India Arriving The IT Story - Article & Book

An interesting article came to my attention that points to a new book released in November by Stanford Professor Rafiq Dossani titled "India Arriving: How This Economic Powerhouse Is Redefining Global Business". The article is an editorial from SandHill.com a website dedicated to the Technology industry - emerging trends and their impact on IT.

The article provides a personal perspective on the changes that India is undergoing as it becomes a service driven economy. While the story of the major IT services firms in India (e.g., Infosys, Wipro, TCS, Satyam and others ...) are fairly well known what the article offers is an interesting glimpse into the changes taking place across India. Professor Dossani relays a story about travelling to one of the Tier 2 cities in India and contrasting the situation to the developments in Bangalore. Beyond his comments about the physical infrastructure and many of the well documented challenges of doing business in India relating to the crumbling infrastructure is the ingenuity being demonstrated by entrepreneurs in rising to meet these challenges as they growth their businesses. His description of seeing an IT outsourcing firm utilizing car batteries tied to an inverter to compensate for the challenges of an unreliable power grid remind me of pictures from this Nokia research presentation relating to cell phone refuelling stations in Africa. What struck me most about the article is the perspective of how technology is beginning to enter all areas of Indian life and the increasing importance of the cell phone and broadband connectivity in transforming the Indian economy and way of life. The editorial is well worth a read and I've put the book on hold at my local library - hopefully they'll get their copies soon so that I can read it and post a review here.