India rising: Can a giant democracy become an economic colossus?

The sleek blue-glass building of the Infosys corporation sits like an intruding spaceship amid the unpaved side streets and half-completed residential structures that surround it. Its giant porthole windows offer a peek into a Jetsons-esque world of workers gliding between floors on elevated moving sidewalks.

For now, 19-year-old Nishank Nachappaa toils in the shadows of Infosys and the other high-tech companies that, like him, call the Electronic City section of Bangalore home. The high school graduate helps out at two dormitories for tech workers – one for young men, the other for young women – that his parents manage. His father maintains the buildings and his mother prepares meals for the 120 male and 30 female residents.

Walk a block or two from the dorms and other corporate structures loom with multinational names such as Emerson and Yokogawa, Altametrics and Hewlett Packard.

The company logos offer a hint as to why Bangalore is known as India’s answer to Silicon Valley. Yet despite the high-tech cornucopia, it is still Infosys that Mr. Nachappaa aspires to work for in the future. Perhaps that’s because it is the building the entering college freshman, who will major in computer applications, sees every day as he completes his mundane summer chores cleaning and fetching water. Or maybe it’s those big round windows that offer a glimpse into another world.

“I dream of maybe working for Infosys someday,” says Mr. Nachappaa, shooing away the stray dogs that also call his street home. “It just seems like the future in there, from what I can see. It looks like a good future for me. I think it’s the kind of future many Indians want for our country.”

The dreams that Mr. Nachappaa lays out mirror in many ways the aspirations of a country that senses it is ready to vault forward in the world economy. Fueled

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