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The System: Reloaded: Indian Express
New Delhi, June 05: Innovators like Narayana Murthy have sound ideas on how to junk colonial mindsets. Listen...
New Delhi, June 05: Innovators like Narayana Murthy have sound ideas on how to junk colonial mindsets. Listen...
Infosys Technologies founder N.R. Narayana Murthy has a Rs 8,000 metaphor for India’s propensity to trip on its admittedly good intentions. In a recent television interview he recounts a question he faced at a board meeting at Ahmedabad’s Indian Institute of Management. An under-secretary to the Government of India demanded to know how the board had taken as monumental a decision as to retire an old Maruti van worth Rs 8,000.
The absurdity is troubling. The gathering included men and women in charge of guiding the 400 best managerial aspirants in the country and pioneers who have within their lifetimes created companies with turnovers running into thousands of crores of rupees. Yet, their competence to fix the functional value of a dilapidated little vehicle was being directly questioned.
The subtext is telling. Amidst talk of reform and de-regulation, of business initiative and government assistance, the roadblocks remain insurmountable: Bureaucratic distrust of those driven by the profit motive, colonial-era rules and procedures that aid the political class in subjugating rather than in enabling citizens, a system that rewards status quoists rather than innovators, a mai-baap attitude that a private citizen could not possibly know better than an elected representative. And so the absurdities pile up.
Bangalore may be the hub of our software industry, but some wise soul in Delhi has decided to reduce international flights into the garden city. Narayana Murthy and colleagues may complain that this directly hits the software industry — and by implication the creation of jobs and wealth—but who’s listening? Alumni of elite schools, like the IITs, may want to contribute to their alma mater, but the government doubts even their good sense. They can only chip in to a central fund, and the learned men and women in New Delhi will adjudge the money’s appropriate use.
In fact, concedes Naryana Murthy, the System is unbiased in its disdain of innovation. It not only helps the bureaucratic-political establishment in stifling private initiative, it also smothers attempts for change from within. A civil servant content with the status quo, with quoting from the rulebooks on his table, will fare well — there are no allurements for bureaucrats who perform. What is needed, he says, is a system of “fairness, incentive, transparency and accountability”. Who can argue with that?
Citizens like Narayana Murthy have interesting ideas. They have trusted their foresight and dynamism to excel at the cutting edge, creating an industry, wealth and jobs in the process. Let us listen to them when they now share suggestions in areas beyond their business domain.
The absurdity is troubling. The gathering included men and women in charge of guiding the 400 best managerial aspirants in the country and pioneers who have within their lifetimes created companies with turnovers running into thousands of crores of rupees. Yet, their competence to fix the functional value of a dilapidated little vehicle was being directly questioned.
The subtext is telling. Amidst talk of reform and de-regulation, of business initiative and government assistance, the roadblocks remain insurmountable: Bureaucratic distrust of those driven by the profit motive, colonial-era rules and procedures that aid the political class in subjugating rather than in enabling citizens, a system that rewards status quoists rather than innovators, a mai-baap attitude that a private citizen could not possibly know better than an elected representative. And so the absurdities pile up.
Bangalore may be the hub of our software industry, but some wise soul in Delhi has decided to reduce international flights into the garden city. Narayana Murthy and colleagues may complain that this directly hits the software industry — and by implication the creation of jobs and wealth—but who’s listening? Alumni of elite schools, like the IITs, may want to contribute to their alma mater, but the government doubts even their good sense. They can only chip in to a central fund, and the learned men and women in New Delhi will adjudge the money’s appropriate use.
In fact, concedes Naryana Murthy, the System is unbiased in its disdain of innovation. It not only helps the bureaucratic-political establishment in stifling private initiative, it also smothers attempts for change from within. A civil servant content with the status quo, with quoting from the rulebooks on his table, will fare well — there are no allurements for bureaucrats who perform. What is needed, he says, is a system of “fairness, incentive, transparency and accountability”. Who can argue with that?
Citizens like Narayana Murthy have interesting ideas. They have trusted their foresight and dynamism to excel at the cutting edge, creating an industry, wealth and jobs in the process. Let us listen to them when they now share suggestions in areas beyond their business domain.