India in the Flat World

Desi Fun(da)

There was an amazing article in the New York times under the title "The World is Flat" byt their journalist Thomas L. Freidman. He subsequently has released a book by the same name highlighting the unique opportunities in the flat world where there is not information divide and a person in Vietnam, SriLanka, India, Burma, China or any other developing (have begun to dislike the term third-world) nation has the same level of access towards information as his peers in a developed nation. The era of telecommunications and the internet has bought upon a new era in the world where opportunity lies within the grasp of those that seek it out. There has been a lot of change due to this especially with the outsourcing a.k.a. bangaloring of backend jobs from the developed nations to the developing ones.

We have seen the boom this has bought about in India and how it has touched every aspect of our lives. There has been a lot of change and I am willing to bet that there will be a lot more to come. See most of the people attribute the gains made by the US in various fields due to the immense pool of talent in that country. However I think that such talent lies untapped in places such as India. Exposure to technology and provisions for easy access to knowledge and the work of others has not really been available in countries like ours.

There has been this group of elite people who have been exposed to technology or science right from their childhood due to their high tech schools, vast librarys and immense resources at their disposal which is taken for granted by many people in such countries. However here it is not the same. Most of our schools dont have the kind of resources they need to face the 21st century. The libraries aren't as big as they should be and internet access is still limited to schools within the cities. As these things change, especially with things such as the low-budget pc, there should be a revolution in terms of access to these students. Most engineering colleges face the same problems. Though we have an excellent curriculum in most of the Indian universities, we usually cannot back out technical knowledge with a practical approach towards a given problem. As some tech guru said at the recent FOSS.in "Indians are great engineers however you need to tell them what to do". This lack of creativity hinders our progress. There is a need to get this right a need to make sure that every kid is allowed to have a flame of imagination within. This is what is going to get out those creative ideas and bring in the next big thing.

Recently an engineer pointed out that "there is nothing to be worried about wrt Indian engineers" while giving his take on the competition faced by the West(read USA) from the East(read India/China). Well I differ completely here. Give an Indian the same resources as an American and then let the games begin. We are lagging but hey never underestimate the dreams of a billion people, as the Air Deccan advertisment proclaimed this morning.