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Nandan Nilekani on the idea of a new India

November 27, 2008

For a long period after Independence, India's dream seemed to flicker. Our growth stagnated, and with Jawaharlal Nehru's death the country's social divisions rapidly worsened; we seemed caught forever in the turmoil of spreading unrest and riots.

It was a period when one commentator remarked fatalistically: 'You always have floods . . . food is always a little short, and someone is always striking. India is a sleepy country, and things just go on.'

In the last quarter century, however, India has begun to move away from the roiling distress of those years. The early trigger for this change has been the growth of India's IT sector. Read on...

Excerpted with the publisher's permission from Imagining India by Nandan Nilekani, published by Penguin Books India, Rs 699

Image: Infosys Technologies co-chairman Nandan Nilekani. | Photograph: Dibyangshu Sarkar/AFP/Getty Images

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