By LAURINDA KEYS LONG
SPAN, Sep-Oct 2009
One lesson from Dinesh C. Sharma’s well-written and meticulously researched history of India’s IT industry is the caution against presuming one can find a moment when this phenomenon is static long enough to examine, categorize, guide or predict it. This leads to the question: Was the book not obsolete by the time it rolled off the printing press?
The answer in this case is no. And not only because of Sharma’s skill as a story-teller who, even with a subject some might consider dry, writes with humor, a sense of adventure, painting portraits of flawed heroes, the best intentions gone awry through human hubris and just plain fallibility. For Sharma’s story, just as a classic Greek drama, has a moral, more than one. His tale reminds us of the adage that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Sharma’s book is of interest not only to historians and IT professionals, but psychologists, statisticians, and students of social and political science. His writing is also forward-looking, with a careful examination of India’s higher education system and how it can be developed to produce the graduates the country needs, not only for institutional research and national development, but to lead the businesses and private industries that will create jobs for the growing population.
Read full review at: http://span.state.gov/wwwhspseptoct0944.html
No comments:
Post a Comment