•Seema Chishti: Why did you write and what was the central idea behind it?

When I took up this idea of writing a book, a fairly eccentric venture, I guess -- people wondered why some corporate guy was writing a book on India? My view was that there is a window of opportunity for India based on its demographics and I have talked about that. I felt that to do justice to this opportunity required a fairly in-dept look at what was happening. A lot of people were looking at this through a prism, the economist would look it as an economic issue, the political scientist as a political issue, a sociologist as a societal issue so on and so forth. Whereas what was really required was to bridge this entire world and that one had to look at it much more holistically.

•Dhiraj Nayyar: How much of our political class accepts that private businesses play an important role in the development of the country?

I don't know how many accept it but my view is that the reforms process has to be articulated in a different language. Why do you have reforms? You have higher education reforms, labour reforms or build infrastructure simply to expand access of opportunity for the people.

That's really the name of the game. What distinguishes me from a kid in Bihar? I happened to grow up and get education in an urban city and I became part of the techno global world. A kid in Bihar who doesn't have access to English, who doesn't go to school, where is his mobility? The key is how we create access and mobility for everyone and then the reform arguments become politically salient.

... contd.