The first decade of 21st century belonged to India and...

….that could well be the harbinger for the entire 21st century belonging to India. From Taj Mahal to Chicken Tikka Masala, everything Indian sells now and is fast becoming global icons with dismantling of economic and travel barriers around the globe.

It was not long back in 1999 when the world predicted a doom because of a Y2K bug and India lapped the opportunity to assert it’s dominance in software and eliminated the threat. On the dawn of the 21st century, everything worked as usual; power plant kept on working, banks were not paralyzed and the mass transportation system didn’t blink it’s eye during the cutover.

India arrived at the international scene and there was no looking back. While China might count more achievement in it’s quest for supremacy, it is no denying that being world’s largest democracy, desire to break the shackle of poverty, mass adoption of English, mastery of mathematics and a populous but having more young people, India is fast catching up on China. The entrepreneurial base that is getting built in India will slowly overshadow the small business revolution that made USA the world’s wealthiest nation. It’s no surprise that there are three Indian in the Forbe’s latest list of world's 100 wealthiest people.

The backlash against outsourcing remains a very real threat, intensifying amid 10% unemployment in the US. But outsourcing - and the idea that companies must operate cheaply, efficiently, globally - has come to be an accepted, inescapable reality. The anti outsourcing lobby in US while crying hoarse over the job getting lost to countries like India has not even open it’s eye to understand that India while serving the IT needs in US can also buy the products coming out of US. Once the ever increasing and dreaded population growth in India has now turned into world’s youngest population and a mad race by giant corporations to exploit the growth. Every multinational US corporations has made India almost their second home to lap up the needs of a fledgling middle class and to be present to serve probably the biggest market the world has ever seen.

I was talking to my Dad the other day and was pleasantly surprise to hear from him that young boys and girls must pursue what they dream and not blindly follow the path of choosing some career for sake of others, if one is not interested. When people in their 60’s and 70’s are changing their views and adapting to the new order, a burgeoning young population is just waiting to explode to embrace change. This was just unthinkable even in late 80’s. The pace at which the thinking has changed in India really amazes me.

It was aptly summarized in WSJ in US that “What will distinguish India in the decade that begins Friday is its ability to now look inward, to clean its government, to uplift more of its population, to foster the businesses and innovations ... and make their success of the last 10 years the norm across regions and industries. That might just clinch more than the next decade - it could well pave the way for an Indian century”,