Imagine you has reporter and take interview with nr narayana murty
Answers
What made you initially choose engineering as a career?
My uncle was a civil servant and my father was very keen that I take that up as a career but somehow it didn’t appeal to me. Those were the days when engineering was considered the in thing along with medicine. People didn’t think that being an economist or a social scientist could be a productive career.
I had got admission to the iit by passing the entrance exam with a fairly high rank and a scholarship. But the scholarship was to be disbursed at the end of the year. I remember talking to my father who said that there was no way he could afford to pay since he was earning Rs 250 per month. He said: If you’re smart you can go to any college and be able to do something worthwhile. So I joined the local engineering college.
Did you have any role models who inspired you in your career?
Those days our role models were our teachers, both in school and university. They taught us to be inquisitive and articulate. You have to imagine a lower middle class family in a district headquarters in the ’60s. My father used to tell us about the importance of putting public good before private good; mother would talk about sacrifice and truth. Beyond the basic values of life they didn’t discuss too much about our careers.
My dream was to become a junior engineer in a hydroelectric power plant, Nehru’s temples of modern India. What appealed to me was that they were non-polluting and set in pristine surroundings. Also, being an electrical engineer, there was this macho thing about building a big generator. But as a top-ranking student, people advised me to do my masters. It was not easy for people like us from a certain section of society that was considered already advantaged to get a job in Karnataka because of the reservation system and so I postponed the career decision for two years by doing my masters.
So you finally made it to IIT; what was that experience like?
IIT Kanpur was in its halcyon days. We had so many young professors who had done their Ph.Ds in the US and had come back to India. They were all in their 20s and 30s and full of energy and optimism. Also, under the Kanpur Indo-American programme, iit had links with eight American universities like MIT, Berkeley, Purdue. What that meant was that when MIT got an IBM computer they sent one to Kanpur. We were introduced to computers – that wonder machine – and I was hooked.
What prompted you to opt for the unconventional job offer from IIM?
The phase I enjoyed the most was my time at iim Ahmedabad where I took up a job as chief systems programmer. In those days there were few computer science graduates so we got five job offers each. I had offers from hmt, ecil, Telco, Air India. The salary in those places was much higher than at the iim. But Prof. Krishnayya of iim who came to iit Kanpur talked to me for an hour about this great, modern mini- computer that he was going to install and that iim would be the third business school in the world to install a time-sharing system after Harvard and Stanford. He also said that the atmosphere was collegial, we’d work 20 hours a day and learn a lot. Taking this job at a salary of Rs 800 a month was the best decision of my life.
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