Let him not reach for the moon!
Let him walk on the M.G.Road!

Mr.N.R.Narayanamurthy, the Infosys founder and the IT industry icon is justly lauded for his great achievements. He had in a way, transformed India single-handedly and as such he deserves a Bharat Ratna.

If  he had not been so honoured so far, it only shows how politics works in this country and how even men and women entrusted with great responsibilities fail in not rising up to their full potential.
In fact, we wrote to the then President Abdul Kalam, more than once to confer the highest award on Indians who have contributed to enhance the quality of life in the country. For some strange reasons, we neither saw any action nor heard from him! Our countrymen and women don’t realise that power and glory are short-lived!

Now, for Narayanamurthy. In a recent interview in an economic newspaper, full page, he has said several things that are already well-known and he had said it and again here he has repeated. Nothing wrong.

But here we like to make some comments and also some suggestions in view of his standing in the corporate world and also in the public eye.

First, he says and also seems to be repeating that ethics for him comes first and foremost before profit. Admirable! But for a person who has such a reputation and who is now almost seem to have withdrawn from day to day running of such a big enterprise and also who is now talking like an elder statesman of the industry as well as the country to say that ethics comes before profit, he seems to be sending out the message that it is only Infosys is doing this and not others.

To talk of ethics in business is rare and for a man of his stature to talk so, so often seems to give the impression that only Infosys is doing it at its best. For he also seems to  say that his only preoccupation even now, after he ceased to be the executive Chairman and also after Nandan Nilekani had done so and when a new man is now in charge is to say that his interest continues in Infosys and this is not wrong. But to say that he when he is still continuing to promote the brand of Infosys, he travels 20 days abroad just to talk about Infosys, he says so openly and also with emphasis his only interest even now is to promote the Infosys brand and in such a context to emphasise ethics before profits leaves some uncomfortable feeling.

The feeling arises from the thought that he should be knowing only too well, as he was once a Socialist (also a Communist or Communist sympathiser as well?)He must be only too sensitive to the public perception that no private sector, we mean, Capitalism can’t be free of the charge of “exploitation’s and also free of some “unethical” practices, call it business strategy or whatever name you prefer to call it, there is this basic and inherent contradiction between Capitalism and profit making.
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Rahul Gandhi must read more and learn to reform the Congress party!

For whatever be the reasons that Rahul Gandhi is now entrusted to head the Congress party and he is now in the line of succession. So, given the constraints of the Indian situation, we have to welcome the new young face and learn to live with him, right?

Now what are the issues on which the young Gandhi would have to grapple with?
I believe that besides the usual list, like the reform of the Congress party itself, the party is now  a mere imagination of Sonia Gandhi and ,poor lady, she herself has no clue as to go about further than consolidating herself as she is.

This is certainly bad. The men around her, as ministers or busybodies at the AICC are just time-servers; they are not drawn by any common beliefs.

So, I would put the evolving of a set of common beliefs as the chief task of the young Gandhi, given his interest and experience in management.

He has to read his great grand father’s books, to start with, if he had not done so already.
Also he has to read some books at least on Mahatma Gandhi.

These two founding fathers of independent India have left the country with certain liberal beliefs. Democracy, secularism and socialism have been the watchwords under Nehru.
Of these concepts, democracy is rather a bit easy. For everyone talks about it. About socialism, it is now gone and now the talk is about economic reforms without anyone having any precise idea of what economic reforms really mean.

So, one lesson Rahul Gandhi has to learn and also “teach” is to come out with precise account of the contents of economic reforms. More so, when he has come out with a set of ideas for defining his” future challenges”. The future challenges are simply about how to adhere to economic reforms in all its dimensions, not just to crow about the rate of economic growth. It is a thought task and a tough challenge and it would test the ingenuity of all around Rahul to come out with a precise definition and explanation of economic reforms.

Just for once we would like to mention the twin pillars of any economic reform package is as to how to ensure a liberal democracy with individual liberty as the ultimate test.
The much more challenging task for the young leader is to turn India into a genuine secular state.
Secularism and how it came about in India?

Now, secularism is much used because it finds a mention in our Constitution. Much misused because of the rise of the BJP’s Hindutva rightwing extremism.

But then secularism is not an easy world either. I am not sure how Nehru used the word or how Nehru came to be identified with the word. May be he in his Socialist ideological enthusiasm used the word Secularism to distance the Congress party from the then prevailing Hindu-Muslim debates, more so in the pre-Independence Partition days negotiations.

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Gandhi’s role in India’s Partition

There are about 400 and odd books on Mahatma Gandhi alone. This vast output is besides Gandhi’s own writings and letters that are collected into some one hundred volumes by the Indian government. Every country that had leaders of great national importance, from dictators to democrats, from Lenin, Stalin to Mao and the American and the British leaders has such authorised multi-volume publications.

These authorised, official versions and publications after sometime go out of use and completely junk!

Even Pandit Nehru’s “works” now already in multi-volumes, are falling behind times and it is said by the time the full volumes come out, most  of the contemporaries might have all been dead and forgotten! Along with them the Nehru era romance might also fade.
What would be the fate of the Mahatma?

Why so many books, continue to be written about him? Is he a man or a god, a mahatma or a soul force and what else we can make of this complex personality?

Gandhi stirs our emotions, mostly beneficial, for the obvious reason he is seen as a moral person and he talked often as a spiritual person. One more attraction for Gandhi is his long association with so many Christians and Jews and his claims in his autobiography how he was influenced by his coming into contact with these religious teachings.

But then he always claimed himself to be a religious person and that too as a Hindu. And to complicate matters, he had to work for Indian freedom and that brought him into direct conflict with the Indian Muslims and ultimately India was partitioned and also he died at the hands of a Hindu fanatic.

So, the story makes for an unending charm and complexity and throws in Gandhi’s other many idiosyncracies, eccentricities and a resort to fasting and direct action! All this he did in the name of freedom and also as a disciple of Gokhale, a great believer in constitutional means of agitation and persuasion! So, a series of contradictory acts and beliefs make for Gandhi, the man and his complex character. There are other ingredients as well like sex and sex experiments and the last but not the least the long-suppressed relationship with a high born Bengali lady of the Tagore aristocracy and the long-suppressed letter of Rajaji to Gandhi dissuading him to cut of his further relationship. So, you can have your own take, you are a secularist or a religious person or whatever you are and your inclination. The fascination for Gandhi never seems to die!

There have been several new books on Mahatama Gandhi. Two by his own grandsons, Rajmohan Gandhi (Mohandas: The True Story of a Man, His People and an Empire, pages738) and Gopalkrishna Gandhi (Gandhi in his own words, OUP), who is now West Bengal Governor. I had had a glimpse into these two new books. Both are written with much affection and also much detachment. That is an admirable quality one can surely expect from these two highly gifted grandsons of such a great man. There is also one by his great grand son, Tushar Gandhi whose book is sensationally titled as “Let’s kill Gandhi”!
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Scientists, writers or leaders?

India is a land of Gandhi. It is a matter of great pride to Indians that at least this year, the Nobel Foundations felt constrained to publicly confess it was a mistake on the Nobel Committee not to have given the Peace Nobel to Gandhi.

Why? This question is not asked by everyone concerned. Neither by the Nobel Committee nor by the Western intellectuals. Nor by the Indians themselves.

The real obstacle to Gandhi getting the Prize was the power of British colonial power. Churchill and Rudyard Kipling, the two most undeserving names got the Prize for, of all reasons, literature! This should be the supreme irony. But no one asked and even today fails to ask.

While luckily at least Tagore was spotted by British artists and thus he won the Prize.

Even now, in post-Independent India, no one dares to ask why Indian language literatures don’t get the Nobel Prize. Or for that matter, the several others, more rare and precious languages, even the very small minority languages have good literature. The Eastern European nations have produced much literature, poetry and novels that testify to the triumph of human spirit.
Why only English language is given so much attention? Why you search for people who are past their prime to award this prize?

Even literature Nobel Prizes must come to the Indian language literatures.
This year, at least one Indian had the honour of being mentioned as head of an Inter-Government Panel on Climate change that won the Peace Nobel. Thank god, one heaved a sigh of relief!
Why then no Indian scientist, that is born and brought up and works in India, had won a Nobel Prize after Sir C.V.Raman had the honour in 1930? Yes, the other Indian names, Khurana and S.Chandrasekhar won the Nobel Prizes, but they worked for long enough, almost after they became virtually American citizens, as like other foreign-born, America-domiciled names, before they were honoured with a Nobel. Even Amartya Sen would not have won the prize if he had remained within India, nay, even if he had continued to live the UK! Yes, such is the power and pull of the American universities and also American material and political and global power.

This year’s Peace Nobel deservedly went to AL Gore, the US Vice-President who narrowly lost the Presidency and as commentators have endorsed that Gore won the popular vote but the Republican-dominated Supreme Court handed over the White House to his rival George Bush! Now, in a sort of rebuff, the Nobel Foundation had recognised that Gore is the man to save the world, unlike his rival Bush is seen widely as the greatest disaster that had happened to the US in recent years.

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If Ministers pursue their own glories! Their portfolios fail to deliver!

Agri minister is now known for his big money business of cricket than for his political acumen and decision-making. So too his colleague, the Finance minister. This not-so-experienced youngish lawyer’s entry into politics and that too into the highly important portfolio of finance has really sullied the financial system, more so the banking sector.
Gone are the days when the public sector banks had any social obligation, they now make news for their high NPAs, poor performance record and also the failure to deliver on their social obligations. While the farmers’ suicides make routine daily mandatory news, also make news the routine mandatory role of private banks’ questionable practices and the role of loan recovery agents and their criminal activities that lead to deaths of poor and innocent victims and the agents themselves getting arrested by the police for their goonda acts.
Is this all for the two otherwise powerful ministers’ tracking records. Each one is pursuing his own private glory. The FM just now had come back from a world tour to canvass his own candidature for the IMF’s supervisory head job! Yes, Dr.Manmohan Singh’s team is not a happy team. There is no coherence, no collective vision, each minister is own lord of the universe.
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Mukesh Ambani vs Sunil Bharti Mittal rivalry!

The economic reformers must articulate the benefits of organised retail for farm sector reforms!

The organised retail revolution will come and will succeed. The traditional exploitation of farmers by the age-old money lenders and the traders will end for ever! One has to have the vision to foresee developments in the farm sector. It will help both the producers and the consumers. Better prices for farm produce and low price for consumers. And see the multiple benefits. Air prices, electronic weighing, spot payments and collection at farmers’ gates. May be, the Indian farmers are waiting all these days for this day to come. With no exaggeration we can say this is the real second Green Revolution. This revolution of retail business in agri produce and food products through retail chains.
It is always good news for agriculture that daily news   is about agriculture.
TV news channels these days often play up the protests against some retail chains in UP, Orissa and Maharashtra. The latest seemed to be the one in Mumbai not long ago. Over 20,000 persons gathered  at Azad Maidan to protest against the corporates and foreign chains like Wal-Mart into retail trade in India, more so the agri /food products, groceries etc.
At the centre of this controversy are the Special Economic Zones and also the targeted Reliance subsidiary, Reliance Fresh stores.

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Date: December 1, 2007
Place: Trichy, Tamil Nadu
Life and literature of Tamils
As seen from the perspectives of  Tamils living abroad and outside Tamil Nadu in India

1. Introduction:
I am highly grateful for all those who have thought of inviting me to give the keynote address to this assembly of Tamil scholars and all lovers of Tamil language and literature.
This is an exciting theme, happening at an exciting time. The historic  situation of the world today, at the beginning of a new millennium, with globalisation and the rising terrorist violence and the rapid pace of life, a growing migration of people outside of their traditional homes and the consequent identity crisis have all created and given us, in particular, educators, creative writers, thinkers, poets and novelists  a new challenge. The time is certainly here for us to think hard and come up with new ideas and new perspectives.
As I am new to  this assembly of scholars and all those  present here,  I think it is only proper I give a very brief indication of what I think may be my credentials for the role assigned to me  today.
Yes, I have some qualifications and credentials as I see it.
Apart from the fact that I  went to  some of the most universities, India’s most famous university, namely of Visva Bharati at Santiniketan founded by Rabindranath Tagore, I also had the  privilege of  going up to Oxford University  in UK.I was lucky to study at these universities when there were giants of men who led these portals of learning. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru himself was the Chancellor of Visva-Bharati University when I was there for four years and I had the great good fortune to have come closer to him in my formative years. Of course, this impacted my personality and outlook.
At Oxford in the later Fifties and early Sixties there was an unprecedented intellectual ferment, in fact, a revolution in philosophy that almost changed the course of the modern twentieth century philosophy. Oxford was the hub of this philosophy. Bertrand Russell and his colleagues were very much alive then. At Oxford were all his successors, Prof.A.J.Ayer, Isaiah Berlin, John Plamenetz in philosophy and politics and Sir John Hicks and Sir Roy Harrod in philosophy, A.J.P.Taylor in history, Sir Maurice Bowra in classical and modern literature were all very much there and some of these great minds taught me. I am glad to say and it is worth mentioning, I think, that I was taught by those who won the Nobel Prizes (Sir Hicks for economics) and some of my friends also won the Nobel Prizes (Amartya Sen for economics), when I was there the youngest Indian to won a prestigious literature prize (the Hawthordon prize for poetry) was Dom Moraes, my close friend who won it at age 19! So, you can imagine the ferment in which my intellect was nurtured.
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It is an irony that as we type this note comes the news that RBI had punished 7 banks, private, foreign and PSU banks for violating IPO norms! The fines for the IPO scams run from Rs.25 lakhs to 5 lakhs. The point is that some of the superstars are also found to be indulging in this sort of fraud.

Why we say this?

We are having an agri media business for some two decades and we have commented on the banks in the agri lending practices over the years. We have created awareness among the bankers, farmers, the government departments and the various ’stakeholders’ how promoting agriculture, creating wealth in agriculture through independent enterprises is a near impossible job! And yet we have succeeded in a positive way in the sense that thanks to our persistent efforts we have created a lot of independent entrepreneurs, small and medium entrepreneurs who have overcome the obstacles to invest in agri ventures.

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United Progressive Alliance becomes United Political Survival! It is ironical that the Left threatened the UPA and in the process the ruling alliance caved in. They have all become partners in the united political survival game.

PM’s credibility falls, Sonia slips! Left prone to trouble making, as usual! The Indo-US nuclear deal had taken certain unexpected turns. The Left  had over-played its hands and the PM uncharacteristically issued an ultimatum of sorts and the Sonia” a latest outburst  only  queered the pitch. So, there is every sign that the political  pace  is quickening and the mid-polls is the only way out of this logjam. What if India loses its face with the IAEA chairman visiting India at an embarrassing moment with the Left’s public posturing creating an acute difficulty for the distinguished guest  as well as the host country. The basic  irony  is that no one seems to be wiser after all these controversies! Who exactly is the originator of the deal in the first place? Why Man Mohan Singh emerged as the sole defender of the deal? How sure are the  hardcore Left leaders the deal, even if concluded in the “operationalisation” 123,Hardy Act and the Nuclear Suppliers Group and the signing of the CTBT, FMCT are all really  gone through? Why Sonia after the initial slip by the PM had suddenly lost control  over her remarks, knowing fully well the Left is already so touchy about their own wisdom?

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Just all end up as election slogans?

Who is the urban development minister? And also, who is the rural development minister? Can one recall at once? Such is the urban-centric, New Delhi-based power elite that occupies all the ministerial posts and party jobs! And we talk of aam aadmi, tongue in cheek!

We seem to be living more and more in a make-believe world of politics. As soon as Rahul Gandhi took over “power”, he asked the PM to extend the NREGA to the whole of India and the PM does it in a second! As if this is a magic wand!

Is this all we have had, I mean the great hope in a Prime Minister who was seen all along as the great economic expert? The PM for one must surely know well enough that the NREGA as it has so far been put into practice is not delivering on its promises. There have been more than one report/survey that points to the very low success rate. There have been large scale funds diversions, as little as 6 per cent of the households that have registered for the jobs had had jobs and that too at wages that are lower than what is available in the open market. Even in very backwards districts the progress has been very modest, to say the least. As such the NRGEA must have been now restricted to the most backward districts where tribal population is concentrated and where there is no scope for outward migration. But instead, now, at the drop of a hat, Rahul asks the PM just to extend the jobs scheme to the whoe country and the PM obliges with no thought for its truth! No funds, no chance of success and yet the PM obliges.
As the days go by, as the mid-term election nears, the PM seems to have become clueless to the future, including to his own future. That may be one reason why the PM is so obliging to the wishes of a young man who is seen as the heir to the throne! An young man, quite experienced and yet he would be the Prime Minister under whom the dodling old men, all in office for very long time, and all so old to be in total isolation of the ground realties of the country would however would be asked to be Cabinet Ministers and they, including the incumbent PM would be only too willing to oblige!

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