INDIA DECODED

'Create a broad route, not a narrow staircase'

Asha Rai & R Edwin Sudhir | TNN

    Nandan Nilekani's eagerly anticipated 'Imagining India—Ideas for the New Century' was handled by New York literary agent Andrew 'The Jackal' Wylie. It was snapped up by Penguin India, with Nilekani receiving the biggest advance ever paid to a non-fiction writer in India. So what's all the fuss about? Nilekani tells us. Excerpts from an exclusive interview:
Q. Why a book on ideas? What makes you uniquely positioned to write on the subject? A. Several motivations. My job required me to meet a lot of people around the world. They would ask questions about India and its contradictions: 'How did you launch a space programme amid so much poverty? How can you have the IITs when there is so much illiteracy?' I didn't have answers to all that. So, I thought if I do this book, I will also get some clarity about what's going on.
Q. You say on the very first page that you are 'unelectable'. Was that a motivation?
A. That is correct, in a sense. I mean, what is my contribution to change? It can come only in the realm of ideas.
Q. How did you go about writing the book?
A. Though it seems a bit odd to say it, I thought of writing it like a software programme. When you write a large software application, you divide it into sections. Then you design the modules. I applied the same concept. I said, 'I have these 18 ideas', and I saw a pattern in the ideas in terms of the maturity in the Indian psyche.
Q. Why hasn't our politics embraced reforms more deeply and openly as you point out? A.Our reformers have been reticent because the connection between reforms and why they are good for the people has not been established. A lot of people continue to promulgate bad ideas. Half-reforms are worse than no reforms. In half-reforms, those who are better equipped to deal with opportunities take full advantage of them. The trick is to expand the opportunity for everyone. The whole idea is to create a broad route rather than a narrow staircase for people.

I mean, what is my contribution to change? It can come only in the realm of ideas
—Nandan Nilekani