Deserved government

On several occasions, the frequent — once every nine days — peregrinations abroad at public expense of Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of the Planning Commission (exposed by India Today), have provoked trenchant comment on this page. Now it transpires that the itch for free foreign travel is not peculiar to Ahluwalia. Information reluctantly provided under the Right to Information Act, 2005 by the Lok Sabha secretariat to civil rights activist Subhash Agarwal, reveals that Meira Kumar, speaker of the Lok Sabha, travelled abroad 29 times in the past 35 months since her election in 2009, billing the public exchequer a cool Rs.10 crore. And who can forget that the gracious President of the Republic ran up a foreign travels bill of Rs.204 crore during her undistinguished five-year term in office which mercifully ends next month? Yet if the nation’s uncaring netas and babus are robbing the country blind, the undemanding public and complicit establishment are as much to blame. Although the media — perhaps the only effectively functional estate of the republic — routinely exposes the depredations and shenanigans of the country’s overweening politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen, the great majority of the population is stoically indifferent to the great exchequer robbery. For instance, EducationWorld has been persistently pressing for disclosure — under a separate head — of the annual wages and salaries (including travel and conveyance) expenditure of the Central government. Yet despite this publication reaching a million readers, including the country’s top academics, this routine request for full disclosure has not attracted a single comment — let alone support — from its reputedly learned readers. Proof of the adage that a nation gets the government(s) it deserves.  Wrong man An IT (information technology) software and services company which is enjoying a series of public relations triumphs of late is the Mumbai-based Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS). In a nationwide poll recently conducted by the Delhi-based fortnightly Business Today (February 2012), TCS was voted the best company to work for in terms of employee satisfaction. Moreover with the sudden precipitous decline in the market value of the Bangalore-based Infosys Technologies, TCS has emerged as the country’s undisputed No.1 IT corporate. And recently the company received wide exposure for sponsoring the TCS World 10 K half-marathon on May 27 in Bangalore which attracted 25,000 participants, many rich and famous. As a consequence of these public relations triumphs, the stock of N. Chandrasekaran — appointed managing director and chief executive of TCS in 2009 — is riding high. Yet it is pertinent to note that if TCS and its recently appointed CEO are basking in the sunshine of public approbation, Chandrasekaran is a mere inheritor of decades of painstaking spadework done by Fakir Chand Kohli, the founder chief executive for four decades and latterly his chosen successor S. Ramadorai in the new millennium. On the contrary, there is some evidence to prove that Chandrasekaran may well be a square peg in a round hole within TCS. Notwithstanding that TCS is one…