An Open Letter To Mr. Narayan Murthy

Dear Mr. Murthy,

Let me just say this upfront – I am thoroughly disappointed with you. Not that I was ever delighted with your acts, actions, speeches and many a times those quite unnecessary shouting from the roof top. For a long time I was contemplating of writing an open letter to you to let you know how absurd and hollow you sound most of the time and hypocritical for the rest; but looking at your stature and that uncanny ability of yours (with help of few theatric clowns) to self-gloat yourself, I thought of not showing you the mirror which eventually would have meant a lot of pain for you, since you would have realized the bitter facts. But thanks to your recent not so required bite at the IITians, I have decided to shed off my inhabitation and scribe down the lines which I feel I should have done a long time back.

You know what Mr.Murthy, you also proved me wrong this time with your blanket statement. I was damn sure of my deduction that the last person on this planet who can do something correct and worth praising, has to be Chetan Bhagat. But no, you thought to show one upmanship and conveniently got infected with that nonsense vomiting syndrome which lead to entities like Chetan Bhagat to rap you in the knuckles and make a mockery of your intellectual jingoism. That is the biggest shame right there Mr.Murthy. Getting humiliated by Chetan is more shameful than begging for aid from Somalia. But No, you think you are the Michelangelo of Indian IT and hence have some kind of license to talk on anything and everything that is happening around the globe. Be it Indian nuclear policy or the concerns for the rapid growth of prostitution in India; there has to be a bloody opinion of yours’. Your statements having a huge range from Indian cricket team’s poor performance to the rapidly shrinking length of Rakhi Shawant’s skirt; only shows that you have talked rubbish throughout without being sure on what you want to talk and what you meant when you finally did.

Coming back to the job of showing the mirror – let’s see what Chetan has to say (rightly at that for once) in reaction to your earlier jibe that the quality of IITians is degrading by the hours. ‘A man who runs a BODY SHOP and calls it as high-tech shouldn’t furnish such blanket statement’. Bull’s eye, that’s what you can safely say – hitting the nail in the skull. For the first time I felt like kissing Chetan on his BT Brinjal wearing glasses look alike face. Please Mr. Murthy, closely mark the words written in CAPS and let’s debate on those words and see how fair Chetan is with his comments.

Let’s look at the feats of the organization that you take immense pride of. What is the achievement of Infosys till now? Employing worthless entities in thousands to behave, act and work like hernia affected mules inside A/C rooms and introducing lakhs of lines of garbage code to the cyber world. If that wasn’t a big shameful act in itself, you thought of humiliating your paid mules further by coining them as tech savvy giants and their job as High-tech. For God’s sake give all a break including yourself. We all know how high-tech your bespectacled mules are. Just because we love cleaning other’s mess and we perhaps the cheapest sweepers available in the face of the planet, doesn’t make us tech savvy and our job high-tech. Even if we are ready to believe an illogical orator (who talks for the sake of talking) like you for once, still a list of only FIVE high-tech jobs that Infosys has accomplished since its inception would help. Please mark the words in CAPS again. And please don’t comeback with naming Finnacle as a high-tech job since I am quite aware what happened to the National Bank of Congo once they started using your created waste. The bank went bankrupt plunging down their economy to the rock bottom that only way they can afford to repay their debts if half of the nation sells off their kidneys to the outside world. Get this straight - Your organization is at best a master at fooling its clients, own employees and to some extent even its own investors. You false bill and charge exorbitant price from your clients on hourly basis while paying peanuts to your mules. Is that what you boast too much about the ethics of your organization? Cheat one-and-all? This is where you sound hollow. You talk big on stages about honesty, patriotism and social impact and urge your audiences to adhere to it, while you yourself seem to be far from adhering to any of your own preaching.

Now let’s ponder how hypocritical you are in your own actions. When Steve Jobs died it was you who delivered that heavy condolence message. According to you, Steve is one of the finest innovator and visionary who once again proved that real talent doesn’t need the ladder of big degrees or % mark one secures, to blossom. Let me first commend you for admitting a fact knowingly or unknowingly. That said, it also highlights your hypocrisy. While you might wonder how your condolence of Steve reflects your hypocrisy, I would request you to stop bothering your brain and let me explain. None of your job postings till date that I have seen seems to support your views towards Steve. Each one of them (at least those I have seen) does have a standard line at the bottom which I feel you should have tattooed on the foreheads of each recruitment team member of Infosys a long time back. While you applauded Steve for being a great innovator without any degree, you expect guys to have excellent education in terms of marks from Standard – X onwards to be a mule at Infosys. Isn’t that hypocritical Mr. Murthy? When it comes to talk big or many times nonsense at that, you happen to be there at the front row, but when it comes to implementing your own views you run away from it. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison doesn’t possess 80% marks to show in their resume but certainly are bigger figures than the entire Indian IT industry including Infosys put together, but to be a mule at your IT Coolie farm one needs to have a strong consistently upward educational curve, and yet none of your so called excellent academicians turned Infosian mules have yet to do a millionth portion that Steve used to do in one year.

So why don’t you for heaven’s sake implement that in your own organization and get rid of the mark criteria in your job postings if you really believe talent doesn’t need an 80% progress report to prove itself? If you can’t then please stop touting as if you are a Prabachan maker in a religious channel and possess an epiphany that the entire world should know and accept as well. None loves hypocrisy and I would strongly suggest you to keep it to yourself only.

Let’s see Infosys’s social impact in Indian spectrum. Mr. Murthy, I am sure you must have heard about a business house named TATA. If yes then have you ever tried to analyze their social work for bigger causes? Opening schools, colleges, research institutes, sports hostels, hospitals and many more to help the bottom layer of the citizens to elevate themselves. Where Infosys stands against the TATAs when it comes to social impact? A pediatric ward at the Bhubaneswar General hospital and that’s it? And still you believe you have done so much for social cause that you are at par with a certain J.R.D. Tata and have all the rights to speak on every damn thing and expect people to respect your views with a bowing head? Let me assure you Mr. Murthy – Whole of India is not working as slaved mules in your so called Hi-Tech BODY SHOPPING organization.

Forget about the nation Mr. Murthy; let’s look at your immediate colleagues. Have you ever cared to analyze them? Have you ever bothered in the larger spectrum why people love Nandan Nilekani more than you? It could be a shocker for you to know how people have more respect for Nandan than THE Narayan Murthy (mark the word in CAPS again), but it is a fact and in fact there is nothing for you to get bewildered as there are good enough reasons for that. The biggest of them is – Nandan is a no-nonsense, straight spoken, non-hypocritical and walk-the-talk kind of guy where in, you are the exact opposite of that. I haven’t ever seen Nandan talking nonsense about how, when and why the standard of IITians is degrading or why the hell Indian cricketers are giving priority to IPL than playing for their nation. Whenever Nandan has spoken on any topic, he has acted on them to rectify the mistakes (not just hollow Prabachans). UID implementation is a good example. Along with the successful implementation of the project he ensured there is no financial mess and proved a very vital point – When the person at the top is clean and no-nonsense the system responds and hence we shouldn’t blame the system always. In nutshell Nandan knows his job and goes about doing it in silence than running around like a headless chicken and delivering only baseless statements and non-required concerns in various platforms.

Coming back to the Asli Mudda again - Even if IITians have lowered their standard, then it still bothers me to see your anxiety on the whole issue. For the life of mine, I fail to comprehend, if you are so bothered for the falling standard, then being in a position of power, may I ask what you have done to elevate it then? Let me clear one doubt Mr. Murthy – By only talking nonsense (without any credible actions) you are not going to be a visionary or none going to accept you as a great thinker either. So stop these unnecessary jingoisms at once.

Mr. Murthy, if you think you can keep alive your dream of becoming the president of the nation by talking about social causes (without doing anything for the betterment) you can continue to do so but in the name of Neptune don’t expect us to buy all your absurd and nonsensical statements on face value, even if they happen to be true. More so when aptly being elaborated by Chetan – “A man who runs a BODY SHOP and naïve enough to call it High-Tech should not make blanket statements on issues of grave concern and at no point should be taken too seriously”.

Waiting for the reply from you soon sir

Warm Regards

An Irate IT Coolie