Sir

Your Outlook feature “Among the best: strong bonds” (Nature 436, 492; 200510.1038/436492a), quotes Govindarajan Padmanaban as saying “Indian scientists on the whole do not integrate in large groups”.

I disagree with this generalization. Indian scientists and engineers are widely employed across diversified disciplines, all over the heavily industrialized Western world. Many of today's successful small and medium-sized IT and biotech companies were founded by Indian entrepreneurs, and elsewhere senior Indian executives have played key roles in running larger organizations.

A few familiar names in this ever-growing list are: Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems; Sabeer Bhatia, founder of Hotmail; Arun Netravali, former president of Bell Labs; and Arun Sarin, chief executive of Vodafone.

The success of these companies, which to a large extent relies on teamwork and interpersonal skills, is, in itself, clear evidence that we Indians are great team players. Other contributory factors could be our familiarity with the English language (English is the de facto official language across India, thanks to the British Raj), our inborn spirituality and the extended-family culture that teaches cooperation, mutual respect and interdependence.