Interview: N.R. Narayana Murthy, founder of Infosys Technologies

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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.


Post the Satyam episode the issue of corporate governance has come to the fore. What do you think should be done to avoid such instances?
Any community that encourages, directly or indirectly, a feudal structure or dictatorship is bound to result in disaster. On the other hand any community (company, city, town, nation etc) that espouses the cause of democracy committed with fair, balanced, transparency and accountability will never see a disaster.
What happened in Satyam is that it was a huge scandal. Nobody could stand up and say, what is happening is wrong. Even those who thought what was happening is wrong did not have the courage and were not in an environment to say that it was wrong.


But lot of companies has a feudal approach...
That's where I think the investors, particularly the institutional investors, have to put pressure on such companies to eschew feudalism and install an enlightened democracy. I believe feudalism was responsible for what happened at Satyam.