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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
From Nehru to Manmohan Singh & Beyond, July 27, 2009
This review is from: Imagining India: The Idea of a Renewed Nation (Hardcover)
It is not often that an engineer writes a book about his country. It is even rarer if that engineer is from IIT and is also the CEO of a company with over 80,000 employees. So when I first heard about this book, my reaction was the same when I saw an advertisement in which Hema Malini models for a water filter. The question that arose was does she really have to do this? Similarly I asked does Mr.Nilekani really have to do this?
Keeping in mind the author's illustrious background, a forward by Thomas Friedman and the backing of a "stellar team of editors", my expectations from this book went sky high. In order to understand it, enjoy it and do full justice to it, I read this book for no more than an hour each day. If one were to sum up the essence of this book in one word, then it would be "heavy". This book is heavy in weight, in content and full of heavy weights (i.e. experts in different fields).
The gist of the book is that it explores the growth of India from the era of Nehru to Manmohan Singh and beyond. In 1991 economic reforms were introduced in India and with that says Mr. Nilekani "the baton for growth passed from the government to the human spirit of creativity, adventure and enterprise". Beautiful words! The author explains this by exploring different issues. He has put in a lot of effort to study each issue, discuss it with the local experts and then write about it. For a writer it is one thing to understand a complex issue but what requires extraordinary skill is to break it into simple blocks of past, present and future and then write about it in simple words, so that the common man can fully understand it. Thomas Friedman calls Mr.Nilekani "an explainer" and I couldn't agree with him more.
The structure of the book is well defined by organizing these issues into four sections in the book. Richard Carlson in his book ' Don't Sweat The Small Stuff' says that the single greatest discovery by mankind is the fact that you can change the world by changing your attitude. Nothing demonstrates this better than the first section of this book which deals with issues "where attitudes have changed radically and are at the heart of Indian dynamism today". These include family planning, acceptance of English language by masses, IT etc. I especially enjoyed reading the way Mr.Nilekani has explained how IT has brought about a revolution in banking, farming, stock market, elections, railways etc. For example he tells you about ICICI, a small and weak bank initially. It was the first to adopt IT and then the bank was able to efficiently deal with 250,000 transactions a day, with a staff of only five employees! Its common in the west but this is what Malcolm Gladwell calls a 'tipping point'. Another great story was about how the common man started investing in the Indian stock market once the wealth tax was eliminated and IT brought it efficiency. This is a huge attitude change for the common man, from investing in only gold to a vibrant stock market.
The second section deals with "ideas that are still ether" e.g. schools (government versus private) etc. The third section is about ideas where the "biggest arguments" lie e.g. higher education, role of markets, labor laws, universities and jobs. The last section deals with "the forgotten nooks of the policy" i.e. issues like health, energy, environment etc. The first two sections are very enjoyable to read as they deal optimistically with solutions. The last two sections focus on the problems so much that a NRI will feel relieved to be not living in India. The latter half needs some serious editing.
But what holds the book together is the narration and the choice of words. For example to explain the government's change of attitude towards the entrepreneurs he uses the words" from red tape to red carpet" and the change in health problems is expressed with " from hunger to heart disease". Then there is also Mr.Nilekani's skill in making connections between different sectors, to demonstrate change. He tells you that in the 1980s the unemployment was high hence the Bollywood movies featured stories about young, angry men e.g. Deewar, Sholay etc. But now even the common, ordinary young man wants to make a difference in India. Hence we are seeing movies like Rang de basanti and Munna Bhai.
To a NRI like me, reading this book felt like going back home to India and an older sibling telling me, "Hey sis, this is what happened while you were away for over 20 years". As Mr.Nilekani very aptly puts it, "to a NRI India is like a Monet painting, promising from a distance". Thanks Mr.Nilekani, because of this book, now I also see the pixels clearly!
As for the question I raised in the beginning, Mr.Nilekani has done a great service to India by writing this book. With his vision and phenomenal understanding of the issues pertaining to India, I would recommend him for the President's post, in his post-Infosys years. In conclusion, this book is a keeper for NRIs and a must read for students of economics, political science and history.
Ratna
[...]
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15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
It is all about IT and IIT - To a hammer, everything is a nail!, July 22, 2009
First impressions after reading the book: When you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail - The solution to all problems is IT?
On second thoughts, if you can get past all that IT and IIT stuff, it is actually an exhaustive discourse of the microcosm that was, is and will be INDIA - really the United States of India.
Towards the end, Mr. Nilekani redeems himself when he says "we cannot build systems over a creaky base-we have to first reinvent our state processes to increase our efficiencies rather than merely computerizing what exists" - [...]
IT or for that matter "Technology" by itself, does not fix or solve any problem. You have to first understand what the issues are, create a framework for the solution and use the scare resources to invest in the right technology judiciously. Elsewhere in the book, he does mention this being the reason why most IT projects do not go beyond the pilot phase since the organizational issues were not addressed upfront - in government that is the elephant in the room, especially in India.
I learned a lot about India's regulatory system and its demographics. The double hump demographic dividend was interesting. Will the second dividend from the BIMARU's really come to fruition? I guess time will tell......
Imagining India: The Idea of a Nation Renewed
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25 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting and Educational!, March 24, 2009
This review is from: Imagining India: The Idea of a Renewed Nation (Hardcover)
Author Nanden Nilekani, co-founder of Infosys, traces the ideas that shaped India's past and present, and looks forward into its future.
India's socialist ethos is still dominant, rooted in abuses from early British rule, memories of the Great Depression, and greatly exaggerated growth statistics from the Soviet Union's early days. Initially, after gaining independence, entry into industries set aside for the private sector was regulated through a licensing system, and the government controlled pricing of commodities. This spawned massive expansion of a slow-moving bureaucracy, the opportunity for corruption, and eventual change. Until that change occurred, businesses procured multiple licenses to preempt competition, resulting in most industries having just 1-2 competitors, poor quality, and high prices. The 1980s and 1990s brought change out of frustration and a nearly bankrupt government treasury. De-licensing, dismantling price controls in some industries, lowering tariffs, and changed tax policy that no longer sapped profits brought reinvestment, growth, and a 5X multiplication in government revenues (aka Arthur Laffer) in ten years. Annual growth has exceeded 6% since the early 1990s, a record in history exceeded only by China. Nilekani, however, conceded that much more remains to be done - India still ranks below China and Pakistan in ease of doing businesses (especially new start-ups), and he doubts any businessman could be elected to high office.
Nilekani has no doubts that India's Democracy is superior to China's government, and cites China's tumult under Mao and even since as evidence. However, his contention that India's laissez faire approach to birth control will be more effective than China's mandated "one-child" rule is not compelling. India has endured 30 famines between 1770 and 1950 - entire provinces saw a third of their population disappear; 50% of its population is too young to vote. Growth has decreased, mostly due to reduced infant mortality, but still exceeds that in China. Both nations have significant selective births - 925 females vs. 1,000 males in India, and 855 vs. 1,000 in China.
India has the largest number of official languages - 22. The total number of languages used ranges from 150 to 1,500, depending on the definition. The English language, like capitalism, has gone through ups and downs in India. The British first encouraged it as a means of employing locals to replace high-cost British civil servants. This tainted the language with an association to imperialism. Then it was promoted as a means of blocking Hinduism and its caste system. Now outsourcing has made English the entry ticket to a global economy, as well as a unifying factor within India. About 30% are literate in English; overall, about 1/3 the population is illiterate in any language.
IT in India has been opposed by unions - especially in banking. This changed in 1993 when foreign banks and their IT were allowed in. Scandal in India's then manual stock market, voting fraud, delays in irregularities land record-keeping have brought major inroads for IT use.
Education is another source of pride and frustration. Teachers have been guaranteed representation in Legislative Councils, and used that power to limit change. About one-third of children are now enrolled in cheap private schools, and 7,000 public schools are empty in one state. Some innovations have taken place - eg. kiosks dispensing educational videos, private school start-ups aided by packaged courses of study, but these do not include vouchers.
And so "Reimagining India" proceeds from one topic to the next - each benefiting from the insights of a native resident regarded as expert within that topic.
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