Apa beda antara pengusaha/enterpreneur India dan Indo? 1. yg pertama akan 'mengembalikan' sebagian itu untuk negara atau rakyat india; sedang pengusaha Indo 'menghadiahkan' penghasilannya pada Singapore atau Cina.
2. pengusaha india merasa bangga pada nasionalisme ke-india-annya, sedang pengusaha kita merasa bangga pada 'nasionalisme' leluhurnya. Ada yg mau menambah daftar ini? dan kapan kita memiliki pengusaha2 sukses yg bangga dg indonesia dan tidak ingat lagi pada leluhurnya? kenapa yg cinta tanah air dan merasa indonesia sebagai 'tumpah darahnya' justru hanya 'kalangan' pengusaha yg tak sukses? salam dari saudi arabia (lagi ngurusin jamaah sakit) razi The legacy of pioneers - By Suhel Seth Last week, I met F.C. Kohli, the pioneer of Indian IT � what is unarguably India�s calling card in the global corporate scenario � and was humbled to discover the kind of work that India�s retired legends are capable of doing when they put their soul into it. We all know of the role that F.C. Kohli played in creating India�s most admired IT company: Tata Consultancy Services. A company that he nurtured with care and passion and which today is perhaps the only Indian IT company that gets almost 13% of its revenue from India when other IT companies only obtain about 3% to 5%: the reason that TCS does it is because it believes in giving back to the country from which it takes so liberally in terms of brainpower. Now if TCS were to flip this revenue source and begin to scale down its rupee revenue, it would be an even bigger story than it already is. But that is not the purpose of this article. F.C. Kohli, in partnership with TCS, runs an admirable programme for adult education: a country that has almost 67% adult illiteracy, needs individuals and companies such as Kohli and TCS to engineer the change that the education landscape so deservedly needs. Which is why I was surprised to know the mechanism of how they go about doing this. TCS gets people to donate old computers and has today created software which guarantees literacy within 40-50 hours at a cost of less than Rs 100 per person which includes the cost of hardware when amortised over the number of people who access that computer. In essence, they have run this programme for over 50,000 people spread in six states and have now handed over the further expansion to the government so that the roll-out is greater and pan-India. But this is where all right-minded Indians should be worried. Our governments are useless when it comes to spreading any kind of goodness. Every minister is so seized with personal glory and making the right noises that it is almost futile to expect a government to do the right things especially when it comes to literacy. I remember, many years ago, when the National Literacy Mission had kicked off a massive communication campaign, the definition of literacy was the ability to sign. The reason given was both myopic and plain silly: they said that it was important for people to sign, in order to prevent fraud and forgery when it came to trite activities such as signing money order forms or receiving important mail. But what TCS is doing is something more substantive and corrective. Their research tells them that basic language (and what we read in newspapers) confines itself to about 450 words that are the most common in usage terms and it is this pool of words that the TCS software restricts itself to, thus making a person newspaper-reading capable. That too at a fraction of the cost and in limited time: this is important because most adults who undergo the programme are in effect working individuals and will thus need to do this programme within a time window that they can afford. It is here where we need to laud the efforts of people like F.C. Kohli, and to my kind, these are the real heroes of today�s (and perhaps tomorrow�s) India. Kohli�s contribution to Indian IT is well documented and is stuff that legends are made of. But to my mind, his real-time contribution is how he has used his own and of course TCS� capabilities to give back to the community, whereas there are enough corporate leaders in India who would much rather pursue golf or some trivial board positions post retirement. In another domain, one company which is now going out of its way to empower those who need empowerment, is ITC: with its e-choupal system. I have said this before and will say it again, the e-choupal revolution will create the kind of rural empowerment almost akin to a successful panchayat system that was created several decades ago and is today the anchor for rural landscapes changing in our country. The fact that you have two diametrically opposite kinds of organisations engaged in very different kinds of nation-building, is not just heart-warming, it must also serve as role-models for the many corporations in India that use CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) for lip-service reasons rather than anything either enduring or meaningful. There must be several unsung heroes such as F.C. Kohli in every city in India. But the tragedy of our times is they will never get their fair share of credit. But then to be honest, many of them would even shy away from it. If every retired CEO of corporate India would do what the Kohlis of the world have done, we�d be a better nation. And these men and women would have led a more fulfilling life. Khairurrazi Aligarh Muslim University Uttar Pradesh, India -- India.com free e-mail - www.india.com. Check out our value-added Premium features, such as an extra 20MB for mail storage, POP3, e-mail forwarding, and ads-free mailboxes! 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