A very good morning to all of you. We now move on to one of the most anticipated segments of today's program. The fireside chat with Mr. NR Narayana Murthy, the visionary founder of Infosys, a stalwart of Indian IT industry and an inspiration to innovators across generations. The interactive session will be moderated by esteemed Professor Indranil Manna, immediate former president of INAE, vice chancellor Birla Institute of Technology Mesra, Ranchi. I'm certain that audience is eagerly looking forward to this engaging conversation. May I request Professor Manna to please take over the session. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Good morning to everybody. Mr. Narayana Murthy, on behalf of the academy, please allow me to thank you profusely for joining this session. He was traveling until probably day before yesterday, came from abroad, and then he has a series of engagements. We have always been extremely grateful to him for his generous support and advice, like one today. So time is the most precious thing and we don't want to waste time in reading his biodata. You know, someone told me long ago that for you and I, when you write biodata, you may end up writing almost a thesis, but the length of the biodata is inversely proportional to the eminence of the person. Someone who is a Nobel laureate would write 'Professor or Doctor so-and-so, Nobel laureate in physics in this year for this invention.' So Mr. Narayana Murthy actually is one of them. Just 'Mr. N.R. Narayana Murthy, Founder, Infosys' is good enough. But for the sake of some of the youngsters, we have the bio displayed on the screen, but I'm not going to read it out. This is a very important session. For safety reasons, HAL won't allow us to light a fire on the stage, but sparks may fly, so let's look forward to a very absorbing session ahead. I have had some opportunity of having some exchange of mails with Mr. Murthy and we have identified certain topics which are of relevance and interest to the entire audience here. And sir, there will be many more who will be watching this or listening to this conversation through YouTube. See, today artificial intelligence is something which is no longer going to come, no longer something in the horizon. It has already touched our lives in multiple ways. Before you even finish keying in a question, you are prompted an answer of very, very accurate nature. It has affected us in every possible way, from education to trade, industry, manufacturing, even creative arts and so on. So sir, the question is, which all of us would like to learn from you: AI is not going to happen, it is already there. So the question is, how and how soon and which way should we embrace it, particularly in the engineering fraternity?
Thank you, Professor Manna. First of all, it is an honor and a privilege to sit here with Professor Manna, a very highly accomplished engineer, a very distinguished professor at IIT Kharagpur, and then the director of IIT Kanpur, and to top it all, the former president of INAE. So it's a big honor for me. Second, it is as big an honor and a rare opportunity for me to be with you all. I have always believed that the only asset of any country is the power of the human mind. And in this room, you have a good example of that. Therefore, it is such a privilege to be with this large number of highly developed minds that are part of this interaction. Thank you for that. Now, coming to artificial intelligence, what is it that we need to do? Today, everybody says we're using AI in almost everything. You all know that there are two kinds of algorithms in AI. One is algorithms that you can teach first and then ask it to do something. The second is what we call self-learning algorithms. By and large, the first type of algorithm depends on machine learning, deep learning, etc., where the major input is large multiple regression and of course some neural networks. The second part is where deep learning and neural networks do play a very important role. The importance for a country like India is to use artificial intelligence algorithms or to create agents, what is called agentic AI, in an assistive manner, not in every case in a replacement manner. Yes, there are areas where it has to be in a replacement manner. For example, working in hazardous places, remote robotic surgery, advanced military exercises, those are all areas where you can use human-replaceable algorithms. On the other hand, by and large, most of our AI applications will look at improving the work productivity of human beings. Whether it is in education, whether it is in healthcare, whether it is in manufacturing, whether it is in services, whether it is in public governance systems. In every one of these areas, the need of the day for us is to improve our work productivity. And most often, technology is a tool to enhance work productivity. Of course, certain technologies bring more comfort, certain technologies reduce cost, certain technologies enhance entertainment. All of that is there. But all these can be traced to enhancing the work productivity or the efficiency of human beings. So my personal belief is that there are hundreds of areas in our country where we can use both types of algorithms, that is, the trainable algorithms with large amounts of data and self-learning algorithms, to solve some of the critical problems. What are those? Let's look at a few important things. The first one is the air quality index in India. We have been grappling for the last at least 50, 55 years, I remember this, about the low quality of air in Delhi. Sometimes it even goes to 1,500, which is, you know, I mean, London is 20. I was in Kanpur three days ago, the air quality index was 20. Bangalore is about 120, Delhi was about 780 or something. Now, why is it that all the wonderful, highly distinguished, highly accomplished engineers that are assembled here and that are part of the Indian National Academy of Engineering say, 'We will form a group and find a solution to the problem of pollution in Delhi'? You know, it's somewhat, particularly when you hear from foreigners snide comments, it pains us. They cannot understand how after 60, 70 years we have not been able to solve it. Let me give you a comparative example. In 1979, when my plane landed in Los Angeles, there was so much smog all around. But by 1983, it was clear. They have not heard of that problem since '83. So my request is, look at what could be called grand challenges for our country. One is air. Second is, India is woefully short of water. Think about an inexpensive method of recycling water and producing clean, potable water. That is a challenge that INAE should take. Third, thanks to Dr. Swaminathan who brought in the Green Revolution, thank you, along with Dr. Norman Borlaug in the US, India became self-sufficient. But however, since the time of Shri Subramaniam, who was at that time the minister of agriculture or something, and Professor, you know, late Swaminathan, since then we have not produced any new method of ensuring that the soil is not saturated with the kind of fertilizers that we put there. As you all know, Punjab, the wheat granary of India, the rice granary in Andhra Pradesh, etc., they're all slowly declining. That will once again become an issue. Fourth, look at the traffic situation in Bangalore. It takes an hour to go from one part of a suburb to another part of the suburb. Urban planning is almost non-existent. If INAE could say we will use these algorithms to come out with better urban planning, you would have added tremendously. The biggest problem I find in India is somehow we engineers do not seem to think that our métier, as it's called in French, or I don't know what in English we say, our task or whatever it is, is to solve problems. So therefore, if we can get to solving problems and in using the self-learning algorithms, you'll have to create guardrails so that it doesn't do something undesirable. Sorry, I can go on and on.
Yes, sir. I think in brief what he was saying is that there's no question whether or not we have to embrace it, and in a definitive way, we should identify the grand challenges faced by the nation and it has a role there. Sir, where are the teachers who will actually introduce these kind of new subject domains? And we are now convinced in all the universities, including IITs, we face a huge dearth of teachers who are not only competent in AI as AI but also application of AI in various engineering disciplines, for example, mechanics or thermodynamics or electrical machines, in every possible discipline. And today AI has a role, and at least people of our generation, we were not trained to use AI as a tool to pursue those problems. So training teachers who are competent to teach fundamental subjects using AI as a tool, there is a huge need. And what would be your advice as to how we should go about it?
Well, in some way, Professor Manna is the originator of the idea of training teachers in certain engineering subjects in tier 2 and tier 3 colleges. In addition to all the wonderful work that he has done, my suggestion is to leave aside our ego and then get our alumni from the developed world as well as well-known professors from the developed world. Give them adequate or competitive compensation. Make their life very comfortable here. Welcome them with open arms and let them come and just hold two-month-long programs. You invite hundreds of them, and 25 in the north, 25 in the south, 25 in the center, 25 in the west, 25 in the east. It doesn't cost you much. Even if you gave them somewhere around for two months about $30,000, it's not a big deal. But all these things require a certain vision. All these things require a certain self-confidence amongst our rulers. We have to say, while India at one point of time, 2,000 years ago, was a great nation, today it is not. Therefore, our greatness is in showing open-mindedness to learn from whoever has solved it. I think we need to do that. In fact, I had suggested bringing about 10,000 STEM retired teachers from high schools in the developed world, give them each $100,000 a year, and hold training programs for secondary and primary school teachers. These are all somewhat radical, but I do think that they will yield a lot of dividends for us. So let's keep aside our ego. Mahabharat is Mahan. We agree Mahabharat is Mahan because we are open-minded. It's not that we are number one. We are not number one. Everybody knows that. Let's not kid ourselves. We are Mahan because we are open-minded. So I would say that seek help from wherever it is available in a win-win way. Make those people feel welcome here. Make their life comfortable. Let them deliver. Evaluate them. Maybe some of them are not good. So next time you won't invite them. In addition to some people from our higher education system like IIIT and IISc or whatever it is, I think solutions are possible for everything.
So it is absolutely urgent. I mean, we can't wait anymore. Sir, the biggest bottleneck to solutions is our ego. That is what we should overcome. True, sir. I mean, talking about education, you know, we have a very well-celebrated policy called National Education Policy 2020. Dr. Kasturirangan was the chief architect. Now that says the government should spend 6% of the GDP on education, and the gross enrollment ratio today, somebody claims it's 25, 26%, we are not too sure about that data. I'm talking about the tertiary level, and I mean, the government desires to take it to 50% above, which is higher than the world average, and the outlay on education is still 3 to 4%, and we are the fifth-largest economy in the world. So obviously, one person makes a huge difference, but we're not seeing any major indication. Sir, how important is it to raise our outlay, budget outlay on education?
This is an issue that I have spoken about for the last 40 years. Somehow in India, we are always concerned about inputs. We're not concerned about outputs. We're not concerned about outcomes. Let me tell you, you know, I was invited by Sri Jyoti Basu, who was our chief minister, probably 30, 31, 32 years ago, to be part of the state planning board. So I went there, I was enthusiastic, and there was a lady officer, I don't want to give her name, who made a presentation. She was the planning secretary. So she said, in '91 we constructed this many houses, you know, in '92 we constructed, etc. So I asked that lady, 'Ma'am, did you work towards improving the efficiency of construction? Did you produce more houses per whatever million rupees that you spent in '92 compared to '91? Did the quality of what you were constructing become better two years, three years later?' That was the last time I received an invitation for that planning board.
So I think, sir, this is a very important message for the audience and each one of us here, that output actually matters more than the input. A typical bureaucratic way is to say that so many percentage, so many millions of dollars or crores of rupees are allocated. But what comes out of that, actually? So that's...
So my suggestion, Professor, is this: that first, let us do an open-minded, transparent audit of what is the state of our primary and secondary and college education. Then we can think of this. You know better than I do that in 2002, India was ranked 73rd out of 74 nations in the PISA index, which is the OECD standard for primary and secondary education. I mean, to be ranked 73rd out of 74 nations is not something of which you and I can be proud of. What did we do? We said we'll not participate in that. Mahabharat Mahan. So I think, I have, you know, at least running Infosys for 33 years, I realized one thing: if Infosys has to improve, we have to become open-minded to learn from people who are better than us. We have to learn from the competition. We have to learn from professors. We have to learn from intelligent employees. So if we become open-minded to understand what are the reasons why we have not been able to make progress that is worthy of our nation, and take some quick actions, things will happen. But otherwise, even if you put 6%, it won't improve, let me assure you.
Yeah, I think that's a very important message, that just showing intention or allocating budget is not going to work. We actually have to look at the outcome of it. Sir, one other, you know, this may sound strange. I'm into my 40th year in the education profession, and out of which 35 years I lived in the government patronage. Only in the last five years I have known something called outside the government patronage, the private institutions. And to my horror, I realized that there are many, many schemes, good schemes of the government, in which the private institutions are not eligible. So there are many important, for example, One Nation One Subscription scheme. Those from academia would know today it's very difficult to publish papers in top journals because most of the journals demand author publication charges, and that's very expensive. So government has rolled out a scheme to help the IITs and top institutions in the country that the government will provide the subscription for them and professors can publish there. Private institutions are not eligible for that scheme. More students today go to the private institutions in the country than to the government institutions. So unless we care for all, sir, I don't think we really can expect the country to be really great. So sir, what do you say?
Well, that again is a remnant of the colonizer mindset when the British were ruling us 78 years ago. Their objective, rightly, and I don't blame them, rightly, to protect the interest of the crown and to make sure that the crown derived as much benefit from the colonies as possible. I can't blame them. After all, they were smart. They managed to rule India. All of that. But that mindset has continued even today because those who belong to the government are our people. The rest of them are foreigners. The rest of them are our enemies. Rest of them do not deserve any encouragement. See, that mindset is at least 78 years old. That again comes back to my issue of being open-minded to learn from other developed countries, other developing countries like Singapore. Look at Singapore, look at Thailand, look at Malaysia, you know, look at Eastern Europe, they all transformed, but we have not transformed. So if we create advisory committees in every function of the government where you take people who are highly respected, you know, who are highly accomplished in whatever they did, as advisors to each of the ministries, and give the chairman of that committee a status equivalent to the cabinet minister in charge of that function, then it will change. But that again requires the government to give up its power to share it with the people. So that, I think, is, it all comes down to open-mindedness, nothing else.
Right, sir. We often hear about another very important strength of the country called demographic dividend, and these are all related. I mean, 1.44-plus billion people, youngest nation in the world, and there you may try to set up many more schools, colleges, employ many more teachers, and just not in education, whether it's sports or music or industry, anywhere. Quality, unfortunately, is not really proportional to quantity. It's rather the other way around. So we can set up more number of institutions, more organizations, quality tends to suffer now. But for a large country like ours where we have no dearth of challenges ahead of us, we have to not only increase the numbers but also have to ensure quality. So sir, what is your advice as to how learned bodies like INAE or for that matter the policymakers, which way should we move?
You know, and you are a very learned professor, all of the people here are very learned people, they know better than I do. Whenever there is a problem, one thing I was taught was to take a little bit of time, think deeply about what are the reasons why we failed or what are the reasons why we are where we are as against where we wanted to be. But for that you need transparency. For that you need openness. For that you need to write down so that everybody knows. If we identify why we have not been able to produce quality along with quantity, if we say these are the reasons and try and attack those, what are the resources needed to attack those problems? Should we be able to invite professors from outside India who can come and, as I pointed out earlier, hold summer programs for teachers of tier 2, tier 3 colleges along with our IITs and IISc? Should we send more and more students abroad for their PhD, like it used to be? There used to be a thing called National Scholarship for Study Abroad. I don't know if it still exists. And that was a wonderful scheme that was started by Jawaharlal Nehru. But the tragedy of that was 95% of Indians didn't come back. The guys who got scholarship, they got PhD from MIT, Stanford, Caltech, and Cornell, all of that, but they all stayed back then. But we have to work out a deal with the governments of the developed countries saying these guys will not be allowed to work there. They will have to come back for five years. They have to work here. Their outcomes will be measured of their spending here, and then we will release them.
So you mentioned Singapore does that.
Exactly. I was about to say that Singapore exactly does that.
Exactly. You know, my, there was a...
There was a classmate of my son. My son went to Cornell. Professor Borje Olbala is here. He was dean of architecture at Cornell. And he had a classmate. He did very well. But he had to go back to Singapore because he said, 'Look, I had got a scholarship from Singapore. I have to be back in Singapore for a certain number of years and then only I can come back and do my PhD.' So these are all because of some vested interests we don't implement this policy, because somebody's son is there, he has got a scholarship, and therefore my son will suffer, therefore I won't do it. I think there are lots of issues. So my suggestion is, as engineers, if you people were to form a small group and then say what are the reasons why we are not able to improve the quality while improving quantity. What are the four, five reasons? What are the steps that we need to take in order to overcome these, and how much of money is needed for how long to sort this problem? See, look at this whole PISA thing. 2012 was when that PISA thing happened. It is 13 years. Nothing has happened. Nothing. So a lot of dispassionate analysis and soul-searching is needed.
See, that's what we are all, you know, we're all engineers. Engineering is about using the power of science to apply it to real-life problems and solve them. That's all what engineering is. So if we have noticed that the quality has not improved, then we can form a small group and produce, write it in Times of India, write it in Hindu, write it in India Today, you know, same article can be published or some different names can be put so that to satisfy all these guys. And we have to enhance the awareness. We should not be scared of saying that no, no, this fellow will get upset, that fellow will get upset. I think that is needed. So now a googly to you. If you are allowed to reboot your entire life and career, professional career, would you take the same path, found Infosys, and pursue the way you did, or do you have certain advice to the youngsters who want to be entrepreneurs, which way they could turn out to be even more successful?
I think that's a very good question. First of all, let me say this. I am the son of a high school teacher. There is maximum respect for teachers in my family. Therefore, if I could not pursue the path that I did, I would have tried my best to be a teacher. I had a scholarship to do my PhD in the US as well as at Technion Israel. My choice was Technion Israel. And when I got this job in Paris, all my friends said, 'No, no, Murthy, you can do your PhD later. Go to Paris. The city is Paris. You're getting good salary and all of that.' And there I got influenced about various isms, socialism, capitalism, libertarianism, and communism. And then I decided to come back to India to conduct an experiment. But I would have been very proud to have been a teacher.
Oh, that's very, very... at least for those of us from academia, we certainly can feel very happy. Sir, we often hear in this country a word called 'jugaad', and we tend to mistake this to be innovation. Compared to Finland, whose population is as much as in Kolkata, and they rank seventh in the world in Global Innovation Index. India is 30th or 32nd, somewhere around that, has improved, of course, it used to be worse than that. Korea fourth. If we compare ourselves with countries like Israel and so on, so there's a long way to go. And without this incremental developments and innovation, we will never be able to compete in technology with the rest of the world. So what would be your advice?
Well, you know, let me talk about what we did at Infosys in 1990 or so, 35 years ago. We studied very small, I mean almost zero, companies that had reached big heights, that had succeeded. We said, what are the things that these people do? And we found that their main weapon was innovation to create a differentiated business value to their customers compared to their competitors. That was one line. Then we said, how did they create innovation? We realized that...
They created an environment where there was open-mindedness to new ideas. There was a hierarchy of ideas rather than hierarchy of corner offices and titles. There was an environment of justice. There was an environment of meritocracy. There was an environment that protected the dignity and honor of every employee. And most importantly, we realized that innovation is not the preserve of a few people in white coats in the company. Innovation has to be demonstrated by the peon who cleans your offices. It has to be demonstrated by the CEO who runs the company. It has to be demonstrated by the head of sales, by somebody in software development, etc. So in 1990 we conducted a workshop. At that time we were only 150 people, very small, where everybody was invited, starting from peons to the chairman and CEO. They were all good people, they were wonderful people, they came and attended. We did it in our canteen and we got four people to explain what is innovation, why innovation is important, how innovation will make the company stronger, etc. We did it in four languages. We did it in English, we did it in Hindi, we did it in Kannada, and we did it in Tamil because by and large we found that we covered about 90% to 92% of the employees with these four languages. After that was done, two days later, one of the janitors, Pons by name, Chandra, he came to me. He asked me in Kannada, 'Sir, there was this whole presentation on innovation, you know, all they were very good etc., but somehow I didn't understand the whole thing. Can you explain?' I said, 'Chandra, not a problem. Please sit down.' I sat down with him and told him, 'Chandra, you are responsible for cleaning eight conference rooms every day. Tomorrow morning when you come for your job, when you start cleaning the first conference room, ask three important questions. One, how do I do whatever I am doing today faster tomorrow than today?' I said, 'Look, you are using one cloth for cleaning the table, maybe one piece of cloth. Try and see if you can clean it with two hands. You may improve sometimes maybe 30%, sometimes 60%, sometimes 20%. But then you will see what was the mistake that you did in using two hands. Or there may be you will think of a tool that will have two branches with a stick and that will clean two parts of the table. In other words, you have improved, you have done whatever you're doing today faster tomorrow.' Second, I said, 'Chandra, ask the following question. Whatever you are doing today, how can you do it cheaper tomorrow?' I said, 'After you finish cleaning today, go to the market, talk to the people, find out if there is a cheaper cleaning liquid or if there is a cleaning liquid that is more efficient than what you are using. And if you use the same quantity, you can clean even a larger surface. Thereby you have reduced the amount of cleaning liquid. Thereby you have reduced... there may be a new product which may clean much better and that may be less expensive.' So that was the second question. And the third question I asked him was, 'When you start cleaning today, ask the following question. What can I do tomorrow to clean the table with a better quality than what I did today?' Today when you finished cleaning the table, please spend a few minutes and look at how many specks of dust remained on the table. Then say, think about how you can reduce the number of specks of dust. Today let's say it was five. You say tomorrow I'll make sure it is four. Or go to the market and find out if there is a mechanism to reduce the dust. I said that is how you improve the quality of what you're doing. So I said all that you need to worry about in every one of your jobs, whether you are the CEO, whether you are the peon, it doesn't matter, that is: how do I do things faster tomorrow, how do I do things cheaper, third, how do I do with a better quality. Sometimes at different levels, you know, you may say, 'No, I can't use this tool, this is not... I will go and read.' I mean, books... those days internet was not as good as today. You know, maybe in journals, in the US journals or something, there may be something else that you can use to do all those things. So I said this is all what innovation is. There is nothing... this is not invention, but many times innovation leads to invention. Innovation is the desire to do things faster, cheaper, and better. So then of course he practiced... the point I'm making is every one of us, whether one is a peon, whether one is a cook, whether one is a CEO, every one of us can do our job faster, cheaper, better. The important thing for a leader is to create an environment where this becomes part of your mindset and you have to create an environment where nobody is afraid of trying. The biggest problem we have is we are all afraid of failing. We are all scared of what our colleagues will say. We are all afraid of smarter people looking down on us. Somehow the job of a leader is to overcome this to ensure that everybody in the company would say, 'I will try this new idea. If it fails, I will not be punished as long as I didn't do anything unethical willingly.' That is a different aspect. So I personally feel that if... sorry, I took a little bit extra time, but this is important. If INAE can indeed form a group, there are so many distinguished people, and they were to analyze why have we not been able to enhance the quality of the colleges while we have enhanced the number of them. And you people know solutions better than anybody else. And then you will have to call the industry. You'll have to call the government and say this is what we want to do. We need your support. This is for the country. This is not for any one of you. This is for the country. Look at China. China has become six times GDP of India. I mean, in the same period, 1978, when Deng Xiaoping said, 'I don't care whether the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice,' 78 to 2025, in a period of 47 years, China became six times India. China's exports, I'm sure all of you know, last year was 3.6 trillion. You know what the export of US was that same period? Just $2 trillion. Know what the export of India was? Anybody guess? It was $470 billion. So the reality is that I used to say at Infosys, before you blame others, first ask why am I not doing as well as the other guy? What is it that I need to do? What is it that I need to correct myself to become better? Once we do that, I can tell you it'll be opening up your mind. And the moment India opens its mind to learn from people better than us, to focus on speed, imagination, and excellence in execution, I am very confident that India too would accelerate like China.
