Innovation in a post-China world

Recently, I had a wonderful intellectual encounter with a group of bright people at the Dartmouth Osher Institute for a Great Decisions seminar, "India: Beyond China, the West, and the Global South."

- NARAIN BATRA

After the 150-minute, exhilarating seminar, I found the Q&A segment to be the most thrilling. The participants' thirst for knowledge about Indian history, caste system, women and arranged marriages, multilingual democratic political system, and minorities was boundless. I concluded the seminar with a video clip of a classical dance Bharatanatyam with a melody so enchanting that they were transported to a moment of India's spiritual world.

A seminar participant asked: How is the education system in India? How does it compare to the US? I said, Look around. Every 10th doctor in America is an Indian-American. And there are more than 75,000 of them. Most of them were educated and trained both in India and the US. Of the more than 5 million Indian-Americans, 44 per cent hold managerial or professional roles in fields such as information technology, medicine, scientific research, engineering, and business. They play a major role in Silicon Valley, where 7 per cent of hi-tech firms have Indian CEOs and 34 per cent of engineers are of Indian origin.

Google/Alphabet, Microsoft, the World Bank, and several other major US corporations have Indian-American CEOs. And today the American political landscape has the sound and accent of India: Kamala Harris, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, Kash Patel, Pramila Jayapal, Ro Khanna, Raja Krishnamoorthi, et.al.