do both.

One of the most striking points made in the book is that Indians are now comfortable with globalisation. Many would dispute this, still detecting a distrust of foreign capital. But he argues that people take a more sanguine view of the outside world than they used to, and identifies this as a battle won.

“In the post-reform years, we saw plenty of protests against multinationals in India; Coca Cola put up billboards announcing ‘We’re back!’ on which activists wrote, ‘Till we throw you out again’; KFC faced visits from local inspectors suspicious of their chicken, and Hindu activists protested in front of McDonalds in Bombay, evoking pre-Independence-era slogans with their demand that the restaurant ‘Quit India’," he writes.

But now, he says, the entry of multinational companies goes unremarked and Indians increasingly take pride in the international expansion of local companies like the Tata Group or his own.

The achievement of Mr Nilekani’s book is in its structure, and its ease of reading.

Though about the ebb and flow of ideas, the book is clearly divided into four parts about varying degrees of Indian consensus. The first looks at what Indians once argued about and now don’t any longer. Among these issues, the author includes globalisation, pluses and minuses of the country's large population, and the use of the English language – once controversial after the end of British rule, now increasingly seen as the language of getting ahead.

The second part tackles accepted ideas that have yet to bear fruit. This includes universal education, urbanisation, the improvement of defunct and non-existent infrastructure, and a common, domestic market free from state-by-state laws.

The third addresses unresolved arguments like the state and number of India’s universities and organised labour.

The final part seeks to identify what India should be arguing about but is not. The important items missed off the agenda include health, energy, environment, social security and the use of modern technology.

At the heart of the book is a strongly-held view that India is a highly suitable business and political partner for the west. This is based on his experience in the back-office processing (BPO) business where Indian employees have had to deal on a day-to-day basis with clients in Europe and America. But it is also rooted in the country’s diversity and democracy. “India’s acquisitions around the world should be more successful on a global scale, thanks to a shared emphasis with the west on transparency, independence from government and fair business practice,” Mr Nilekani writes.

“The capital Indian firms bring may consequently trigger less soul searching among western firms that need financing and support. India’s young demographics also consist of people who share common values with western firms and their customers."

Mahatma Gandhi famously once said: “India is not be found in its few cities but in its 700,000 villages”. Mr Nilekani’s conclusion is that Indians are ready to leave their villages in the near certainty that they will find something better outside.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

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