We Indians need to shed our egos, says Narayana Murthy

Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy was in Mumbai last week to deliver the fourth annual Independence Day Lit Live lecture, when he pointed out the flaws in Indian cities that are holding them from becoming world-class, and compared them to their international counterparts.

"The biggest challenge for all of us, not just politicians or bureaucrats, is that we, Indians, have the highest ego per unit of achievement. I would humbly request, we be open-minded to those who have performed better than us," he said.

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He said that he has worked with so many governments in India, but somehow things never move fast, a reason of which could be Indians’ know-it-all attitude.

He also added that Nandan Nilekani (co-founder, Infosys and the force behind Aadhaar cards) also went through a similar experience while he was working with the establishment in Delhi.

"Nandan was giving a lecture on his experience in designing and implementing Aadhaar sometime back. Somebody asked him how difficult was it to work in Delhi," Murthy said. To this, Nilekani's response was that the bureaucrats say we know this, which is the first hurdle that is to be crossed. The toughest hurdle, however, is if they say we are already doing this, which doesn’t leave much to do.

In contrast to this, Murthy said, he had a different experience while working as an IT advisor to the Thai PM, more than a decade back. "They (Thai officials) would make a presentation and I would give suggestions. They would write those down. The next time I went there, they would show me how they've (the suggestions) been implemented," he said.

In our country, however, he has never seen anyone writing down any suggestions, maybe because as he likes to put it, “they already know it.”

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