Imagining India

Great Technology, Bad Roads

India presents the outsider with a complicated and often contradictory face: Some of its most modern office complexes are difficult to reach because of unpaved, jammed roads; its democratic society tolerates one of Asia’s largest slums; its large numbers of well-educated “knowledge workers” disguise the world’s highest tally of school dropouts; and globally renowned companies operate in an often hopelessly bureaucratic home market.

Dwelling on these anomalies obscures the road to progress India has traveled since its independence in 1947 and its rise to global economic superstardom in the past few decades. Since the early 1990s, annual growth rates in excess of 6% have spurred a mushrooming domestic and international economy that provides enough money to create a viable middle class and to raise millions of people out of poverty. The thousands of Indians who are well educated and English speaking comprise an in-demand workforce that has made the country the home of world-famous technology and service industries.

That’s the face India presents to the outsider. Most of the experts who observe India anticipate that its role in a globalized...