The State of India
 I’ve been studying India in two ways during the past few weeks. The first is a measured, patient study of books and news articles about or related to India such as Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat and articles linked at internationalentrepreneurship.com. The second strategy is a sporadic, keyword-fueled Google approach complete with multiple click throughs and cross references on Wikipedia, like wandering through the backwoods and following every fork in the trail I happen upon.
Popular India culture looks very Western, as you can see at Sulekha. The broadcast news looks so American (minus the endless new crawl at the base of the screen) that I was at first unsure whether it was an Indian news network in the United States or homegrown for the Asian subcontinent, but I soon figured out that any Indian-Americans watching NDTV were watching it on satellite. This just in: the Indian government has requested ISPs to block Blogger.com, the free blogging giant acquired by Google, as well certain blogs outside that network on grounds of sedition. Censorship has wings in China, but India’s media is not nearly as constrained by government switchboards. Speaking with Dr. Nathan, I learned that educated Indians are very defensive of freedom of speech, a right explicitly granted in the Indian constitution. The outcome of this ordeal will be very telling of India’s wont for intellectual freedom. As the most populous democracy on the planet, how Indians respond to this could have a huge impact on the way citizens of burgeoning democracies react to violations of rights from their own governments.
Nevertheless, technology and communication are a cornerstone of India’s accelerating economy. As Friedman describes in his book, the ease and low-cost of communication between the United States, India, and China is pushing and expanding the boundaries of what can be done over the wires. While customer service call centers for Dell and American Airlines are predictably outsourced to India, where good wages are much lower and workers are motivated, the average American taxpayer would never guess tax preparation outsourced to India quadrupled every year from 2003-2005 from 25,000 to 400,000. Churning out 70,000 accountancy graduates each year, minimal training is required to pay a young Indian $100 a month to complete your Georgia state tax return. There are plenty of reasons this is good…nay, great for America, but what does it mean for Indian entrepreneurs and startups?
While foreign direct investment and exporting has been the power source for China’s leaps in economic growth, Indians have been more insular and self-reliant. Society has not been wholeheartedly accepting of entrepreneurship, but many institutions are changing the way young people feel about it. The National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN) and McKinsey & Company are each a bastion for startup firms. They facilitate the training, networking, and resources needed to help young Indians start businesses, particularly in the IT industry. It is estimated that 8,000 new IT businesses are necessary to achieve a target $87 billion IT sector by next year, and both organizations are working hard to achieve this milestone.
Click here for a video of hugely successful Indian entrepreneurs from NEN sharing their thoughts about whether an entrepreneur is born or made, featuring music from the hit 80’s TV legal drama LA Law.
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