Re-Discovery of India

Re-Discovery of India

From somnolent and sluggish to resurgent and self-confident , powerful new images of India have emerged, and everyone, from CEOs to bureaucrats and foreign correspondents, is turning author to tell the story of a country in the midst of sweeping transformation. By Arati Menon Carroll


Thirty five years ago, British Broadcasting Corporation appointed Mark Tully as its India correspondent. This was to be the prodigal return to his birthplace, having being born in Calcutta in 1936. Eager to re-acquaint himself, Tully sought out written material on the country; almost everybody recommended VS Naipauls India : An Area of Darkness, a book known for its harshly critical view of India in the early 60s. Im glad I didnt use that as my guide, recalls Tully, because if that was the kind of baggage I brought with me as a BBC reporter, what a dismal view Id have had.
Many years on, Tully is widely acknowledged as one of the most trusted, authoritative voices on India and his books, from India in Slow Motion to The Heart of India, and most recently India's Unending Journey, speak of his deep affection for his adopted country. Tully has been signed on by Penguin India to write Changing India, a work-inprogress that examines what economic liberalisation has and hasnt done for modern India.
Udayan Mitra, Publishing Director, Allen Lane, the nonfiction imprint of Penguin India, is delighted that Tully has returned to Penguin. His books are perennial bestsellers, he says. This hasnt been the only bit of good news recently for Penguin India. Imagining India: Ideas for the New Century, written by Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani in which he presents his manifesto of ideas that have held India back and those that could change Indias place in modernity forever, has sold 50,000 copies. The book has become a great visual for a developing India, says Mitra. So powerful was the impact of his book that the government invited Nilekani to develop one of those ideas that of a unique identification system for all Indians. He accepted and did the unimaginable quit Infosys.

IF FRIEDMAN CAN, SO CAN I

Many will credit economist Thomas Friedman for Nilekanis foray into writing. A comment he made to Friedman Tom, the playing field is being levelled inspired the title and thesis of Friedmans The World is Flat, a mega best-seller about offshoring and globalisation. With a focus on India and China, what Friedman (and Nilekanis comment) essentially did for millions of readers, was establish Indias place firmly on the 21st century world stage. India as a subject of non-fiction writing isnt a new fascination. There have been seminal books on India, broad and richly detailed , like Jawaharlal Nehrus Discovery of India and works by Naipaul and Ved Mehta. More recently, historian Ramachandra Guha and former P&G boss Gurcharan Das have found enormous success with their writings on India, as has Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen through his collection of essays in The Argumentative Indian. Today however, everyone from CEOs to bureaucrats and foreign correspondents seem to want to articulate a view on Indias economic and social transformation. The desire to write about India seems to have gained momentum, confirms Lipika Bhushan, manager marketing, HarperCollins India. 'At a time when the rest of the world is growing grey, Nilekani writes in his book, 'India has one of the youngest populations in the world with a median age of 23 and 'the second-largest reservoir of skilled labour in the world . From the Indian-built mini Nano, an expression of the burgeoning aspirations of the Indian masses, to the growing confidence of Indian entrepreneurs and sustained economic growth even in the face of a financial crisis, the world is sitting up to take notice of India.
Even Indian-born management gurus who never really capitalised on their India connection are now focussing their case studies on India, whether it is Harvard Business Schools Tarun Khannas Billions of Entrepreneurs: How China and India Are Reshaping Their Futures and Yours, London Business School Professor of Marketing Nirmalya Kumars Indias Global Powerhouses: How They Are Taking On The World or Stanford scholar Rafiq Dossanis India Arriving. Earlier there wasn't much to write about. It's only in the last few years that Indian businesses have transformed from leading domestic players to global giants, and their unique approach to globalisation is also a very recent evolution , says Kumar.

So far as I am able to judge, nothing has been left undone, either by man or nature, to make India the most extraordinary country that the sun visits on his rounds
Mark Twain

American-born Anand Giridharadas moved to India six years ago as a consultant with McKinsey but defected to become the South Asia Correspondent for the International Herald Tribune. His column Letter from India that appeared twice a month in The New York Times and IHT has chronicled, as he writes in his concluding column in NYT dated July 4 2009, the self-inventing swagger of a rising generation of Indians . Giridharadas is now writing a non-fiction book about modern India.
So is the former Canadian envoy to India David Malone, whose forthcoming book on Indias foreign policy is titled Does The Elephant Dance Edward Luce, similarly, came to India in a professional capacity, as the South Asia bureau chief of the Financial Times and ended up writing In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India, an evaluation of contemporary India, lauded by some as the best book written on the New India .