Monday, October 31, 2005

Sucheta Dalal on the Murthy-Gowda slugfest

Writing in The Financial Express, Sucheta Dalal gives us Another view of the Murthy-Gowda slugfest.

Her main point is that none of the other industry leaders came in support of Narayana Murthy. The non-IT industry leaders are, she opines, probably gleeful that for once the IT industry is also getting screwed by the politicians. This is what she says:
The first quietly contrarian view is from industrialists in the traditional manufacturing sector. One of them pointed out that the debate over unionisation of IT workers and the Deve Gowda-Murthy controversy has, for the first time, forced the ‘pristine clean’ IT sector to taste the murky world in which others are forced to operate. From licenses and permissions at municipal levels to central clearances, such as environment and pollution, Indian industrialists have been forced to bend, crawl and grease the palms of netas and babus. Many hated doing it, but were forced to find ways to operate the ‘system’. The IT industry bypassed this muck and thrived in the absence of laws and regulations.

It’s probably why Indian industry associations, who otherwise compete to have Mr Murthy as a speaker, have maintained a thundering silence over the issue. As someone told me: “Infosys will soon realise that the world may be getting flatter, but the terrain remains rather bumpy in our little patch.” An obvious reference to Thomas Friedman’s glowing references to the Infosys gang in his bestseller.
Murthy has every reason to be pissed off at the lack of support he is getting. His nephew and MphasiS BFL's chief Jerry Rao should at least have said things in support of Murthy. I was also disappointed in not hearing anything from Azim Premji.

This is not the time to sit quiet and let the demagogues manipulate the mass opinion.

2 comments:

  1. I am shocked to know that Naryana Murthy is Greedier than Indian Politicians. Outlook India has painted Infosys in Black & White.

    Shame on your Murthy!! No doubt you ran out of Bangalore and sitting in Boston and Fremont!!!


    http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20051107&fname=Krishna+%28F%29&sid=1&pn=1

    Read ---> IS 'IT' ALL FOR LAND?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dear Anon,

    No, I continue to live in India, in Chennai. I have been to Boston once and to Fremont never.

    Anyway, thanks for the URLs. I did read the Outlook article on Infosys "land grab". The article doesn't sound genuine to me. There has been no effort at contacting Infosys top honchos and get their views in the same article. There is no quoted source from the Government on what the current Govt.'s position is on the allegations.

    It is apparent that Infosys is asking for more land than other companies - but that in itself is not a crime.

    I find it ridiculous that a company that makes a few thousand crores in profits is all eyes on making a few tens of crores at best through manipulating land - buying cheap and selling high?

    However there is no need for giving clean chit to Narayana Murthy and Infosys. Let there be a full scale investigation and prosecution if there is any truth in the allegations.

    However you have to still take in to account Narayana Murthy's viewpoints when it comes to the crappy infrastructure in Bangalore. I wish Murthy and Ramesh Ramanathan publish their presentation they made to Dharam Singh and Deve Gowda in the public domain so that we can understand what their solution methodology was.

    ReplyDelete