Improving competence levels more important than reservation: Murthy

Bangalore, Dec 1 (UNI) IT icon N R Narayana Murthy today reiterated his opposition to reservation in higher learning, saying that developing infrastructure and environment of competence will work better than caste or religion based reservations.

Speaking newspersons after delivering a lecture on 'Managing Technological Innovation in IT' at a Conference organised by the Institute of Engineering and Technology, here Mr Murthy, who is now the non-executive chairman of Infosys, refused to agree with the Sachar Committee which had recommended to set up Equal Opportunity Commission and monitoring mechanism.

''I don't agree with that and that's not the best way to bring the downtrodden up. You have to provide needed infrastructure and improve the competence level of the young,'' he said.

The country had done reasonably well in higher education level thanks to the vision of Jawaharlal Nehru who had taken initiative to start premier institutes in engineering, technology and medical sciences. However in primary education the country had not done well. This had affected people belonging to all religions and the governments should give a better attention to it. There was a need to make primary and secondary education a platform for success, he said.

Mr Murthy said that Infosys was conducting an experiment with Mr Sadagopan, Founder Director of IIIT-Bangalore, to demonstrate that providing proper attention and efficient training programme to the young was a better way than taking up research projects.

Replying to a question he welcomed the entry of Walmart, the global giant in retail industry into the country. The uniqueness of Walmart was its deployment of technology and leverage it to bring efficiency and customers comforts, which was unheard of in the country. ''It is good that the Walmart will bring its expertise and ecosystem into Indian,'' he said.

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