GROWTH AND GOVERNANCE BY SAMEER KOCHHAR [HARDBOUND0

Nandan Nilekani earned his place as an iconic entrepreneur in India in the 1980s, having co-founded Infosys Limited in 1981. In the post-economic liberalisation era, he cemented his reputation as a pioneer in the corporate and information technology world, just as he helped launch Infosys into the big league of world’s IT-enabled services companies. He served as the company’s Chief Executive Officer from 2001 to 2007. At the fag end of his career in Infosys, Nilekani wrote a best-selling book in 2009, Imagining India: the Idea of a Nation Renewed. The book is widely acclaimed for heralding a new, idea-based approach to meet the present and future challenges facing India. It spelt out the theoretical framework for the provision of a unique identity for all its citizens as an important step towards putting, what Nilekani called, “human capital front and center as the main driver of productivity and growth”.
His long experience in the corporate world and his passion for the citizen empowerment—as proved in the successful Bangalore Agenda Task Force experiment
started in 1999 as well as enunciated in his 2009 book—made him the natural choice to be the first chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) that was being set up by the Union government to provide residents of India with a unique identity and a digital platform—known as the Aadhaar. Nilekani left Infosys to head the UIDAI in July 2009.
In five years, Aadhaar has transformed India’s approach to socio-economic justice and equity, and became the lynchpin to the government’s welfare programmes that seek to achieve these goals. It also set the stage for an efficient and transparent mechanism to monitor government programmes, which is crucial to cut waste and slippage in order to maintain fiscal prudence at the national level.
The authors of the essays in this volume are accomplished experts in their respective fields. Together, they piece together a wide range of issues relevant to India’s present and future: fiscal and monetary policies, political and economic governance, financial sector reforms, financial inclusion, urban development, corporate governance, competitive markets, food security, national security, public policy advocacy and information & communication technology. The volume not only offers clear-cut analyses on these topics, but also a clear vision for the future.