Sunday Posts

If the title of the post sounds cheesy, it was meant to be that way. I am about to complete an intense year of working on a project to introduce a new kind of Higher Education model, one that brings the educators and employers closely together, and this experience has allowed me new insights and ideas, apart from all the airmiles, a permanent state of jetlag and a number of new friends and correspondents. So, there must be an afterword, which I intend to write now, which captures both the journey and a sense of arriving somewhere, only if to embark on another journey. To tell the story, I must start with the assumptions that I had. The most crucial one perhaps is that India is ripe for education innovation. The rationale is simple - India has a growing young population buzzing with aspiration, an education system which is struggling to catch up and a large services sector which needs millions of workers but can not find them - and therefore, there is space for new educational mod...

Narayana Murthy makes an interesting point in an interview he recently gave - he talks about the culture of execution in India and says our Brahminical Tradition undermines the culture of getting things done. I shall not repeat his words here, but would rather write a personal reflection. I know this observation is very true. Everyone living abroad knows this actually, when you watch how many things you are expected to do by yourself. When I came to Britain, I was soon struggling because I never fixed the electricity at home, never cooked a proper meal and never fixed the water supply before. Couple of years down the line, I had this awkward idea of creating a DIY website for India and I was laughed at, and eventually discouraged, because 'no one who would buy things on the Internet would ever want to do the jobs themselves'. I had the same issue when I was setting up operations in India in my current job. The first things I brought for the office was an electric kettle and...

My travel in India continues. I spoke about the disappointment about the Indian reaction to returnees yesterday, but did not speak about the opportunity, though I initially set out to do so. The opportunity is indeed the key why one should look at India - as the country to return to, as the country to start a business in. It is complicated and competitive, but India still has enormous underserved markets. My rough estimates - about 90% of India's population is still untouched by all the major commercial innovations made in last 20 years. It is not that all of them are poor; besides, the poor are also being lifted out of poverty gradually. While it is still so, Indians are getting equated in terms of aspirations with the west. Television is spreading, and though it still has a long way to go to become an object of personal possession, some communities share television sets and satellite channels are coming in. Mobile phone has reached distant corners and diverse communities. Newspa...