INDIA TODAY
Caste away September 25, 2008 GREAT IDEAS, GREAT MINDS—STATE ACCOUNTABILITY N.R. Narayana Murthy It was sometime in the first week of March 2006 that Meira Kumar, the Union Minister for Social Justice, called me to Delhi for a meeting. She was meeting various business people seeking support for legislation on reservation of jobs in the private sector for the Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST). In a soft, gentle, yet firm manner, she told me she was determined to ensure justice to the much neglected SC and ST youngsters in the country, and that she was keen to move a statute for reservation of jobs for them in the private sector in Parliament. She expected the industry to support her. I was equally courteous and firm in my reply. I agreed with her that enormous harm and injustice has been done to the SC and ST youngsters in the country for over 4,000 years. I told her, however, that the solution to the problem did not lie in reservation of jobs in the private sector. I ended the conversation saying that I was enthusiastic about finding a solution to this problem and I would think for a few days, and get back to her with my solution to this important national issue. I came back to Bangalore, spent a few days thinking how the IT industry and Infosys could demonstrate their commitment to providing opportunities for such students. I wanted a scheme that did not diminish the confidence of these youngsters in this highly-competitive industry, while ensuring fairness to the companies whose revenues came primarily from developed countries and whose customers did not appreciate the social problems of our country. I have always believed that aspiration, hard work, discipline and commitment can make any person, from any social background, succeed, as long as society provides an opportunity to him to demonstrate these values. I realised that the best way to demonstrate that our underprivileged are as good as anybody else was to create a Special Training Programme (STP) to train 100 such students and show that they would get software engineering jobs in major software companies through the same selection procedure as is used by these corporates at campus recruitments. Generally, when I have a good idea, I discuss it with my extraordinary Infosys colleague Mohandas Pai. When I discussed it with him this time, he was very enthusiastic and suggested that we bring in M.P. Ravindra, head of education and research at Infosys, and also S. Sadagopan, director at the International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore (IIIT-B), in order to make it a bilateral programme. Sadagopan came out with a well-thought seven-month-long training programme. When the four of us met, I laid down the following ground rules for this pilot: The selection procedure would be left to the Karnataka Government since we wanted it to be a genuine and not a rigged experiment in enabling the disadvantaged. The best and the most committed teachers from Infosys and IIIT-B would have to be deployed in this programme, to be called the STP. The entire cost of this experiment would be borne by Infosys. Every candidate would be provided with a decent stipend by Infosys. The candidates would be provided with excellent breakfast, lunch and dinner by Infosys since I have discovered that students often skip these basic necessities and spend money on other not-so-necessary items. Lack of proper nutrition often comes in the way of students focusing on studies. The teachers would be courteous, patient, mission-oriented and willing to spend as much time as the students wanted in solving problems posed by them. Maintaining the hope, enthusiasm and confidence of the students in this difficult experiment was very important. The students would undergo exactly the same recruitment procedure as at campus recruitments. The training process would be such that they would found suitable by almost all the major software companies. While conducting this experiment, we would create systems, processes and collaterals to enable the state governments to scale up this programme to be run throughout the country. While the first experiment would be funded by Infosys, the subsequent ones would have to be funded by the social welfare agencies of the government. The only expectation that the STP would have from the students is that they should believe in themselves, be aspirational, honest, hardworking and disciplined. R.B. Agwane, secretary, Department of Social Welfare of Karnataka Government, managed to enroll 89 engineering graduates (35 girls and 54 boys) from the SC and ST communities. Nandan Nilekani, our then CEO, and Kris Gopalakrishnan, our then COO, were, as usual, supportive of such a socially important programme and signed a cheque for Rs 1 crore without batting an eyelid. Sadagopan and Ravindra went ahead with their usual, missionary zeal to select the most committed faculty members from IIIT-B and Infosys. Pai became the sponsor of my yet another crazy idea and provided leadership for it to happen. Thanks to Balu Doraiswamy, HP donated 100 laptops for the students. M.B.N. Rao, chairman of Canara Bank, was kind enough to provide classroom facilities for the students in the city. After ascertaining that we were, indeed, ready to start the programme, I contacted Mrs Kumar and told her about my experiment. She was, as always, very encouraging. When one of her officers suggested that she should inaugurate it, I told her that we wanted her name to be associated with this experiment only when it became a success. That is, when at least 90 per cent of the students completing the programme had been placed with well-known software companies. This figure is much higher than the success rate of students from engineering colleges through normal campus recruitments. I also told her that I did not want any inauguration till the experiment was a success since it would put the youngsters under the media glare right from day one and would reduce their confidence. When I addressed the students on the first day, I told them that this project was a historic event that would demonstrate how a group of 89 committed, disciplined and aspirational students from disadvantaged communities, combined with a group of missionary and committed teachers, could prove a new model to eradicate social injustice. I told them that the success of this model depended primarily on them and that they carried a huge responsibility. The programme got off to a wonderful start on October 9, 2006. As expected, Sadagopan, Ravindra, the extraordinary faculty from IIIT-B and Infosys and Pai worked hard and smart to complete the course. We studied the average performance of the students under the programme in the 12 tests we administered during the course. In 10 out of the 12 tests, the average performance was nearly the same as the highly rigorous Infosys course, proving the point that given attention, quality teachers, facilities and care, the disadvantaged students could perform as good as any. When these students completed their course on May 1, 2007, they were interviewed by well-known software companies like Bally Systems, Canara Bank, HP, IBM, Iflex, Infosys, MindTree, Mphasis and Wipro. On the day of the convocation, an amazing 84 out of 89 students had been placed in these companies, thus meeting the criterion of placement of at least 90 per cent of the students for us to deem this experiment a success. Mrs Kumar and the then chief minister of Karnataka H.D. Kumaraswamy, graced the convocation held on June 23 and distributed certificates to the confident students who had demonstrated that they were as good as any and better than many. Mrs Kumar was very happy with this experiment and congratulated the youngsters and the extraordinary teachers. These students meet me once a year and tell me how well they are doing in their jobs. As of this writing, STP students are employed in USA, Nigeria, Germany, India and Australia-spanning five continents. All but one of the 84 students have completed their year-long probation successfully. We are repeating this experiment in several states and we hope that it will prove that the solution to the problem of social injustice is not reservation as it will damage the psyche of the youngsters permanently. The solution is to invest heavily in producing high-quality, committed teachers and create incentives for them to provide special attention to the disadvantaged children right from primary schools. The Government should also provide tuition fees in top schools, good nutrition and hostel facilities to these children. As the wonderful young men and women from the STP, and the extraordinary teachers from IIIT-B and Infosys demonstrated, nothing much can be achieved without aspiration, hard work, discipline and commitment. This experiment has proved to me that it is possible to eradicate social injustice in India in a very constructive and positive way. The challenge is to find people like Sadagopan and his inspiring band of IIIT-B teachers, Ravindra and his committed Infosys colleagues, and Pai. A country like India should have a large number of such terrific people. Leadership is identifying such people and empowering them to lead initiatives like these. This is what that great man, Jawaharlal Nehru, did so effortlessly. .
