Some time ago, ABC did a feature on India's rise in the global context where a journalist whom I don't recognise traveled to India and made a documentary on India with the emphasis on " What will India's innovation and booming economy mean for Americans?" It is a very thought provoking interview to say the least and I would say one of the most rounded opinion I have read or heard or seen about India from a westerner's eye. The video is available on ABC's website here.

The journalist traveled far and wide ("thousands of miles" to put in his words) and has caught glimpses of India and voices that not many westerners have done or even cared to do. For most India is still is a primitive country (Yes, one of the persons I recently met did tell me very happily that he rode an elephant when he had visited India) regardless of the fact that there are more number of educated people there and more English speaking people than in America.

It was really interesting to see the interviewer / hostess ask him the question, "Where does all this knowledge, this science come from?" What is obvious to any Indian is a source of intrigue to most people outside India. In India the thought of a person dropping from school / college to work or because he/she does not like it is still unthinkable. Any person who is not a graduate is considered to be a failure unless he/she becomes Dhirubhai Ambani (Even the Ambani brothers are highly educated). As the journalist says, "It is a three thousand year old reverence for knowledge. Every college, school has an image of the goddess of knowledge". Indeed, we have been taught to worship Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge from when we were very young.

Another remarkable part of the interview is when the journalist compares his visit to China and India. It is very telling of the picture. The entire progress in India has come "grounds up" while contending with the extreme bureaucracy, red-tapism and corruption. It seems that we Indians are the only people who look at our situation with extreme pessimism instead of the optimism that overflows in the picture. As the Indian born American business consultant, B.K. Pralahad says, "If we look long enough, a method emerges from the madness." And this is the method that carries the Indian juggernaut forward and gives the shake to the metaphorical champagne bottle to blow out the cork in whose way nobody would dare to come.

Some might point to the exploding population in India a big problem. Again as the journalist points out the difference between the people density in Manhattan and Mumbai, it definitely is a problem. But it also is a blessing. As in the computer game series, Age of Empires, the bigger your civilisation grows, the more chances you have to be victorious by wiping out your opponents. India will never destroy civilisation or country literally. But India has already started to invade many countries in way you cannot even imagine. Some time back I had traveled to Chicago to work on a bid to win business. There in my companies groups were Americans (quite old, I might add) who were fighting against American companies to win the bid and take the business to India. Something similar to what the East India Company did. But this time around, other people are coming to Indian companies themselves and are doing it voluntarily rather than being forced at gunpoint.

India definitely is going to be the country to be watched. It is only a matter of confidence that we Indians should exude and pass on the message to every other Indian on the earth.