Imagining India: The Idea of A Renewed Nation.
By Nandan Nilekani.
The Penguin Press, 2009. 511 pages.
When I began reading Imagining India, I was pleasantly surprised
that a leader of a global multi-billion dollar corporation had the
time, inclination and aptitude to persuasively write about his vision
for India in the 21st century. To be sure, Nandan Nilekani is not the
first corporate leader to believe that his thoughts warrant something
more substantial than a PowerPoint presentation or a strategic business
plan. In the United States, there are numerous titans of industry whose
experiences and/or egos have encouraged either memoirs or business
management guides (Jack Welch, David Packard, and Andy Grove come to
mind). In South Asia, there are fewer such executives-cum-writers;
perhaps the most prominent is Gurcharan Das, the former CEO of Procter
& Gamble India, who has penned several books, including India
Unbound, which was written before Y2K (Year 2000) and BPO (Business
Process outsourcing) became wealth-generating catch phrases. But unlike
Das, Welch and others, Nilekani has not waited to retire from bourses
before turning to books.
Nilekani’s Bangalore-based company, Infosys Technologies, continues
to leverage its software core competency to capitalize on Y2K, BPO and
a host of other business trends that have been closely linked with the
globalization of ideas, capital and people. And when Imagining India
was published earlier this year, Nilekani continued to lead Infosys as
co-chairman (along with N. R. Narayana Murthy) and serve as an informal
spokesman for India’s thriving IT industry. Indeed, New York Times
columnist Tom Friedman, an unabashed champion of global free markets,
has long credited his “teacher and friend, Nandan” for inspiring the
title of his best-selling The World is Flat.
In reading the first few chapters of this book, I found myself
thinking that this was the writing of a man whose aspirations went
beyond the New York Times best-seller list. It was like reading an
Indian version of Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope. Though not as
literary as Obama, Nilekani has an easy, flowing style that makes the
pages fly. Also, both men share a passion for enabling the
transformation of their countries. Of course, the world knows about
Obama’s “Change We Can Believe In” slogan; and now readers of Imagining
India know about Nilekani’s “changing seasons,” “changing faces” and
“changing epidemics” (all part of the book’s thematically connected
chapter titles).
The focus on change is both a strength and a weakness. As Friedman
writes in Imagining India’s foreword, “Nandan Nilekani’s life and book
are testament to the fact that the new India has truly arrived – in
many ways and many places.” The new India is a changed and changing
India. As such, this dynamic nation requires an engagement with ideas
that matter; and Nilekani has written a book chock-full of ideas –
hopeful, optimistic, forward-looking ideas.
One area where this book’s objective hopefulness and optimism are
in full-display is its forward-looking examination of India’s
infrastructure. One delightfully-titled chapter (“The Long Roads Home”)
is a fine essay ranging from the colonial roots of the subcontinent’s
infrastructure to today’s chaotic mess and onward to the expansion of
road, rail, and air transportation in parallel with copper-less
telecommunication. Nilekani is not Pollyannaish in his assessment of
the current state: “India now presents us with a bewildering landscape
– of vibrant, private enterprise choking up as it meets crumbling
infrastructure.” But rather than dwell on the potholes to the future,
or complain that India’s demand-driven democracy cannot keep up with
China’s top-down autocratic development, Imagining India imaginatively
suggests that “the rise of effective infrastructure through the system
of public-private partnerships is a hopeful sign.” To be sure, legal
and ethical issues of eminent domain will need to addressed if India’s
evolving model is for all Indians rather than just the plutocrats
populating public-private partnerships.
But sometimes this hopefulness and optimism needs to look not only
forward, but also deeper. For example, in a section praising Mukesh
Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries and change agent responsible
for introducing a domestic version of Wal-Mart to India, Nilekani
writes, “I marveled at the scale of [Ambani’s] ambition. ? Mukesh told
me that his supply chains would go a long way in addressing the massive
infrastructure gaps between India’s farms and its markets – he called
his initiative ‘from farm to fork.’ And as more such entrepreneurs
focus on India’s problems, a whole new force of change is becoming
possible.”
I re-read this section a bit more deeply after learning that in
June Nilekani had been appointed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as a
cabinet minister who will chair the Unique Identification Authority of
India. On the one hand, it is wonderful that Indian politics is
attracting talented individuals of Nilekani’s caliber; on the other
hand, Imagining India begins to read like a politician’s book. And as a
political statement, it requires a different kind of scrutiny. To go
back to the Ambani episode, one wonders why little mention is made of
the lakhs of shop-owners and sabji-wallahs who have been displaced by
Reliance Fresh. One also questions why no mention is made of the fact
that Ambani’s venture into retail petroleum distribution began with the
expensive launch of over one thousand highway petrol stations, only to
end in the sudden shuttering of these same stations. It is not
inappropriate to ask the author, “Whose side are you on?” When one
“entrepreneur” is privileged over hundreds of thousands of
entrepreneurs, the answer might be abundantly clear: Mukesh wins over
the Common Man.
However, the intrigue of Imagining India (and, perhaps, India
herself) is the ambiguity of the answer. Although Nilekani the chairman
occasionally refers to peers such as Mukesh Ambani on a first-name
basis, Nilekani the populist wistfully imagines an India with “systems
and policies that give people the ability to travel in search of work,
to educate their children, and to tap into economic growth.” He has
written a book chock-full of ideas for all Indians – from Mukesh to the
Common Man, and from Ahmedabad to Atlanta: “ideas that have arrived,”
“ideas in progress,” “ideas in battle” and “ideas to anticipate.” As a
book reviewer, I test these ideas for a credible narrative. As a change
management consultant born in India, I embrace these ideas as a
transformative theme that enlightens. And as a father, I hope that
Nilekani’s ideas gain traction and continue to develop India into a
place that my American-born children will call a home.
Dr. Rajesh C. Oza serves as consultant to organizations and
individuals requiring change leadership. His doctoral dissertation was
titled “Globalization, Diaspora, and Work Transformation.”