I briefly considered following recent New York Times tradition and simply plagiarizing Mr. Friedman’s essay but I found that it was incomplete. He offers a compelling story about how young Indian professionals are coming back to get involved in fixing India’s problems of governance. As Mr. Friedman states, “As long as these two liabilities of inept governance and endemic poverty are not addressed, India can't really take off and become a big-time technology competitor of the United States. The information revolution, though, has given India, for the first time, some real resources and tools to address its chronic ailments. Will it seize this opportunity? This is India's "to be or not to be" question….But it will require some radical changes in politics: While India has the hardware of democracy — free elections — it still lacks a lot of the software — decent, responsive, transparent local government.”

While I agree with his essay, his point regarding inept governance doesn’t give enough credit to the changes that have already occurred nor highlight what I see are difficult barriers yet to overcome. India’s government has made strides in shedding its cumbersome Statist past over the last decade. Several times on this trip I have heard stories about how trade, communication, and travel between states within India has become easier. In addition, I have direct experience in companies that have worked with India both now and a decade ago and the environment for conducting business has improved. But bureaucracy and protectionism are still the order of the day and this makes our experience of finding Washington apples in the middle of the Thar desert all the more remarkable (whoever markets Washington apples in this part of the world deserves a raise!).

Friedman goes on to state that “America's greatest competitive advantages are the flexibility of its economy and the quality of its infrastructure, rule of law and regulatory institutions. Knowledge workers are mobile and they like to live in nice, stable places. My hope is that the knowledge workers now spearheading India's economic revolution will feel compelled to spearhead a political revolution.” But achieving an economic or political revolution in India will require more than just improved governance and better infrastructure. The ideas of history’s real revolutionaries, people like Marx and Jefferson, never took full root here despite the very fertile soil of horrific poverty. This is due, I believe, to India’s culture. And it is this culture, specifically the lingering presence of the caste system, that may make it most difficult for India to take the place that it deserves among other nations.

People in the West typically associate Hinduism with the doctrine of “karma” according to which one’s station in life depends on the quality and rightness of one’s deeds in previous lives. But we overlook the equally important doctrine of “dharma” or duty which dictates appropriate behavior based on one’s station in life. Hence, according to dharma it is your duty in a lower caste to fulfill the role you have been given no matter how distasteful. Similarly, this may explain why I constantly observe higher caste individuals acting like it is their duty to lord it over everyone else! The upper class in India often seems to simply ignore the rampant poverty around them as if it doesn’t concern them. The lowest classes fulfill their role because it is their religious duty. Silly Marx, it is the workers’ duty to wear those chains! This is, of course, too broad a generalization because the caste system, I am told, is weakening, but cultural influences like this take generations to overcome. Serious efforts to address India’s poverty will continue to prove difficult as long as the caste system holds so much sway.

Friedman observes that the IT industry in India is walling itself off from the rest of India with its own infrastructure, something we also observed today in driving around Bangalore’s industrial parks. He suggests that young IT professionals may have the drive and the clout to reform India. I’m afraid that instead these people may form, as Catherine suggests, a new, fifth caste separating itself away from the rest of India much as the Maharajahs of past centuries did when they built the forts that we toured last week in Rajasthan.