N.R. Narayana Murthy, founder-chairman emeritus of Infosys Technologies, penned a gracious tribute (Economic Times, August 17) to Azim Premji who recently completed 50 years as chairman of the IT behemoth Wipro Ltd (revenue: Rs.51,590 crore in 2015-16). In an op-ed page essay, Murthy lauded Premji, his business rival for decades, for his firm middle class values and thrift — the billionaire’s preference for economy class air travel and three star hotels despite being India’s richest individual by virtue of his 84 percent shareholding in Wipro, is legendary. But he also disclosed that Premji had rejected him in a job interview for which he expressed his gratitude because if he had not, Murthy would never have become a billionaire in his own right, as he did subsequently.
Undoubtedly, Premji, the only Indian to have signed the Giving Pledge promoted by US billionaires Bill Gates and Warren Buffet among others under which signatories pledge to disburse more than 50 percent of their net worth to charitable causes, deserves the encomiums he receives. His endowments to the Azim Premji Foundation and the Azim Premji University (APU) are unmatched by any other business tycoon in India. Yet there is a grudging opacity about his philanthropic activities. Despite your editor being acquainted with Premji in Mumbai, when EducationWorld wrote a laudatory cover feature to celebrate the inauguration of APU (EW May, 2011), Premji churlishly expressed preference for an e-mail interview. Moreover despite his bleeding heart for the nation’s educationally under-served children, when this pioneer education reforms advocacy publication was floundering in its early years, Premji declined to extend any advertising support, let alone investment.
But such boorish resentment and hypocrisy is the badge of the tribe of Bangalore’s noveaux riche, narrow-minded IT tycoons busy with primitive capital accumulation. Luckily just like Premji did Murthy a favour by rejecting his job application, all the city’s tech titans including Murthy, Nandan Nilekani, T.V. Mohandas Pai did your publisher-editor a similar favour by declining to invest in EducationWorld. In retrospect it was foolish of your editor to expect this gentry, erroneously lauded as intellectuals, to make the connection that but for your correspondent’s relentless advocacy of economic liberalisation and deregulation as editor of Business India and Businessworld, they might never have made their billions.
Cloister retreat advice
Although ranked among India’s Top 10 universities by several publications including India Today and the #20 private university in India in the EducationWorld India Private University Rankings 2016, the Bangalore-based Christ University is at most the best of a bad lot. For several years this institution (formerly Christ College, estb. 1969), managed by the Syrian Catholic religious congregation, has been hitting the headlines for archaic self-righteousness, and for issuing elaborate dress codes for its adult women students rather than for any notable academic or sports achievements.
Despite this education-focused news magazine being published in the same city, we have never received a press release or the tiniest tidbit of information from Christ University proclaiming the great deeds of its students or faculty. And although its website claims that “Christ University is secular in its outlook and welcomes students from all castes, religions, creed and languages to be a part of the Christite family”, in reality its management seems hell-bent upon imposing the cultural mores of the Syrian Catholic clergy on students. In August, Christ University hit the headlines in the local media again for decreeing a Taliban-like dress code for its students. According to a newsreport in the Deccan Chronicle (August 22), “Christ University has the strictest code for girl (sic) students....They are allowed to wear only salwar suits” — a north Indian attire which covers the entire body except face.
Quite clearly, the reverend fathers who manage this institution are unable to make the distinction between school and university. The Catholic church (unlike the Anglican and Protestant creeds) imposes celibacy upon its clergy. But if that’s the cause of conservative dress and deportment restrictions upon adult students, perhaps the time has come for reverend fathers to retreat into cloister to teach divinity and the scriptures, leaving the task of dispensing modern secular education to professionals.
Media revolving door
Last month Krishna Prasad, editor of the Delhi-based magazine Outlook, was sacked overnight from the bestselling weekly founded by the late and legendary Vinod Mehta (1942-2015). During his short and forgettable innings in Outlook, Prasad outraged many of the weekly’s readers by changing the masthead for the worse and investing the formerly neat and tidy magazine with garish layouts.
But that’s not the reason why he was peremptorily dismissed and replaced with Rajesh Ramachandran on August 16. His crime was publication of an anti-RSS cover story (August 8) which alleged that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the self-styled Hindu cultural organisation which is the ideological mentor of the ruling BJP, had kidnapped 31 tribal girls from Assam, and taken them to brainwashing camps in Punjab and Gujarat to convert them to Hinduism. This cursorily researched and somewhat hastily published story invited the wrath of the BJP government on real estate tycoon K. Raheja, the owner of the weekly, who promptly issued marching orders to Prasad.
Almost simultaneously Paranjoy Guha-Thakurta (PGT), who was inducted into journalism over four decades ago by your correspondent then editor of Business India (BI), has been appointed editor of the much-admired Economic & Political Weekly currently celebrating its golden jubilee. Despite having worked in the bourgeois pro-free enterprise BI, Comrade PGT continues to be enamoured with gobbledegook Marxist economics. One hopes that he learned enough in BI not to advocate the revival of public sector enterprises whose pathetic operational performance during the half century past, almost destroyed the high potential Indian economy.