Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy: Indians have highest ego per unit of achievement 08-17

Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy: Indians have highest ego per unit of achievement.

Shyam take on this.....

Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy: Indians have highest ego per unit of achievement

And what about the cover up ratio per unit of failure???

I think, we need to work on that create parameters and metrics to measure that too.

I think it also must be quite high...

Yes, the expertise that we have in creating alibis for our misadventures. Even in that we Indians must be ranking quite high, probably next only to the United States. You can't beat the American bureaucrats in that, they create honest and perfect looking alibis for waging war and invading countries. The façade of dignity and inevitability they impart to their misadventure is the best.

Coming back to Indian bureaucrats the moment they clear their civil services exams and get a posting, they feel that they have special endowments and entitlements, when compared to the normal human beings. Specially the brain and the brain parts. They feel that their Cortex, Hypothalamus, and the Cerebellum are of larger size and superior quality. Add to this, the training they undergo implants in them a false sense appropriateness and completeness which creates the ego in them right from the beginning, and it keeps growing with the growth in their career.

One probable reason for the highhanded behavior of the bureaucrats must be the shabby treatment they receive from the less educated and unreasonable politicians. They find a reason and the occasion to vent out their disappointments and frustrations when corporate businessmen like Narayan Murthy and Nandan Nilekani meet them.

This being the scenario, the situation is not likely to improve any time soon.

And for ordinary mortals like you and me, the situation must be worse than the worst.

Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy delivered the fourth annual Independence Day Lit Live lecture in Mumbai last week. The first question he was asked as he reached the venue was if he found the 90-minute long commute from the airport to the venue frustrating. Murthy brushed it off saying he's used to worse in Bengaluru, his home city.

It was a good point to start the conversation since his lecture's topic was city systems. Murthy quoted several numbers and international examples to highlight what's holding Indian cities back from being world class.  

"The biggest challenge for all of us, not just politicians or bureaucrats, is that we, Indians, have the highest ego per unit of achievement. I would humbly request, we be open-minded to those who have performed better than us," he said.

He spoke of having worked with so many governments and realised that somehow things don't move fast. It's partly due to the know-it-all attitude. He shared that Nandan Nilekani (co-founder, Infosys and the force behind Aadhaar cards) too had a similar experience while working with the establishment in Delhi.

"Nandan was giving a lecture on his experience in designing and implementing Aadhaar sometime back. Somebody asked him how difficult was it to work in Delhi," Murthy said. Nilekani's response: The first hurdle that you come across is that they (bureaucrats) say we know this. The toughest hurdle is if they say we are already doing this. There isn't much to do then.

Murthy contrasted this attitude with his experience as an IT advisor to the Thai PM, more than a decade back. "They (Thai officials) would make a presentation and I would give suggestions. They would write those down. The next time I went there, they would show me how they've (the suggestions) been implemented," he said.

In comparison stands the Indian bureaucrat, who as per Murthy never writes anything. Probably because he already knows it.

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