India : A Nation of Tech Workers and Bookworms

c|net News' Special Report this week focuses on what it calls the Indian Tech Renaissance. I wonder in what sense the term renaissance is being used. If c|net News believes it is a period of revival for the Indian technology sector, I can't recall a time when it has flagged in the last fifteen years or so : it's been growing almost consistently ever since it spurted, as an offshoot of the first attempts at dismantling the License Raj in concert with the Y2K opportunity. If he uses the term to equate our accomplishments to the heights achieved in art and culture after the Middle Ages, I believe the best is yet to come. I also wonder why he asks China to move over, given that we are not in the same playing fields at the moment. China is still playing catch-up in the software services market, while we are taking our first baby steps in the electronics product space.

Nitpicking apart, the article captures the optimism and the possibilities India is awash in. Two areas where we could do much better than we have though, are Entrepreneurship in the technology product arena and Bridging the cliched, yet depressingly real, Digital Divide between our biggest cities and the rest of the country. Rajesh Jain, quoted in the c|net article, blogs on these subjects extensively.

The NOP World Culture Index throws up the interesting finding that Indian consumers spend more time reading than consumers from any other nation surveyed. I usually ignore survey results, and the ensuing generalizations, but seized on this one with glee. The BBC features reactions to the news. R Sriram of Crossword seems to equate studying with reading, and advice from grandparents to that you can get in books. Tarun Tejpal points out that the sampling must have been in urban India.

I hope that the surveyors refused, quite properly, to consider the Metro Supplements of the Times Of India as reading material.

[ Technorati Tags : India ]