Murthy exhorts political, biz leaders to ponder on India

Bangalore, Jan 19: Infosys Chief Mentor N R Narayana Murthy today exhorted politicians and business leaders of the country to ponder over less fortunate India and make efforts to reach the deprived classes of society in rural areas.

Participating in the valedictory of the three-day Confederation of Indian Industry Partnership Summit here, he said it was not sufficient if India was seen everywhere throughout the world. It was very much necessary to see India within the country. It could be done collectively by political leaders, business community and the intelligentsia. The need of the hour was to instil confidence in the minds of the younger generations and kindle hope in them.

Mr Murthy regretted that though India had made strides in various sectors and Indians were embarking on acquiring global companies, it was unfortunate that the growth rate in agriculture sector showed a downward trend. A whopping 650 million people in the country earned less than Rs 45 a day. The contribution from this sector was likely to go down further in the next ten years and the disposable income of people belonging to this category was likely to go down further.

Hence, it was a great challenge to the country which stressed the need to take the less fortunate India along with the progress in other sectors, he noted, adding that unless this was done, all joy would be shortlived.

He suggested that in the first step, business leaders should come out openly in the interest of the less fortunate and show their concern towards societal obligations. ''We (the corporate sector) can tell the Finance Minister that whoever is making a profit of more than Rs 50 crore annually will contribute a corporate tax. If it is done, India can generate US Dollars four billion, enough to take care of breakfast and lunch under the mid-day meal programme covering 35,000 million children.''

Mr Murthy called for public-private participation to devise a plan to control the population in a more effective way. If the population was not controlled, all efforts would come to a naught, he cautioned. He rued that majority of the children were under-nourished and belonged to the base of the pyramid. They had no proper access to decent education. If correct measures were taken, these children too could be fed well and given proper education so that they could also compete with children from urban areas on an equal footing, he felt.

Lauding efforts made by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his predecessor A B Vajpayee, he said there was a paradigm shift in the relationship between Ministers and the business community.

CII President R Seshasayee said CII had begun to carve out an agenda for action based on three messages from the dialogues and discussions with various leaders. A research initiative on the impact of globalisation in select sectors of the Indian industry would be taken up to enable fine tuning of the industry initiative in future. Multilateralism was going to stay and bilateral talks were also necessary and it was not a negation to the multilateral trade links, he added.

UNI