It is very easy to come out with an idea but to validate that idea…..

Image: (Left to right) Sudha Murthy, N R Narayana Murthy, Nandan Nilekani and Rohini Nilekani, a journalist at Bombay magazine before their wedding, at a picnic near Bangalore in the early 1980s. | Photograph, courtesy: Infosys technologies and Rediff.

In the second part of his interview with Rediff Mr N R Narayana Murthy, chief mentor of Infosys Technologies says interesting and disappointing.

What do you think could be done to make higher education in India better?

To enhance the quality of our higher education, we can do five things:

One, enhance the autonomy of our higher education system;

Second, encourage them to collaborate with world-class institutions outside India, within India too, but most of them are outside India... ;

Third, bring in a sense of meritocracy in the selection of students and the appointment and promotion of faculty;

Fourth, create incentives for our faculty members to do more world-class research; and

Fifth, remove any licensing in the education system. We gave up most of industrial licensing in 1991. It is silly that we continue licensing of our educational institutions.

Talking about higher education... even the recommendations made to the Knowledge Commission have not been implemented? Why does this happen?

The Indian society is a society of ideas. It is a society that has revered talk. In this society, articulation is mistaken for accomplishment. We are quite satisfied with our voice, with our writings. This is not a society that is focussed on execution.

Frankly, the problem is due to our caste system and the dominance of Brahmins in our society for long period. The Brahminical system said my job is to think of the higher worlds. My job is to think of connecting you people with God. I don't want to do anything that has a relationship with the real world.

Now that is a problem that has played havoc with the Indian culture. So, here in this culture, if you do anything with your hands, it is considered less honourable that anything to do with your brain.

Here everybody wants to be an engineer, nobody wants to be a technician. So when a society does not value implementation, execution, what happens is you create more and more reports and nothing gets done.

For example, (Reliance Industries Chairman) Mr Mukesh Ambani and I gave two reports on how to improve the higher education system: one to (then prime minister) Mr Vajpayee and one to Dr Manmohan Singh.

Second, there has been the Knowledge Commission. Nothing has happened. Third, in 1998 I was a member of the IT Task Force -- which was headed by Mr Jaswant Singh -- and that task force submitted its report somewhere in 1999 0r 2000.

Nine years and I don't think even one suggestion has been implemented. And we made 108 suggestions! So that is why I am not a big fan of ideas in India.

My brother-in-law is a famous professor of physics at Caltech and he tells me it is very easy to come out with an idea. But to validate that idea he and his doctoral students will have to work hard for six months, one year... sometimes two years. That takes 20 hours of work each day for two years. So it is important to come out with new ideas, but it is even more important to execute them.

We are not a nation of doers; we are a nation which believes that our articulation is our accomplishment.

Was he a visionary politician?

Image: Narayana Murthy with his just released book. | Photograph: Rajesh Karkera

In a interview with Rediff Mr Nagavara Ramarao Narayana Murthy, chief mentor of Infosys Technologies says: 

Which politician has influenced you the most? 

Jawaharlal Nehru. See, first of all Mahatma Gandhi... but he was not a politician, so we should not even bring him into the conversation. 

But Jawaharlal Nehru was a visionary politician. He achieved so much in the first 12 years since the birth of the Republic of India. We built five steel plants, we built Bhakra Nangal dam, we built Damodar Valley Corporation, we had atomic energy establishment, Indian Institutes of Technology...you name it, Nehru did it. 

He demonstrated that we in India can bring about extraordinary progress even through public sector, but what has happened is that after him successive governments somehow have condoned corruption, have condoned inefficiency, and have lost sight of focus of excellence in implementation. 

That's the reason why you see delays in almost all projects. It's got nothing to do with people, with the country. 

It's got everything to do with the leaders or the quality and vision of leaders in the country. 

India is new to IT and urbanism… but still lingering with the Great Indian Socialist Darkness….

In a interview with the ET Mr N R Narayana Murthy says some interesting discussion especially about Nehru. Some excerpts:   

• “we have been unable to redeem the pledge that our founding fathers took when India got independence. That is to provide decent access to education, nutrition, healthcare and welfare to the poorest of the poor. India has the largest mass of illiterates in the world, largest mass of poor people in the world, 250 million people don't have access to safe drinking water, 650 million people do not have access to decent sanitation. So this whole paradigm of 8-9% GDP growth becomes somewhat irrelevant when you look at these aspects. 
  
• ..a country like India we need to solve three pieces of development -- first is creating a public opinion that values good work ethic, honesty, discipline, secularism. Second, we need to develop a cadre of leadership who espouse these values and serve as role models and demonstrate leadership by example. Third, we need the determination of the elite and the powerful in the society to eschew creation of asymmetry of benefits in their favour vis-à-vis the common man. Only when these three conditions are fulfilled will we be able to create a fair, just, equitable and inclusive growth in our society. In essence this is the fundamental thesis on which the book is based.  
  
• I don't think that there is any shortage of good quality people. The important thing is for our political parties to provide opportunities to the young. For instance just as in Infosys I voluntarily gave up the MD position when I was 52 and later the CEO position at 56 years and supported those youngsters who came to those position. I believe it's important that politicians give new opportunity to younger people.  
  
• Can you tell us about some of the lectures in the book? 
• They all address different, crucial aspects of our progress. For example, Address to Students and Values (parts 1 &2) I believe are extremely important. There is a lecture about `What Can We Learn from the West' delivered as the Lal Bahadur Shastri Memorial Lecture which touches upon how we can make our already wonderful value system even stronger. Then there is the Darbari Seth Memorial Lecture `In Praise of Secularism' which is very important at this hour of extraordinary progress we are making.  

I read with interest particularly the `What Can We Learn from the West' and `In Praise of Secularism' the latter one is not just eye opening but seems to be miracle of war with word like minority. I was happened to receive the last copy of Darbari Seth Memorial Lecture `In Praise of Secularism' published by TERI. 

• “We have to ensure that there is a spirit of oneness in our country rather than differentiating ourselves. We have to summon the energy, enthusiasm, hope and confidence of every community in India to make this a better country and that's where secularism is very important. There is a lecture on the Role of Discipline in Accelerating National Development which emphasizes that unless we embrace discipline in every aspect of our live we will not be able to bring fast and equitable growth.  
  
• The way our politics is going these days regional issues are more important, regional parties are taking centre stage... 
• That's because the quality of our political leaders is going down. Remember when Jawaharlal Nehru was the PM between 1950 and 1962 this country achieved extraordinary growth. Five steel plants were completed, Bhaba Atomic Energy Research Centre was established Tata Institute of Fundamental research became strong, Bhakra Nangal dam came up, IITs, AIIMS, you name it all of that happened in 12 years post independence. You tell me of any other 12 year period where we made such growth in government. 
• If you have a great leader of the caliber of Nehru even India with all its problems even after independence, with all its lack of resources can make extraordinary progress. Establishing five steel plants is not easy but the man did it. Establishing a centre for atomic energy research is not easy, he did. Getting 400 plus Phds from around the world to IIT Kanpur was not easy, he did it. All of this happened because of the vision of one man. 
• In fact in 1967 many of my professors at IIT Kanpur said they all came back to India because of the vision and the enthusiasm of Nehru. Today these institutes are not able to attract five such faculties per year but that man attracted 400 such people at just one institute. What does it tell you? It tells you if you have great leaders you can achieve what seems impossible. I am absolutely convinced, as I have written in the book, three fundamental pieces of development -- values practiced by people, leaders who serve as a role models and the elite and the powerful who will eschew any asymmetry of benefits. These three pieces of development puzzle are absolutely necessary if India has to make decent, equitable, just fair, growth. 
  
• ………….unfortunately as Franz Fanon has said in his book *Black Skin, White Mask*, the tragedy of most post colonial societies is that the elite and the powerful continue to operate as colonizers, operate under a different set of rules. The civil society has to stand up and change this.” 
  

The idea of “A Better India, A Better World”

So, it’s now his turn to make reader busy with his book probably the young people. The Infosys chief mentor N R Narayana Murthy book "A Better India, A Better World" just released.

He says in a interview with NDTV:

When I look at the big canvas of India, I often feel confused, agitated and powerless—but also motivated to find solutions to the problems of poverty. We continue to rationalize our failures. No other society has mastered this trait as well as we have. Obviously this is an excuse to justify our incompetence, corruption and apathy. This attitude has to change.

Asked for his wish list for the new government that is due to be installed in a few weeks' time, Murthy listed the all-important issue of food security for children as a top priority.

“Mid-day meals to alleviate hunger is even more important than healthcare,” he said.

Power of entrepreneurship in solving the problem of poverty in India…..

N.R. NARAYANA MURTHY writes in his book (Excerpt published in outlook 20 April 2009 from A Better India: A Better World by N. R. Narayana Murthy; Allen Lane (Penguin India), Rs 499): 

• “The enigma of India is that our progress in higher education and in science and technology has not been sufficient to take 350 million Indians out of illiteracy. It is difficult to imagine that 318 million people in the country do not have access to safe drinking water and 250 million people do not have access to basic medical care. 
  
• Why should 630 million people not have access to acceptable sanitation facilities even in 2009? When you see world-class supermarkets and food chains in our towns, and when our urban youngsters gloat over the choice of toppings on their pizzas, why should 51 per cent of the children in the country be undernourished? 
  
• When India is among the largest producers of engineers and scientists in the world, why should 52 per cent of the primary schools have only one teacher for every two classes? When our politicians and bureaucrats live in huge houses in Lutyens’ Delhi and the state capitals, our corporate leaders splurge money on mansions, yachts and planes, and our urban youth revel in their latest sports shoes, why should 300 million Indians live on hardly Rs 545 per month, barely sufficient to manage two meals a day, with little or no money left for schooling, clothes, shelter and medicine?
  
• These questions have been troubling me right from that day when I spent a lonely, hungry, cold and introspective 21 hours in the guard’s compartment on a freight train going from the historic city of Nis, in what was then Yugoslavia and is now Serbia, to Istanbul, way back in 1974. I have had some success in demonstrating the power of entrepreneurship in solving the problem of poverty through my experiment of creating Infosys. Yet, when I look at the big canvas of India, I often feel confused, agitated and powerless—but also motivated to find solutions to this problem.”
  

Murthy Antidote

N.R. Narayana Murthy says “The only way society can solve the problem of poverty is through entrepreneurship because entrepreneurs create jobs, entrepreneurs create wealth.”