India Rising: Tales from a Changing Nation by Oliver Balch Read Free Book Online

textbooks.
    We walk along one of GEC 1’s many corridors. Manjunathea has arranged for me to ask a few questions at the end of an IT basics class. We pass by room after room, each overflowing with future Infosys programmers diligently studying their craft. The sheer scale of the operation begins to hit me. Later, my tour would take me to the newly built Global Education Centre 2, a colossal, crescent-shaped structure with Greek colonnades, Indo-Islamic flourishes and, at its centre, a more than passing resemblance to Washington DC’s Capitol Hill. Covering one million square feet,the floor plan of the four-storey building reveals one hundred and thirteen rooms on Level 1 alone.
    Even here, though, in the modest enormity of GEC 1, I’m struck by the hundreds of people that pass through these corridors every day, all of them bright, industrious young adults like Amrutha and Prianka. Where are they heading? What lies in store for them? What kind of India are they set to inherit? What kind of India do they hope to create?
    My eye is drawn to plaques on the classroom doors. As with the conference room, all carry illustrious names. Most derive from the world of business and scientific enterprise: automotive pioneer Henry Ford, General Electric’s charismatic former leader Jack Welch, early computer scientist Alan Turing, inspired inventor and polymath Benjamin Franklin. I don’t see any rooms dedicated to Narayana Murthy or Nandan Nilekani. Should they exist, their names would not be out of place. After all, it is on their entrepreneurial acumen that the gargantuan Global Education Centres have been built.
    Striding some ten yards ahead, Manjunathea ushers me into the last classroom along the corridor. How many of the young graduates inside aspire to be the next Ford, the next Franklin, the next Nadkani? The thought follows me through the door and towards the lectern at the direction of the class coordinator.
    ‘What does Infosys mean to you? What thoughts does it conjure up?’ I ask by way of a warm-up question.
    Answers are proffered from among the full rows of terraced seating. ‘A good career in the IT field,’ comes one. ‘Excellent training,’ comes another. ‘Career growth and international exposure,’ a third. My follow-up questions receive a similar response. Why Infosys, not Whipro, Tata Consultancy Services or another of India’s leading IT companies? ‘It’s an honour to be here.’ ‘It has the world’s best training.’
    Only one deviates from the script, a thin, mop-haired young man on the back row. ‘Personal growth,’ he says. Then, to the laughter of the class: ‘In financial terms, and all.’ Reminded of Prianka, I ask for a show of hands. How many of you are earningmore relative to your parents when they started work? Not a hand stays down. The hope to be working for Infosys in five years’ time is almost universal too.
    I had come to the campus of one of India’s most famous examples of entrepreneurship in the expectation of meeting a new breed of business visionaries. It was, I realise now, a naive assumption. India’s entrepreneurs have created companies in which the brightest crop of young graduates can prosper and thrive. Not all want to go it alone. Very few do, in fact. A mere three hands go up when I ask who in the class envisions themself setting up their own businesses in the future. In the US, it would be the majority. Outside, on the steps of GEC 1, a batch is having a graduation photo taken. They are ‘production-ready’ and throw their hats in their air to prove it.
    I leave the Mysore campus with a graphic appreciation of what Optimistic Entrepreneurs can create. As the taxi pulls away, I glance back over my shoulder. Through the rear window, the miniature world of Infosys lies out in the sun, all pristine and packaged for consumption. Can the country’s best brains be blamed for buying in?
    Entrepreneurs are the dashing lead characters in the surging New India story.