ABSTRACT
A recent World Bank report starts with the following claim: ‘India is increasingly becoming a top global innovator for high tech products and services’ ( Dutz 2007, 15). The paradox of India which is embedded in this claim eludes the author of the report. In the same report, it is pointed out that India is a country where approximately 90 per cent of Indian workers are still employed in the informal sector. Spread of higher education is still severely limited amongst the working population and 70 per cent of the workforce is still employed in the agricultural sector. The report rightly sees the preceding as key challenges to India’s ambition of sustaining and improving this excellence in IT and IT-based services but the puzzle is how India has reached such a position despite these challenges.
