Last night, I saw Infosys founder N R Narayana Murthy on
BBC's HardTALK program.
Murthy was absolutely great at explaining why it isn't fair for US politicans to decry loss of jobs due to outsourcing of services. He pointed out how many products and services from MNCs he consumes each day - from his refrigerator (LG) to the beverages inside it (Pepsi or Coke), to the car he drives to the office in (Toyota), to his laptop (Toshiba) and office desktop PC (Dell), and so on. Murthy pointed out that competition from these MNCs had forced the closing down of several Indian companies who used to operate in these businesses. "Should India keep out these MNCs because their entry has cost about 5 million or should we welcome them since they have positively impacted some 200-300 million people by providing them with better quality products and services?," he asked. Touche.
Murthy was also cool as a cucumber in response to the interviewer's question on why some Kannadiga group was protesting by burning his effigy and saying Infosys wasn't giving enough jobs to locals. Murthy said that over 20% of his company's employees - or over 10,000 folks - were locals. "The problem with people of this country is that they don't go by facts and numbers. They get carried away by some slogans." Again, touche.
I wish Murthy - as well his industry colleagues - would take such an numbers approach when it comes to pointing out why the government is failing to deliver on providing proper infrastructure facilities in Bangalore despite collecting huge amounts in taxes from the industry.
How much
exactly in taxes does the IT industry in Bangalore generate for the Karnataka Government? How much
exactly has the government spent on building roads? What
exactly is the status of the city's various infrastructure projects (who is the contractor for each flyover, by when is he supposed to complete work, what are the penalties for not delivering, etc, etc.).
It would be great if Bangalore's IT industry or The Bangalore Agenda Task Force (BATF) (of which Infosys co-founder & CEO , Nandan Nilekani, is a member) puts up a
continuously updated web site with such information.
Such a numbers and facts based approach will go a long way in convincing people it is not a "rural verus urban" issue in Karnataka (or elsewhere in India), but it is in how efficient and effective the government is in spending the tax revenues it generates from companies and their employees.
After all, it was the fomer Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's decades old
numbers-based quote - on how only Rs. 15 out of every Rs. 100 that the government allocates for its development programs actually ends up reaching the targets - that Murthy himself referred to in the BBC interview.
