Picked from Narayana Murthy’s AMA, Ahmedabad speech

Ahmedabad Management Association never in past witnessed such a great rush of people coming to listen to someone. The parking was full, and the JB auditorium on the ground floor where the speech event was organized was full. The volunteers were requesting people outside the door to go to the HT Parekh hall upstairs as JB hall was jam packed and completely full. Upstairs, at HT Parekh hall, the situation was even worse. Every corner was occupied and people were standing upto the gate to listen a live video of the speech. The AMA management was very efficient in quick. Some scheduled classes were canceled and several class rooms were allotted for live video of the speech event from JB auditorium. But as soon as the class rooms were opened for the video telecast, they too were full. People sitting on chairs, sitting on the floor, and standing over rest of the space, this was the scenario!

All this in AMA building on Tuesday evening was due to Infosys founder N.R.Narayana Murthy’s speech event.

Shri Murthy in his speech spoke mostly on corruption. Following are the major points picked from Shri Murthy’s speech.

-India has achieved recognition in the world for the first time after 300 years of period. Foreigners have recognized this country as a destination. Most of the Fortune 500 companies will come to India to interact with the software industry here. If they experience corruption here, our people will suffer. It will affect 60 million people of India working in software industry. The window that has opened after 300 years should remain open. If not, we will get an opportunity of such fast economic growth may be after 50 or 100 years or never. If the world forgets India now, it will take a long long time to get recognition again.

-Our nation’s GDP growth rate decreases 0.5% to 1.5% due to corruption. If there was no corruption, our growth rate could be 10% at this time. Our double digit growth could be achieved.

-Administration means continue to maintain status quo, while management is about progress from one point to other. Our bureaucracy should come out from administrative mindset and adopt a management mindset.

-Our nation is slowest in actionizing intent. It takes years to materialize the things here which are materialized in months elsewhere.

-Corruption = discretion + monopoly – accountability

-Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh’s dream of inclusive growth is not getting momentum thanks to corrupt citizens.

-There are two types of corruption: Wholesale corruption and retail corruption. 2G, Commonwealth, Adarsh scam are examples of wholesale corruption, while retail corruption is what the people face in daily life.

-The situation is like it is impossible to live in India unless you submit to corruption.

-Corruption is not monopoly of only public sector. It is there in private system too, but in public system the return is much higher and impact too.

-E-Governance could decrease retail corruption.

-Giving direct subsidy to poor people using UID is good idea.

-Benami transaction act came in 1988, but no government has used it to seize benami property even after 23 years have passed. Effective use of this law will decently end the game of corrupt people.

-Audited accounts of political parties should be in public domain in 90 days.

-Recover double the amount involved in corruption from those proven corrupt. Minimum 15 years sentence should be awarded.

-Till the time we can not make living of 400 million below poverty line people better, our nation should be considered as a failed nation. To make their lives better, we need to create 80 million jobs in next four-five years. For this we would need infrastructure, roads, ports, power plants and other things which would need huge investment. So that we would need Indian and international investors. They would need transparent rules and regulations, corruption free state, quick response, and investment friendly system.

-Lokpal is good instrument to fight corruption. It is good for honesty in public governance and relations between government and business leaders. We hope the issue of whether PM, CVC, Judges should be under Lokpal’s purview or not would be settled between the government and civil society before Shri Ann Hazare’s fast. Citizens need to support Anna Hazare. Lokpal is powerful tool to make country better. Our elected class had shelved Lokpal bill for last 43 years.