Nilekani's ideas for the future

In the opening session of the first day of the summit, Nandan M Nilekani, co-chairman of India’s second largest software and services provider, Infosys Technologies, discussed his interpretation of the central ideas that have shaped modern India. He offered his perspective on India’s past, present and future, from his forthcoming book, Imagining India: Ideas for the New Century.

“In my book, I found 18 ideas about India which I classified into four categories— ideas that have arrived, ideas that have been accepted but not implemented, ideas that we argue about and ideas that we need to anticipate,” said Nilekani.

On the ideas that have ‘arrived’, he explained that these ideas have made India grow at a rate of 6-8 per cent. Changed attitudes towards the population (now called human capital) and the inclusion of entrepreneurs in the ecosystem, are responsible for India’s success. Apart from the acceptance of English language, technology and globalisation were equally important for the Indian economy’s success story. Deepening roots of democracy was an added factor in India’s growth, he said.

 

On the other hand, primary education, infrastructure and urbanisation are ideas that had been accepted but not implemented. “Not only was urbanisation considered an accident of geography and history, the fact that the Empire ruled from the cities, made the process difficult,” commented Nilekani.

Lack of a single market in the country was another idea that was thought about but not executed, he said. There are different kinds of markets for agriculture, products and services. “The single market is very distorted for agriculture, reasonably distorted for products but is good for the services market,” said Nilekani.

After having done a good deal of research on philosophy and sociology, he zeroed down on the existence of caste, inclusion of the private sector in higher education, and labour in the ‘most argued ideas’. He added 93 per cent of India’s labour is in the unorganised sector and it can be tapped to create the middle class.

In his safety net of ideas, derisking the future is an ‘anticipated’ idea that can enable India to learn from the mistakes of the developed countries. These are the issues of prosperity and look at how technology can transform governance. Challenges in healthcare can be addressed in this category. India can’t learn from the ‘hunger to heart disease’ syndrome, meaning that we can’t learn from a country that has people dying of hunger, while others suffer from heart disease because of obesity.

“For a young country like ours, social insurance and entitlements are very important. Equally vital is our harmony with the environment,” Nilekani added, stressing the need to cut pollution emissions.