Faux Superman

With Gujarat strongman Narendra Modi emerging as the BJP/NDA front runner for prime minister in the General Election due next summer, the remarkably long run of the  incumbent septuagenarian Dr. Manmohan Singh of the Congress-led UPA government is all but over. But Singh has little cause to complain considering that contrary to the Lincolnian assertion, he has managed to fool the people for a very long time to become India’s longest continuously serving prime minister after Jawaharlal Nehru. It speaks volumes of the naïveté and sycophancy of the country’s business community (and the media) that this apotheosis of mediocrity, who was one of the prime architects of licence-permit-quota raj which devastated Indian industry for over three decades — he held every senior position within the civil service including economic secretary, governor of the Reserve Bank and deputy chairman of the Planning Commission — is hailed as the saviour of the Indian economy, and an individual of unimpeachable integrity. Returning to India in 1991, after wangling postings in the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, he emerged as an economic reformer who liberalised the Indian economy, when actually he dutifully did prime minister Narasimha Rao’s bidding. A decade later he surfaced as Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi’s yes-mam prime minister after the Congress unexpectedly emerged as the single largest party in Parliament in the General Election of 2004. Since then, he has presided over the most corrupt Central government in Indian history, even as GDP growth has nose-dived from 9 percent per annum in 2004 to below 5 percent currently. With the Nehru dynasty scion Rahul Gandhi indicating a marked disinclination to announce himself as the Congress prime ministerial candidate in 2014, Singh has again thrown his turban into the ring. And given the political illiteracy of the electorate and vested interest of the Indian establishment in corruption, he may well be elected again. Mofussil mindset fallout The reshuffle of the top management of Bangalore-based transnational IT (information technology) behemoth Infosys Technologies Ltd (revenue: Rs.44,817 crore; headcount: 150,000 in fiscal 2012-13), and the reappointment of its iconic promoter N.R Narayana Murthy as executive chairman of the company, has provoked considerable speculation whether Murthy, who is credited with piloting the astonishing growth of this company (estb. 1981), will be able to revive its sagging fortunes. NRNM is widely acknowledged as the man with the Midas touch who charted the growth of Infosys founded by a group of IIT graduates from modest backgrounds, into a globally respected corporate with awe-inspiring campuses and offices in India and abroad. Now the challenge before him is to rectify the damage he himself inflicted on Infosys by imposing several faulty policies and values on the company during his long innings as chairman (2002-2011). The first of them was to reward in rotation, all his promoter-brethren with a stint in the CEO’s corner office regardless of capability. This unwittingly prevented any break from established policies and practices despite a rapidly changing global business environment. Another strategic blunder that…