Foreword of River Valley to Silicon Valley

This is a sincere, simple and readable account of Abhay Kumar’s journey from the banks of the river Paimar to the portals of the Foreign Service Institute in New Delhi. This is a story many young Indians could relate to, those with rural and educationally disadvantaged backgrounds successfully transforming their personal lives and prospects by availing of the opportunities that India’s democratic system and its recent economic growth provide. In its own way, the book is a positive commentary on the process of change in Indian society, on the scope for self-advancement even to the point of becoming a part of the country’s elite through education and competition that now exists. The human content of the narrative will also touch many chords in the readers. The childhood memories of stories told by a grandmother, the venturing out from the family nest in rural India to an urban environment in search for better opportunities in life, and the presence of the father on the emotional landscape of an Indian boy. This is not a complicated book; it is an unpretentious and honest narrative of someone who wants to tell his tale and connect it to a rising India. -K. Sibal, Ambassador of India to the Russian Federation