Books and writing

Imagining India: The Idea of a Renewed Nation (2009)

Penguin Press. A survey of the ideas behind India’s rise after 1991 and those still in dispute. It covers population, English, IT, cities, education, labour and the environment. Thomas Friedman wrote the foreword. Publishers Weekly called it a “suave and unabashedly free market overview” and “eminently reasonable, if less than startling”.

Publishers Weekly: Review of Imagining India (19 January 2009) · Wikipedia: Nandan Nilekani

Rebooting India: Realizing a Billion Aspirations (2015)

Allen Lane (Penguin Random House India). Written with Viral Shah. It draws on Aadhaar and their UPA-era work on GSTN and electronic tolls. It proposes a dozen tech-led public institutions and estimates savings of ₹100,000 crore a year. Mihir S. Sharma in Business Standard called it “a refreshingly optimistic book” but said the solution “feels insufficiently deep”.

Penguin India: Rebooting India · Business Standard: Mihir S. Sharma reviews Rebooting India (7 November 2015)

The Art of Bitfulness: Keeping Calm in the Digital World (2022)

Penguin. Written with Tanuj Bhojwani. It looks at how devices came to hold our time and attention. It offers habits for better use of screens and argues for building tech for all instead of a winner-takes-all system. Srivatsa Krishna in Business Standard called it a “tour de force”.

Business Standard: Srivatsa Krishna reviews The Art of Bitfulness (18 January 2022) · ThePrint: New book lists ways to break out of a toxic relationship with gadgets (14 May 2022)

Finternet: The financial system for the future (2024)

Bank for International Settlements (working paper). A concept paper with BIS general manager Agustín Carstens. It sets out unified ledgers, token managers and programmable assets for an interoperable financial network.

YourStory: Nilekani releases paper proposing Finternet (April 2024) · BIS: Finternet working paper by Agustín Carstens and Nandan Nilekani (2024) · BIS: The Finternet, a giant leap for the financial system (18 April 2024)

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