Ideas for a Changing India: Nandan Nilekani

“In the '60s and '70s we thought of people as a burden. We thought of people as a liability. Today we talk of people as an asset. We talk of people as human capital. And I believe that this change in the mindset of looking at people as something of a burden, to human capital, has been one of the fundamental changes in the Indian mindset.




Only if the people have education, they have good health, they have infrastructure, they have roads to go to work, they have lights to study at night –only in those cases can you really get the benefit of a demographic dividend. In other words, if you don't really invest in the human capital, the same demographic dividend can be a demographic disaster,” says Nandan Nilekani, the the visionary co-founder of outsourcing pioneer Infosys.

Imagining India: Nandan Nilekani



His book Imagining India asks big questions: How can India –which made such leaps in the past two decades –maintain its demographic advantage? How can democracy and education be promoted? How, in the midst of such growth, can the environment be protected for the next generations?




In his talk at TED, he explains four brands of ideas that will determine whether India can continue its recent breakneck progress. Check out: