A Better India: A Better World by N. R. Narayana Murthy

A Better India: A Better World by N.R. Narayana Murthy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A collection of speeches given by N. R. Narayana Murthy on various occasions grouped by the theme of the speech.

Mr. Narayana Murthy swears by capitalism. It looks like he was highly influenced by the treatment he got in communist Hungary. (Can one say it is a bounce back like Ayn Rand who suffered in Russia?).

Nevertheless giving the speaker the benefit of doubt, some of the statements are very apt and the it will help if our leaders listened to him.

In one of the speeches he says "I believe in democracy. As Winston Churchill said, democracy may not be the best form of government, but the alternatives are worse. Democracy is about achieving the collective aspirations of a nation and not that of a few vested interests. Democracy mandates openness for discussion and debate and generally brings out the best ideas. Democracies provide the most effective platform for addressing the basic needs of every citizen - education, health care, shelter and nutrition. A democratic setup creates equal opportunities for everyone to better his life or her life. It also averts disasters, as eloquently argued by the Nobel Laureate economist Amartya Sen".

Now read the same replacing Democracy with Socialism. I don't think anyone would argue that socialism is against of the suggested encouragements provided by democracy. What went wrong was that the few who were in power twisted the essence of socialism.

He goes on to state that all the above holds true in spirit of democracy. The spirit of socialism was the same. It was again the people who interpreted it to their convenience. In a similar way the spirit of capitalism did not preclude sharing of wealth but the fact is that it is not happening today.

A decent read. Be prepared for a lot of repetition as has been warned in the foreword.


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Imagining India: Ideas for the New Century by Nandan Nilekani.

Imagining India, Ideas for the New Century by Nandan Nilekani
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The book is well researched and provides lots of insight into the problems plaguing India.
1. The book has very well illustrated the ups and downs of the Indian economy along with the reasons.
2. It has well documented the need for reforms in the different sectors (education, power, environment) in India.
3. It has analyzed some reasons on why India has been through these ups and downs.
4. He has well argued as to why Government of India should stop trying to create jobs and rather concentrate on creating an atmosphere where private players and entrepreneurs can setup businesses which will in turn create jobs.

Some negative aspects are.

1. The material is repetitive.
2. He waxes eloquent of what IT and ITES has done for the Indian economy. No doubt it has helped the Indian economy but it really is exaggerated.
3. In one of the places talking about education he indicates that there has been a spate of engineering colleges that have come up in India and that the quality of these are going down day by day. What he does not acknowledge is that the IT industry has been mostly or at least partially responsible for mushrooming of these colleges. All IT companies insist on an engineering degree for entry into these organizations irrespective of the branch in which they graduate. And this has really be detrimental to both these organizations and for the quality of education offered.
4. There is a lot of mention of how Infosys provided the banking software to ICICI bank and how it has revolutionized the banking sector (and no doubt in this). On similar lines there is lot of mention of how much NSE, NSDL and NCDEX has benefited because of IT and how much these institutions have gone towards contributing to the development of Indian economy, but there is no mention that TCS was the company behind the software being used at all these institutions.

Note: Read my earlier review of the TCS story by Mr. Ramadorai that has no mention of Infosys and this book has only one mention of TCS and that in passing. It looks like there is lot of bad blood between these two giants and that does not augur well for the Indian IT industry.

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