The World is Flat!

I have been thinking for long time about posting about the book titled 'The World is Flat', authored by 'Thomas L Friedman', winner of pulitzer for commentary in the year 2002. I particularly liked the effort that the author put in writing such a book. It isn't easy writing a book like this as it demands whole lot of facts and collecting facts in't an easy job on any day. He did an excellent job visiting offices of DELL, Walmart and UPS to gather information about the supply chain systems that these successful companies operate with.

I am particularly amazed the way Friedman articulated the whole story of outsouring to third world countries, if I may call them so, like India, China, Philippines and Vietnam. He did mention about the Indian companies like Infosys, TCS, WIPRO, 24X7 and Mphasis ETC.. He talked great deal about Nandan Nilekani, P V Kannan and Jerry Rao in many parts of the book.

Friedman’s list of “flatteners” include the fall of the Berlin Wall; the rise of Netscape and the dotcom boom that led to a trillion dollar investment in fiber optic cable; the emergence of common software platforms and open source code enabling global collaboration; and the rise of outsourcing, offshoring, supply chaining and insourcing. It is facinating to see this man realise that there were lot of things happened when he was busy covering news in Iraq.

He remembers his parents in Minneapolis telling him to finish his dinner and study hard as Chinese and Indian brethren are starving. He now tels his daughter to finish herr home work because the Chinese and Indian kids are starving for the jobs and there is no such thing called American jobs anymore in this flat world.

Click here for his Speech at MIT..... Video is really worth listening to!

This gives a sense of what India achieved in outsourcing but there are lot of other things that Friedman did not mention in the book. He may have liked the biggest confererence rooms in Infosys headquarters but that isn't indicative of anything. What Friedman forgot to mention in the book is the traffic jams, quality of the airports, transportation systems and in precise the INFRASTRUCTURE. As a columnist, he only picked the best and ignored the potential problems that needs immediate attention of the Indian Govt. World is definitely getting flatter in more senses than one but digital divide for sure deserves a mention.