Even though I loved reading Tom Friedman's best seller, The World is Flat, it is hard to agree with his title. Especially, if you are living in India, in the midst of an electronics revolution with highest cell phone adoption and largest young population in the world. A couple of obvious reasons are the stark difference between the living standards of the rich and poor, and all kinds of visas required to travel around the world for the budding citizens of India, even the rich ones. So, there obviously are many walls, hills and valleys in this world, it is not flat at all.

Reason for this blog is my 10 year old son's comments on Abhinav, who won India's first gold medal at Olympics and the grand reception he has received back home. His pictures were all over the papers, was received by the President of India and given lots of cash awards by many state govenments. Alongside was the mention of an American swimmer, Michael Phelps who broke all world records by winning the most number of gold medals. My son wondered aloud as to why India is going gaga over a single gold, while American public and politicians are taking their top winner in stride?

I think an answer lies in quantity vs. quality, while we have over a Billion people in India, there are a very few top performers in the sports, so these are treated as national heroes. The next question is why there are only a few and what can be done to improve this situation?

I do have some ideas but look forward to hearing from you until the next blog.

thanks,

naresh