The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : ‘Great explainer’ sets forth his ideas

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Dec 02, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

‘Great explainer’ sets forth his ideas

Staff Reporter

Nandan Nilekani’s ‘Imagining India: Ideas for the New Century’ released

— Photo: R.Shivaji Rao

VOYAGE OF SELF-DISCOVERY: Historian Ramachandra Guha (left) and co-founder of Infosys Nandan Nilekani at the launch of ‘Imagining India: Ideas for the New Century’ in Chennai on Monday.

CHENNAI: At a time when many are despondent about the state of politics, Nandan Nilekani is an optimistic man. More than half-a-billion young people, 90 per cent literacy by 2020, 40 per cent urbanisation and increased awareness through the media will change the game of politics, he reckons.

These are the facts on which the co-founder of Infosys has based his optimism because as aspirations change, social dynamics will change accordingly, and the demand for better governance will have to be met.

The man whom the author of ‘The World is Flat’ Thomas Friedman called “the great explainer,” proved why he was crowned with that epithet as he shared his thoughts at the launch of his book ‘Imagining India: Ideas for the New Century’ here on Monday.

The book, a Penguin Allen Lane publication, is the outcome of what Mr. Nilekani describes as a voyage of self discovery in understanding why India is the way it is, how we have got here and what the future holds.

This discovery was not charted through “adjectives, slogans and substandard discussions.” Instead, he relied on the power of ideas. Only when an idea got embedded in people’s minds, could a traction develop to make a system believe in the idea, leading to change, he said.

The book is organised into four sets of ideas. Six ideas helped to shape the India of today, said Mr. Nilekani. The idea that population is not a burden but human capital, which is referred to as “demographic dividend,” is the first. The development of the entrepreneurial spirit, the effect of the English language, technology as a tool for empowerment, the attitude to globalisation and deepening of democracy are the other ideas that lie in the first set. “The combination of these six factors is unique. No other country in the world has this,” he said.

Explaining these ideas in economic terms, he said these first six ideas drove the real growth today. The next four ideas were needed to maintain the growth. These were universal primary education, adequate infrastructure, urbanisation, and the idea of India as a single market — ideas which found acceptance among everyone, but were yet to be implemented fully. Some challenges that needed to be overcome were the “ideas that are debated upon today”— reservation, improvement in higher education and labour reforms, he said. Looking towards the future, a sustainable model emerges if we address “the challenges of prosperity,” he said. Modern technology has to be used as an instrument of governance to achieve a dramatic increase in transparency. Also, the challenges of health, pension, environment and energy have to be addressed in a framework that is meaningful to India, he said.

Today, politics operates through ‘vertical divides, where caste, religious and other differences are played upon, whereas there are ‘horizontal aspirations,’ in which people across different strata look towards a different future, Mr. Nilekani said. This book is an attempt to “capture those aspirations and put them in an idea framework,” to provide a “safety net of ideas.”

Historian and author Ramachandra Guha, who launched the book, described Mr.Nilekani as a brilliant Indian democrat.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Tamil Nadu