Explaining India, one problem at a time ; Nilekani's book is wonderfully anecdotal but falls a trifle short on analysis, says Srivatsa Krishna.

Nandan Nilekani's Imagining India is a remarkable book ofstories, soulful conversations and anecdotes, all trying to explainIndia, its people and its institutions. Nandan has the right idea,but ultimately the book does not go beyond these conversations andinsights, and this is where it fails. However, India unarguablyneeds educated, honest, middle class professionals without famousfamily surnames to play major roles in public life and politics. IfNandan is preparing ground to enter the political realm, and hisbook is a de facto manifesto, then this is a welcome move whichshould be supported by one and all. Nandan could well be one amongsta few vying to become India's Obama in 2018.

Imagining India Nandan Nilekani Penguin Books India Pages:380Price: Rs 699The book itself is both exhilarating anddisappointing. Exhilarating because it is packed with conversationsand anecdotes, which, taken together, give a fascinating ringsideview of contemporary India. However, it also disappoints because itdoesn't go very much further than this. Nandan has interviewed aslew of eminent experts across the spectrum and has, surprisingly,left the narrative jarringly conversational over large tracts of thebook by repeatingX or Y tells methis or that. Instead, what oneexpected from a problem solver of Nandan's repute was the extractionof the essence of these conversations in such a way so as to open upnew vistas for debate and new ways to solve old, lingering problems.The single biggest attraction of the book is that it repeats a lotof facts about India, some of which you probably already knowbutthey are melded to wonderful new stories and anecdotes.Here are somequestions that Nandan's book fails to address: For example, why isprivate investment not flowing into infrastructure despite the factthat most policy barriers to the sector have been removed? Is statefunding of elections or other kinds of reforms to the electoralsystem, which lower the financial barriers to entry, possible? Canpolitical parties introduce a salaried class of professionals tojoin their ranks so as to infuse ideas and new thinking into publiclife? If so, how can one make these people 'electable'? How can anational smart ID card be designed and implemented when thechallenge is of collecting and validating a one billion-strongdatabase, which is constantly in flux? How do we ensure thatcriminals don't contest elections or come to power? What aboutindustries other than IT, which have flourished post-1991 India, andwhat lessons do these hold for us? Tackling some of these key issuesthat face India today would have given the book more teeth. However,the book has some poignant stories to tell. It talks about how agroup of fishermen in Tamil Nadu accessed loans to buy fibre glassboats to increase their incomes; a poignant account of India'sunique relationship with the English language, an incisiveexplanation of India's democracy and the school system and anexpansive analysis of the Nehruvian era and its challenges.Bookmark