As I look back now on the successes Indians have achieved in the United States since my own arrival in 1967, it gives me great satisfaction and pride. I am particularly pleased with two things: First, the tremendous success of some Indians is reinforcing the faith that India and Indians can compete with the best and brightest in the world; second, a sizeable portion of the huge wealth created by these individuals is going back to India to support a variety of projects that will enable less privileged countrymen to advance.
For years, India lived by socialism. Its leaders constantly berated businesspeople for their accumulation of wealth. Businesspeople were perceived to be dishonest and making money was considered bad. Consequently, with no competition, enterprising businesses were not allowed to grow. The media — especially television and radio — was government controlled, always painting a rosy picture of the country. The media also almost always focused on its leaders, to the exclusion of everything and everybody else.

I remember my visit to India in the 1980s when Rajiv Gandhi was in power. He had promised to bring computer literacy to the country and take the nation into the twenty-first century. It never happened, not because Gandhi did not have the wherewithal to increase the use of computers in the country, but because the media, controlled by his own government, still fed the nation nonsense.

I remember watching a newscast, which may have been the All India Radio or Doordarshan, and all it seemed to be reporting on what Rajiv Gandhi did that day, and what his plan was for the next day. This piece of “news” took 13 minutes out of the 15 minutes for the entire newscast. This seriously undermines democracy in the country and failed to bring about an awakening in the minds of the people. Ultimately, democracy is a marketplace of ideas, which just did not exist in India; there was no exchange of ideas, no differing perspectives, a fact that seriously held back societal development. Without intellectual honesty and a free media to express it, no society can progress.

Since the 1990s, we have both intellectual honesty and a free media, in India. Satellite television, now privately controlled, has had a huge impact on society. Rather than painting rosy pictures of India, these channels are portraying the country and society as they are, and society is actually benefiting from the exercise. About a decade has passed since the Berlin Wall came down, the USSR broke up — and now even China has caught on with capitalistic practices. Indians are now questioning the wisdom of socialistic policies; they are just now posing the question: “Hey, why not us?”