Mr. NRN Murthy unveils book ‘Designing Change’ by IIMB Post-doc Fellow Dr. Balakrishnan Mahadevan

Well, this is a very important book because there is enough value in it and it is even more important because India has become the leader in the digital world today. As I was reading somewhere, India's digital transactions are something like four times that of the US and Europe combined and that is extraordinary. And also to be able to handle 20 plus billion transactions in a month. I mean that is extraordinary to build technology that has the resilience to handle that volume, to do it in a very smart way thanks to extraordinary people like Shri Gandhi and other leaders of RBI and thanks to the extraordinary wisdom of Shri Balachandran from which all of us benefited. I was very lucky to have worked with him for several years. So I think there is a lot of value in the book both for learning about a very important paradigm of the current century which is digital payment systems and at the same time how every one of us through smartness, hard work and discipline can indeed reach the pinnacle of our aspirations. That's what I would say.

Well, technology in some way is a perishable commodity. Particularly in the era that we live in, things change rapidly, technology changes rapidly. For example, all of you know that one of the challenges that people have today is buying which Nvidia chip that you want to buy because by the time you get it installed and all of that a new version would have come up. So in such an era, the only constant for us is change. Fortunately for us in the West there are a lot of books that have been written on various technologies that are available, we can all benefit from that. However, for various reasons, India has not been a written tradition or an oral tradition. So therefore, this brings out the complexity of working in teams, the kind of encouragement that an institution like RBI provided, how RBI was such a fantastic catalytic enabler because I was the first chairman and I benefited a lot on the one hand from the wisdom of the governor and the deputy governor and all of that. These are all things that have to be documented and that's what therefore I do believe that documenting institutional memories, documenting the interaction of personalities, documenting the strengths and fibers of leaders, documenting the constraints posed by the context. All these are as important as technology. So I do believe that we need books like this so that the foundation of India's progress even further will rest on such wonderful knowledge.

Well, you know, continuing from what I said earlier, this book in some way describes the organizational choreography of this wonderful dance played by RBI, NPCI, the wonderful banks of which several chairpersons are here and of course individuals. If I'm not wrong there are somewhere around 500 banks which are members of the entire platform. And what is very important is the role of the Reserve Bank of India as a catalytic and very paternal and kind enabler. Since I was the chairman and since Mr. Balachandran and I were in some way interfacing with the RBI, we can say very confidently that the role of RBI was extremely important in this and they encouraged us very very positively. The second thing that I am most impressed with, the masterstroke that RBI played in this game was making it a public good. The entire core of the UPI was made a public good. It was made an open, it was really an open system. And by doing this, what they did was they made it least expensive for every user. I don't know if there's any other nation in the world where access to banking, access to the devices of UPI is as inexpensive as it is in India and that credit must go to RBI. There is absolutely no doubt. But the characteristic of a confident leader which he has been is to be able to listen to cogent arguments from the followers and then accept when they have merit. That's another thing. The third thing is they decided that this core cannot be used for rent seeking. Therefore, they made the core an open system. They made the core a technology that is least expensive, a technology that the poorest Indian can indeed aspire to use. All of that has happened thanks to this and thereby what they did was they earned the trust of the common man. You know a couple of years ago I had taken a friend of mine Montek Singh Ahluwalia to Mysore and as we were climbing the Chamundi hill there was a coconut vendor and we bought some coconut water and all and we used UPI and Montek was very very impressed. You know this guy is just selling coconuts and the whole transaction was cashless. And that I think is, I don't know, particularly the youngsters assembled here must understand that when you have leaders who have a broad vision, who have high aspirations, who are well-intentioned, how such leaders can indeed transform the aspirations of the nation and become leaders in the progress. And this is a classical example to me. And of course there have been many other players, my own colleague Nandan Nilekani has played a very important role by bringing in Aadhaar and all of that. So I think RBI's role was being a catalytic, kind, gentle and wise enabler rather than just being a regulator. I think that to me is the most important thing.