Vision India 2020 Book Review: A Vision Well Worth Pursuing

Here is a review by Indu Kodukula from Menlo Park, California:

“Ms. Mitra’s Vision India 2020 book is a great roadmap for turning the current promise of India into something that’s more permanent. Many of the ideas make tremendous sense, have market relevance and if implemented can change the center of gravity of technology innovation. It’s a vision well worth pursuing. I read through the book in a couple of hours and was amazed by the diversity of the ideas and their scope – the title is worthy of the content.

Having lived in Silicon Valley for a number of years now, it does strike me though that achieving this vision in India requires a key ingredient – a cultural change that actively encourages and promotes risk taking of the right kind. The long heritage of traditional Indian culture is a mixed blessing – on the one hand, it does encourage learning and specialization, on the other hand, there is tremendous emphasis on social acceptance and peer respect – norms that often get in the way of entrepreneurship where bucking the prevailing thinking is often the critical success factor.

It would also seem that continuing structural reforms at all levels in India, including infrastructure modernization is critical to achieving Ms Mitra’s vision. Every time when I go back to visit my parents in Orissa (a state that routinely ranks at the bottom just ahead of Bihar in most national surveys), it is a journey back in time and every step in the journey is measured in decades. The entrepreneurial spirit is certainly alive and well in India – the physical realities need to support that spirit.”

– Indu Kodukula, EVP Products, CTO SunGard Availability Services, Menlo Park, California

Vision India 2020 by Sramana Mitra is available from Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle, and from Flipkart in India.

This segment is a part in the series : Vision India 2020 Book Review