Private initiative

Infosys Chairman Narayana Murthy has been disarmingly candid in his address to the Indian Science Congress. It is precisely the flavour of...

Infosys Chairman Narayana Murthy has been disarmingly candid in his address to the Indian Science Congress. It is precisely the flavour of candour that always comes as a shock to the system, which dislikes being faced with unpleasant truths. The system doesn8217;t like its boat rocked, but those outside it must acknowledge the merit of these ideas. Though Murthy has said that he is quot;not driven by realityquot;, he is simply suggesting that we all get real. If India has decided to work towards becoming an information superpower, it must first learn to behave like one.

It must realise that in the absence of education, India will be nowhere in the information marketplace. Besides, the medium of this education has to be English, notwithstanding the convictions of the cultural nationalists, because it is the lingua franca of the infosphere. Notwithstanding them again, India must desist from reinventing the wheel. Swadeshi is all very well, but a refusal to learn from the experience of other nations amounts to folly. The bottomline is that the country must jack in sooner rather than later. The industry is about time advantages and, to be honest, India is already critically time-disadvantaged.

More importantly, there is no way that government can meet development goals like education and population control on its own. It must attract commitments from the private sector in exchange for incentives. The principal incentives offered so far are for setting up operations in remote locations. This has paid limited dividends apart from local employment generation, because only the biggest corporates have invested in infrastructure development. Corporates will be more interested in getting into services which directly benefit them. Education is an obvious option because it generates skilled manpower.

Health is equally obvious because it improves the quality of the workforce. The corporate sector should be encouraged to focus on these areas, rather than on improving access in the outback, which has been something of a priority. Unfortunately, the government has never really invited business to indicate how it would like to be involved in the social sector. There have been initiatives by the chambers of commerce, but cooperation with government or the non-governmental sector has never been institutionalised. Perhaps the government could take Murthy8217;s speech as an overture which could lead to a more meaningful system.

However, it would be naive to believe that corporate involvement is a solution in itself. Private enterprise can certainly be counted on to create wealth faster than any other agency and it should be permitted to pursue its principal interest without gratuitous interference from government. But there is no guarantee that this wealth will filter down to where it is required, and fast enough to make a visible difference.

The Ted Turners who invest a sixth of their worth in population control don8217;t lie very thick on the ground. Corporate wealth is created in the cities and tends to pool there. Other agencies have to move it to the villages. Given sufficient loose change in the cities, perhaps we could see one of India8217;s biggest anomalies set right 8212; the almost complete absence of big, professionally-run charities accustomed to raising and deploying funds on a large scale.