Reimagining India: Unlocking the Potential of Asia’s Next Superpower (56 page)

Sources: United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs/Population Division, McKinsey Global Institute, National Tiger Conservation Authority

Many people, inside and outside McKinsey, shared their time, talent, and enthusiasm to make
Reimagining India
a reality.

In McKinsey’s India office, special thanks are due Barnik Maitra, who played a central role in making the dream of this book a reality. He helped keep the trains running on time and on the right tracks, worked tirelessly to coordinate with contributors, and saved us all from innumerable errors of fact, analysis, and judgment. Kulsum Merchant shared insight, ideas, and contacts at every juncture. Aparna Krishnan and Adhiraj Alai assisted with logistics and project management.

In New York, Rik Kirkland, head of McKinsey Global Publishing, reprised the role he played for
Reimagining Japan
, providing editorial direction, encouragement, and inspiration. McKinsey senior editor Cait Murphy worked closely with all the McKinsey authors. We also are indebted to McKinsey colleagues James Manyika and Brian Salsberg, who went the extra mile in putting us together with crucial contributors.

We benefited enormously from the skill, knowledge, and professionalism of an extraordinary team of outside editors: Nisid Hajari (now in Singapore), Paul Blustein (Kamakura), Rick Hornik (New York), and Gwen Robinson (Bangkok). Thanks, too, to John Sparks, who served as lead editor for our info graphics.

Moomal Mehta, deputy director of the Asia Society in Mumbai, championed our cause, shared her insights, and graciously put us in touch with many wonderful authors.

Priscilla Painton and her team at Simon & Schuster embraced the
spirit of this project from its inception, reviewed every essay, and provided wise and detailed counsel on how to translate our vision into a final format that would engage readers and be worthy of our distinguished contributors.

Finally, we wish to express our deep gratitude to all members of McKinsey’s India offices, now celebrating the firm’s twentieth year in India. McKinsey’s India partners have championed this project wholeheartedly from start to finish. Without their unwavering commitment,
Reimagining India
could never have been imagined.

Clay Chandler, Adil Zainulbhai, Editors

August 2013

ANIL AGARWAL is executive chairman of the Vedanta Resources PLC, a global metals and mining producer with operations in seven countries. Headquartered in London, Vedanta is the world’s largest integrated zinc lead producer and among the top producers of copper, iron ore, and silver.

MUKESH AMBANI is chairman and CEO of Reliance Industries, India’s largest private sector company. He is a member of the Indian Prime Minister’s Council on Trade and Industry, a member of the board of governors of the National Council of Applied Economic Research, and chairman of the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. Ambani has a degree in chemical engineering from the Mumbai University Indian Institute of Chemical Technology and an MBA from Stanford University.

VISWANATHAN ANAND, India’s first chess grandmaster, has been the world chess champion since 2007. He was also the Fédération Internationale des Échecs world rapid chess champion in 2003. In 2007, he received the Padma Vibhushan, the first sportsman so honored.

DOMINIC BARTON is a senior partner and the global managing director of McKinsey & Co.

HARSHA BHOGLE is a journalist who is considered “the voice of Indian cricket.” He began his sports commentary career in 1980 on All
India Radio and worked for the BBC for eight years. Since 1995, he has been presenting live cricket for ESPN STAR Sports. Bhogle earned a degree in chemical engineering from Osmania University and attended the Indian Institute of Technology in Ahmedabad.

KUMAR MANGALAM BIRLA is chairman of the Aditya Birla Group, a global conglomerate founded in 1857 by his great-grandfather. The Birla Group is among the world’s top rolling aluminum, cement, and textile producers. Birla is also chancellor of the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, a university focusing on engineering and the sciences, and a member of the Central Board of Directors of the Reserve Bank of India. He authored India’s first report on corporate governance (1999) and has served as the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s Committee on Insider Trading.

JOHN CHAMBERS is chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems. He has received a number of awards, including the Clinton Global Citizen Award and the Woodrow Wilson Award for Corporate Citizenship.

CLAY CHANDLER is McKinsey’s Asia editor. He is former Asia editor of
Fortune
magazine and has held a variety of other journalistic assignments, including chief economic correspondent and Hong Kong bureau chief for the
Washington Post
and Tokyo correspondent for the
Wall Street Journal
. Chandler is a graduate of Harvard University, where he studied politics, economics, and East Asian history. He is coeditor, with Heang Chhor and Brian Salsberg, of
Reimagining Japan: The Quest for a Future That Works
(Shogakukan, 2011).

MADHAV CHAVAN is cofounder, president, and CEO of the Pratham Education Foundation. Founded in 1994 to provide preschool education to children living in the Mumbai slums, Pratham is now the largest education NGO in India, reaching three million primary school children in nineteen states. In 2012, Chavan won the WISE Prize for Education, considered the Nobel Prize for education.

LOUIS R. CHÊNEVERT is the chairman and CEO of United Technologies, whose business units include Otis elevators, Pratt & Whitney aircraft engines, and Sikorsky Aircraft. Chênevert is a member of the Business Council, the US-India CEO Forum, and Business Roundtable.

PHILIP CLARKE became CEO of Tesco in 2011, thirty-seven years after he first started to work stacking shelves at the British grocer. Today Tesco is one of the world’s largest retailers, with sixty-seven hundred stores in twelve markets. Clarke graduated from the University of Liverpool with a degree in economic history.

STEPHEN P. COHEN, a senior fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution, is an expert on South Asian security and nuclear proliferation. He has served as a consultant to the Department of State, the RAND Corporation, and the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, and has been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations’ task force on South Asia and the Asia Society’s committee on U.S.–South Asian relations. He is the author of
Shooting for a Century: The India-Pakistan Conundrum
(2013),
Beyond America’s Grasp: A Century of Failed Diplomacy in the Middle East
(2009), coauthor, with Sunil Dasgupta, of
Arming without Aiming: India’s Military Modernization
(2010), and a contributor to
The Future of Pakistan
(2011).

VIKASH DAGA is a partner in McKinsey’s Delhi office.

GURCHARAN DAS is a regular columnist for six Indian newspapers (in English, Hindi, Telugu, and Marathi), and he has written for the
New York Times
, the
Wall Street Journal
,
Financial Times
,
Foreign Affairs
, and
Newsweek
. His literary works include a novel,
A Fine Family
(2001), and an exploration of the Mahabharata epic,
The Difficulty of Being Good: On the Subtle Art of Dharma
(2009). He is best known for his books on modern India, including
India Unbound: From Independence to the Global Information Age
(2000), a narrative history of twentieth-century India, which was filmed by the BBC, and
India Grows at Night: A Liberal Case for a
Strong State
(2012). Das became a full-time writer in 1995, after a successful business career, rising to become CEO of Procter & Gamble India.

SONALDE DESAI is a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland and a senior fellow at the National Council of Applied Economic Research in New Delhi. A demographer, Desai studies comparative social, educational, and economic inequality. In collaboration with the NCAER, she recently helped to complete the India Human Development Survey, which collected detailed information on forty thousand households. The data will be used to study the relationships among poverty, gender inequality, and public policy. Desai earned a PhD in sociology from Stanford University. She is the author of
Gender Inequality and Demographic Behavior: India
(1994) and a contributor to
Human Development in India: Challenges for a Society in Transition
(2010).

VISHAKHA N. DESAI, president and CEO of the Asia Society from 2004 to 2012, is special adviser for global affairs to the president of Columbia University and senior adviser for Global Policy and Programs at the Guggenheim Foundation. A scholar of classical Indian art, she was curator of Indian, Southeast Asian, and Islamic art at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and has served as an adviser and juror for numerous international projects on contemporary art, including the Venice Biennale. Desai has taught at the University of Massachusetts, Boston University, and Columbia University.

ROHINI DEY is a restaurateur and former economist and management consultant. She is the owner and founder of Vermilion, Indo-Latin restaurants in New York and Chicago. She founded the Vermilion James Beard Foundation for Women in Culinary Leadership Scholarship to create more women leaders in the dining industry, and is an active member of the Chicago Network, the International Women’s Forum, and the Women’s Forum of New York. She writes a monthly column for the
Chicago Sun-Times
.

FRANK D’SOUZA is the cofounder and CEO of Cognizant, a global consulting and information technology provider. Born in Nairobi, D’Souza earned an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University. D’Souza is a director of the U.S.-India Business Council.

BILL EMMOTT is a writer and consultant on international affairs. From 1993 to 2006, he was editor of the
Economist
. He writes about current affairs for the
Times
of London and
La Stampa
in Italy. Emmott is the author of numerous books, including
Rivals: How the Power Struggle Between China, India, and Japan Will Shape Our Next Decade
(2008) and
Good Italy, Bad Italy: Why Italy Must Conquer Its Demons to Face the Future
(2012). He earned a first-class degree in philosophy, politics, and economics from Magdalen College, Oxford.

SONIA FALEIRO is the author of
Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay’s Dance Bars
(2010), which was the London
Sunday Times
Travel Book of the Year in 2011. Born in Goa and raised in New Delhi, she studied at St. Stephen’s College and the University of Edinburgh. She has written for
India Today
,
Tehelka
, the
New York Times
, and the
International Herald Tribune.

MALCOLM FRANK is executive vice president for strategy and marketing at Cognizant. He has a degree in economics from Yale University.

PATRICK FRENCH is an award-winning British historian. His books include
Younghusband: The Last Great Imperial Adventurer
(1994),
Liberty or Death: India’s Journey to Independence and Division
(1997),
Tibet, Tibet
(2004),
The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of
V. S. Naipaul (2008), and
India: A Portrait
(2011). A founding member of the intergovernmental India-UK Round Table, he has lectured at Oxford, Harvard, the Royal Geographical Society, the Asia Society, the American Enterprise Institute, and many other institutions.

BILL GATES is the cofounder and chairman of Microsoft and cochair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

ANAND GIRIDHARADAS is the author of
India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation’s Remaking
(2011). A former McKinsey consultant, he writes the “Currents” column for the
New York Times
and its global edition, the
International Herald Tribune.
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, and educated at the University of Michigan, Oxford, and Harvard, he has reported and lectured around the world. In 2011, he was named a Henry Crown fellow of the Aspen Institute.

NISABA GODREJ is the executive director of Godrej Consumer Products and a member of the board of directors and president of Human Capital & Innovation for Godrej Industries. Godrej, a diversified conglomerate founded in India in 1897, today has a presence in more than sixty countries. Nisaba Godrej’s focus is on innovation, human capital, and strategy, particularly as related to consumer products. She is also responsible for the group’s corporate social responsibility practices. She earned a BSc degree from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Harvard. She is on the board of Teach for India and the Heroes Project.

CHRISTOPHER J. GRAVES is global CEO of Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide. Before joining Ogilvy, he worked in business news for twenty-three years, including cofounding the long-running TV show
Wall Street Journal Report.
He was also vice president of news and programming for CNBC in Europe and Asia. Graves is a frequent public speaker and moderator, appearing on CNBC’s
Squawk Box
and at events such as the Clinton Global Initiative, World Economic Forum, and the World Islamic Economic Forum.

RAMACHANDRA GUHA is a professor of history at the London School of Economics whose interests include environmentalism and cricket. He is a columnist for several Indian newspapers and a regular contributor to
Caravan
and
Outlook
magazines, and is the author of
India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy
(2007) and
How Much Should a Person Consume? Environmentalism in India and the United States
(2006), and the editor of
The Picador Book of Cricket
(2001). Guha is managing trustee of the New India Foundation, a nonprofit body that funds research on modern Indian history.