A Dream Worth Following: From a World-Class Workplace to a World-Class India

It has been three months since I moved back to India from the US. What am I mostly doing in this important settling-in period? I had no plan, but it turns out I am spending most of my time in office — and what an office it is. Huge, green, and one of the best workspaces in India, maybe even the world.

I had no detailed plan about what I would work on in India, but I had a job waiting after my return from onsite. After a week's break, I have been going to office almost daily. This is partly because I am on the bench, and bench employees don't really get work-from-home options. So I keep myself busy with certifications, trainings and hackathons during work hours.

But here is the thing I want to talk about. I am sitting in one of the finest physical spaces a worker can ask for, and I owe it to my company. Infosys has been named a Great Place to Work® in India six years in a row, and India's Best Employer Among Nation-Builders 2026 for consecutive years. Many companies win such awards, but in these three months I have understood why mine does. After the intense, high-speed life in the US, I landed in this calm, beautiful campus and allowed myself to slow down and breathe.

Why am I writing this? Because I keep asking myself one question every day as I walk through those gates: why can't every workplace and every home in India look and feel like this? To me, that is what a developed India should actually look like — not just numbers on a chart, but beautiful, dignified spaces where ordinary people work and live. So in this post, let me honestly describe where India stands today, and where we need to reach.

The India Inside the Gates

First, let me describe what I see every day, so you know the standard is real and already exists on Indian soil. Clean, air-conditioned buildings full of natural light. Gardens and trees between offices. Food courts serving affordable, hygienic meals. Gyms, medical rooms, sports grounds, even art on the walls. Clean toilets everywhere — something we should never take for granted in India. Safe transport, security, and a general feeling that the place respects you. The guard, the housekeeping staff, the fresher and the senior manager all walk through the same doors and sit under the same roof.

This is not a foreign country. This is India — built by an Indian company, on Indian land, run by Indian people. Which means the excuse "we cannot build such things here" is simply not true. We already have. Just not for everyone.

The India Outside the Gates: The Honest Picture 

Now step outside the campus gates, and let me describe — honestly and literally — how most of India works and lives today.

How most Indians work. Around 90% of India's workers are in the informal sector. That means no proper office, no contract, no paid leave, often no fixed salary. The construction worker builds glass towers he will never enter, standing on bamboo scaffolding without a helmet, drinking water from a shared can. The street vendor works twelve hours under the open sun with no toilet nearby. The delivery boy rides through rain and traffic for small payouts, with no insurance if he falls. The garment worker sits in a crowded hall with poor lighting and one break. The farmer — still nearly half our workforce — works entirely at the mercy of the sky. Even many small offices and shops in our towns are cramped rooms with bad ventilation, tangled wires, no fire safety, and toilets we avoid describing. A clean drinking-water point, a safe staircase, a working toilet, a place to sit and eat lunch — these basics are missing in most Indian workplaces.

How most Indians live. The housing story is similar. Crores of Indians in cities live in slums or one-room homes where a whole family cooks, sleeps and studies in the same space. Many others live in old, crowded buildings with water for one hour a day. Villages have improved — government housing schemes have built crores of pucca houses, electricity has reached nearly every home, and tap water connections have grown rapidly — and that progress is real and worth applauding. But drive through most of India and you will still see the gap: open drains beside homes, garbage piles at street corners, air that stings the eyes in winter, and public spaces that no one owns or maintains. The average Indian's daily environment — where they work and where they sleep — is still far below the dignity they deserve.

The gap in one sentence. India today is a country where world-class islands — like my campus — float in a sea of ordinary and often poor conditions. We have proven what we can build. We just haven't decided that everyone deserves it.

The Place to Reach For

So what is the destination? Let me describe it simply, because it is not complicated. 

A developed India is one where every workplace — the factory, the shop, the school, the government office, the small IT firm in a tier-3 town — has the basics my campus treats as normal: clean toilets, safe drinking water, good light and air, a clean place to eat, fire safety, and a boss or system that treats workers with respect. Not marble floors everywhere — just dignity everywhere. 

A developed India is one where every home, whether in a village or a city, has water in the tap, a toilet that works, power that stays, a clean street outside, and enough space for a child to study. Where the colony park is as well-kept as a campus lawn.

A developed India is one where the delivery rider has rest points and insurance, the construction worker has a helmet and a canteen, the farmer has a shaded mandi and storage, and the small-town employee doesn't have to migrate to one of five big cities just to experience a decent workplace.

None of this is fantasy. Every single item above already exists in India — inside a few hundred campuses, townships and model villages. The task of the next twenty years is simple to state and hard to do: take what exists in islands and spread it across the whole map. Companies should extend campus-like standards to their smallest offices and their contract staff. Governments should make basic workplace dignity — toilets, water, safety, ventilation — as strictly enforced as tax rules. Cities should build public spaces the way campuses build them: maintained, green and owned. And each of us, wherever we have a little power — as an employer, a landlord, a manager, a citizen — should upgrade the little patch of India under our control.

A Simple Dream

I came back from living among the stars, and by pure luck I landed in a place that cools the mind and lifts the spirit. My only wish is that this luck should stop being luck. Every Indian — common, mediocre or extraordinary — should have the opportunity to work and live in conditions like these. A day should come when the small, beautiful world inside these campus gates is extrapolated across the entire country, like in any developed nation. When the whole of India feels like the best parts of India — that is when we will have truly reached the moon.