Narayana Murthy feels “uncomfortable” coming to “indisciplined” Delhi

PTI, Feb 22, 2023, 11:50 AM IST

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New Delhi: Citing an example of traffic rule violation in the national capital, Infosys founder N R Narayana Murthy on Tuesday said that he feels uncomfortable coming to Delhi because it is the one city where indiscipline is the highest.

While speaking at the All India Management Association (AIMA) Foundation Day, Murthy shared that people should treat community property better than personal property as one of the values to avoid issues of dishonesty in public governance.

“I really feel very uncomfortable coming to Delhi, this is one city where indiscipline is the highest. Let me give you an example. I came yesterday from the Airport. At a red signal, there were so many cars, motorbikes and scooters, you know, violating the red light without a single care.

“If we can’t even wait a minute or two, just to move forward. Do you think those people will wait if there is money? Of course they won’t wait,” Murthy said.

He said while emphasising on the creation of right value in the corporate world.

“We should start teaching our children to demonstrate these things in small areas, in areas where there is small returns, to get used to following the right path… Then you will gradually improve towards resisting temptation, where there are big returns,” Murthy said.

The Infosys founder said that he learnt first lesson of corporate governance from his teacher.

“You should treat the community property better than your personal property. All the issues of dishonesty in the public governance system come because they don’t follow this principle,” Murthy said.

When asked about the kind of personality he should be known for, Murthy said that he would like to be known as a fair person instead of a nice person in the Indian parlance.

“I don’t want to be known as a nice person in the Indian parlance. In India, if you are a nice person, what it means is that even if somebody is stealing something, you keep quite and smile. I will stand up and comment respectfully, if it is not proper. However, I want to be known as a fair person.The good thing about fairness in a transaction is that if a party loses the other party loses, that party would leave the table saying that if I had better data, if I had done the right thing, this man would have supported me,” he said.

Murthy said that he doesn’t hate a person, but the act.

“I want to be known as here lies a person who tried his best to be fair,” he said.

Talking about the future of technology with tools like ChatGPT in place, Murthy said that science is about revealing nature while technology is about using the power of science to make life of human beings more comfortable, improve productivity, reduce cost, solve problems etc.

“Artificial intelligence has made our lives more comfortable by becoming assistive technologies. I think there is a mistaken belief that artificial intelligence will replace human beings. Human beings will not allow artificial intelligence to replace it because human beings have the power of mind. No computer, as we know, can equal the mind of a child. Even though such experiments have been conducted many times,” Murthy said.

He said the human mind is always a step ahead and becomes the monster of that technology.