Narayanamurthy Speech:at the Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute of Management

 

Ladies and gentlemen:It is a pleasure to be here at the Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute of Management. Lal Bahadur Shastri was a man of strong values and he epitomized simple living. He was a freedom fighter and innovative administrator who contributed to nation building in full measure. It is indeed a matter of pride for me to be chosen for theLal Bahadur Shastri Award for Public Administration and Management Sciences. I thank the jury for this honor.When I got the invitation to speak here, I decided to speak on an important topic on which I have pondered for years - the role of Western values in contemporary Indian society. Coming from acompany that is built on strong values, the topic is close to myheart. Moreover, an organization is representative of society, andsome of the lessons that I have learnt are applicable in the national context. In fact, values drive progress and define quality of life insociety.The word community joins two Latin words com ("together" or "with") and unus ("one"). A community, then, is both one andmany. It is a unified multitude and not a mere group of people. As it is said in the Vedas: Man can live individually, but can surviveonly collectively. Hence, the challenge is to form a progressivecommunity by balancing the interests of the individual and that of the society. To meet this, we need to develop a value system wherepeople accept modest sacrifices for the common good.What is a value system? It is the protocol for behavior thatenhances the trust, confidence and commitment of members of thecommunity. It goes beyond the domain of legality - it is aboutdecent and desirable behavior. Further, it includes putting thecommunity interests ahead of your own. Thus, our collectivesurvival and progress is predicated on sound values.

 

There are two pillars of the cultural value system - loyalty tofamily and loyalty to community. One should not be in isolation tothe other, because, successful societies are those which combineboth harmoniously. It is in this context that I will discuss therole of Western values in contemporary Indian society.Some of you here might say that most of what I am going todiscuss are actually Indian values in old ages, and not Westernvalues. I live in the present, not in the bygone era. Therefore, Ihave seen these values practiced primarily in the West and not inIndia.Hence, the title of the topic.I am happy as long as we practice these values - whether we call itWestern or old Indian values. As an Indian, I am proud to be partof a culture, which has deep-rooted family values. We havetremendous loyalty to the family. For instance, parents make enormous sacrifices for their children. They support them untilthey can stand on their own feet. On the other side, childrenconsider it their duty to take care of aged parents.We believe:Mathru devo bhava - mother is God, and pithru devo bhava - father is God. Further, brothers and sisters sacrifice for each other. Infact, the eldest brother or sister is respected by all the other siblings. As for marriage, it is held to be a sacred union - husband and wife are bonded, most often, for life. In joint families, theentire family works towards the welfare of the family. There is so much love and affection in our family life.This is the essence of Indian values and one of our key strengths.Our families act as a critical support mechanism for us. In fact, thecredit to the success of Infosys goes, as much to the founders as totheir families, for supporting them through the tough times.Unfortunately, our attitude towards family life is not reflected inour attitude towards community behavior.

 From littering the streets to corruption to breaking of contractual obligations, we are apathetic to the common good. In the West - the US, Canada,Europe,Australia, New Zealand - individuals understand that they have to be responsible towards their community.The primary difference between the West and us is that, there,people have a much better societal orientation. They care more for the society than we do. Further, they generally sacrifice more for the society than us. Quality of life is enhanced because of this. Thisis where we need to learn from the West. I will talk about some of the lessons that we, Indians, can learn from the West.In the West, there is respect for the public good. For instance,parks free of litter, clean streets, public toilets free of graffiti - all these are instances of care for the public good. On the contrary, inIndia, we keep our houses clean and water our gardens everyday -but, when we go to a park, we do not think twice before littering the place.Corruption, as we see in India, is another example of putting theinterest of oneself, and at best that of one's family, above that of the society. Society is relatively corruption free in the West.

 For instance, it is very difficult to bribe a police officer into avoiding a speeding ticket.This is because of the individual's responsible behavior towards the community as a whole On the contrary, in India, corruption, tax evasion, cheating and bribery have eaten into our vitals. For instance, contractors bribe officials, and construct low-quality roads and bridges. The result is that society loses in the form of substandard defence equipment and infrastructure, and low-quality recruitment, just to name a few impediments. Unfortunately, this behavior is condoned by almost everyone.Apathy in solving community matters has held us back from

making progress, which is otherwise within our reach. We seeserious problems around us but do not try to solve them. Webehave as if the problems do not exist or is somebody else's. Onthe other hand, in the West, people solve societal problemsproactively. There are several examples of our apathetic attitude.For instance, all of us are aware of the problem of drought in India.More than 40 years ago, Dr. K. L. Rao - an irrigation expert,suggested creation of a water grid connecting all the rivers inNorth and South India, to solve this problem. Unfortunately,nothing has been done about this. The story of power shortage inBangalore is another instance. In 1983, it was decided to build athermal power plant to meet Bangalore's power requirements.Unfortunately, we have still not started it. Further, the Milansubway in Bombay is in a deplorable state for the last 40 years,and no action has been taken.To quote another example, considering the constant travel requiredin the software industry; five years ago, I had suggested a 240-pagepassport. This would eliminate frequent visits to the passportoffice. In fact, we are ready to pay for it. 

However, I am yet to hear from the Ministry of External Affairs on this.We, Indians, would do well to remember Thomas Hunter's words:Idleness travels very slowly, and poverty soon overtakes it. Whatcould be the reason for all this? We were ruled by foreigners for over thousand years. Thus, we have always believed that publicissues belonged to some foreign ruler and that we have no role insolving them.Moreover, we have lost the will to proactively solve our ownproblems. Thus, we have got used to just executing someone else'sorders. Borrowing Aristotle's words: We are what we repeatedly do.Thus, having done this over the years, the decision-makers in our society are not trained for solving problems. Our decision-makerslook to somebody else to take decisions. Unfortunately, there isnobody to look up to, and this is the tragedy.Our intellectual arrogance has also not helped our society. I havetraveled extensively, and in my experience, have not come acrossanother society where people are as contemptuous of better societies as we are, with as little progress as we have achieved.

Remember that arrogance breeds hypocrisy. No other societygloats so much about the past as we do, with as little currentaccomplishment.Friends, this is not a new phenomenon, but at least a thousandyears old. For instance, Al Barouni, the famous Arabic logicianand traveler of the 10th century, who spent about 30 years in Indiafrom 997 AD to around 1027 AD, referred to this trait of Indians.According to him, during his visit, most Indian pundits consideredit below their dignity even to hold arguments with him. In fact, ona few occasions when a pundit was willing to listen to him, andfound his arguments to be very sound, he invariably askedBarouni:which Indian pundit taught these smart things!The most important attribute of a progressive society is respect for others who have accomplished more than they themselves have,and learn from them. Contrary to this, our leaders make us believethat other societies do not know anything! At the same time,everyday, in the newspapers, you will find numerous claims fromour leaders that ours is the greatest nation. These people would dowell to remember Thomas Carlyle's words: The greatest of faults isto be conscious of none. 

 

If we have to progress, we have to change this attitude, listen topeople who have performed better than us, learn from them andperform better than them. Infosys is a good example of such anattitude. We continue to rationalize our failures. No other societyhas mastered this part as well as we have. Obviously, this is anexcuse to justify our incompetence, corruption, and apathy. Thisattitude has to change. As Sir Josiah Stamp has said: It is easy tododge our responsibilities, but we cannot dodge the consequencesof dodging our responsibilities.Another interesting attribute, which we Indians can learn from theWest, is their accountability. Irrespective of your position, in theWest, you are held accountable for what you do. However, inIndia, the more 'important' you are, the less answerable you are.For instance, a senior politician once declared that he 'forgot' to filehis tax returns for 10 consecutive years - and he got away with it.To quote another instance, there are over 100 loss making publicsector units (central) in India. Nevertheless, I have not seen actiontaken for bad performance against top managers in theseorganizations.Dignity of labor is an integral part of the Western value system. Inthe West, each person is proud about his or her labor that raiseshonest sweat. 

On the other hand, in India, we tend to overlook thesignificance of those who are not in professional jobs. We have amind set that reveres only supposedly intellectual work.For instance, I have seen many engineers, fresh from college, whoonly want to do cutting-edge work and not work that is of relevance to business and the country. However, be it anorganization or society, there are different people performingdifferent roles. For success, all these people are required todischarge their duties. This includes everyone from the CEO to the person who serves tea - every role is important. Hence, we need amind set that reveres everyone who puts in honest work.Indians become intimate even without being friendly. They ask favors of strangers without any hesitation. For instance, the other day, while I was traveling from Bangalore to Mantralaya, I met afellow traveler on the train. Hardly 5 minutes into the conversation,he requested me to speak to his MD about removing him from thebottom 10% list in his company, earmarked for disciplinaryaction. I was reminded of what Rudyard Kipling once said:A westerner can be friendly without being intimate while aneasterner tends to be intimate without being friendly.Yet another lesson to be learnt from the West, is about their professionalism in dealings. The common good being moreimportant than personal equations, people do not let personalrelations interfere with their professional dealings. For instance,they don't hesitate to chastise a colleague, even if he is a personalfriend, for incompetent work.In India, I have seen that we tend to view even work interactionsfrom a personal perspective. Further, we are the most 'thin-skinned' society in the world - we see insults where none is meant.This may be because we were not free for most of the lastthousand years.

 Further, we seem to extend this lack of professionalism to our sense of punctuality. We do not seem torespect the other person's time. The Indian Standard Timesomehow seems to be always running late. Moreover, deadlinesare typically not met. How many public projects are completed ontime? The disheartening aspect is that we have accepted this as thenorm rather than the exception. In the West, they showprofessionalism by embracing meritocracy. Meritocracy bydefinition means that we cannot let personal prejudices affect our evaluation of an individual's performance. 

As we increasingly start to benchmark ourselves with global standards, we have to embracemeritocracy.In the West, right from a very young age, parents teach their children to be independent in thinking. Thus, they grow up to bestrong, confident individuals. In India, we still suffer from feudalthinking. I have seen people, who are otherwise bright, refusing toshow independence and preferring to be told what to do by their boss. We need to overcome this attitude if we have to succeedglobally.The Western value system teaches respect to contractualobligation. In the West, contractual obligations are seldomdishonored. This is important - enforceability of legal rights andcontracts is the most important factor in the enhancement of credibility of our people and nation.In India, we consider our marriage vows as sacred. We are willingto sacrifice in order to respect our marriage vows. However, we donot extend this to the public domain. For instance, India had anunfavorable contract with Enron. Instead of punishing the peopleresponsible for negotiating this, we reneged on the contract - thiswas much before we came to know about the illegal activities atEnron.To quote another instance, I had given recommendations to severalstudents for the national scholarship for higher studies in USuniversities. Most of them did not return to India even thoughcontractually they were obliged to spend five years after their degree in India.In fact, according to a professor at a reputed US university, themaximum default rate for student loans is among Indians - all of these students pass out in flying colors and land lucrative jobs, yetthey refuse to pay back their loans. Thus, their action has made it difficult for the students after them, from India, to obtain loans.We have to change this attitude.

Further, we Indians do not display intellectual honesty. For example, our political leaders use mobile phones to tell journalistson the other side that they do not believe intechnology! If we want our youngsters to progress, such hypocrisymust be stopped. We are all aware of our rights as citizens.Nevertheless, we often fail to acknowledge the duty thataccompanies every right. To borrow Dwight Eisenhower's words:People that values its privileges above its principles soon losesboth. Our duty is towards the community as a whole, as much as itis towards our families.We have to remember that fundamental social problems grow outof a lack of commitment to the common good. To quote HenryBeecher:Culture is that which helps us to work for the betterment of all.Hence, friends, I do believe that we can make our society evenbetter by assimilating these Western values into our own culture -we will be stronger for it.Most of our behavior comes from greed, lack of self-confidence,lack of confidence in the nation, and lack of respect for thesociety. To borrow Gandhi's words: There is enough in this worldfor everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed. Let uswork towards a society where we would do unto others what wewould have others do unto us. Let us all be responsible citizenswho make our country a great place to live. In the words of Churchill:Responsibility is the price of greatness. We have to extend our family values beyond the boundaries of our home. Finally, let uswork towards maximum welfare of the maximum people –

 

Samasta janaanaam sukhino bhavantu. Thus, let us - people of this generation, conduct ourselves as great citizens rather than just good people so that we can serve as good examples for our younger generation.