Infy boss to join govt as cabinet minister

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

New Delhi/Bangalore: He’s been a poster boy of Indian infotech, co-founded a company that has become a byword for participative entrepreneurship, given Thomas Friedman the idea for the bestselling The World Is Flat, and himself penned a book, Imagining India. And now, at the age of 54, his shareholding in Infosys alone worth Rs 3,500 crore, Nandan Nilekani has taken on one of the most ambitious government programs ever envisaged—heading the project to equip every Indian with a biometric Unique Identification Card (UIC). This is the biggest movement from private sector to government in India in recallable memory.

Nilekani, who will quit his job as co-chairman of the Rs 22,000 crore Infosys to avoid
any conflict of interest, has been given the rank and status of a cabinet minister, a deadline of three years, a corpus of Rs 100 crore and—perhaps most importantly—the flexibility to draw in talent from the private sector to build his core team.

The lateral entry of business barons into government is fairly commonplace in the US but rare in India. Nilekani’s is the most significant appointment since 1987 when the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi brought in Sam Pitroda to head the Technology Mission which paved the way for the IT and telecom revolutions.

WHAT’S THE UNIQUE ID PROJECT?

Ambitious | Rs 150,000 cr Unique Identity Card (UIC) project will catalogue personal details of every Indian citizen on smart cards

Detailed | To include name, sex, address, marital status, photo, identification mark and finger biometrics

Hi-tech | Will be based on a sophisticated application called SCOSTA, a secured electronic device that’s used for keeping data & other info in a way that only authorized persons can view it

Versatile | Can be used for a number of things, ranging from use as voter I-card to proof for opening a bank account. Can also help deter illegal immigration

Urgent | Scheme was launched in Nov 2003 and has so far been given to just 31 lakh citizens. Miffed by the delay, the SC pulled up the govt in Jan and asked it to implement the scheme speedily countrywide

Times View

This paper has relentlessly campaigned, primarily through its Lead India initiative, for cleaner, better governance. A good way to achieve this, we’ve said, is to have educated, ethical, efficient and dedicated people from civil society and the private sector join government. We aren’t surprised that it was Nandan Nilekani who’s made this leap of faith — he and his mentor, N R Narayana Murthy, have always been imbued by a sense of public purpose. And we commend Manmohan Singh — himself an accomplished economist-bureaucat — for bringing in a first rate entrepreneur-technocrat for a project of ambitious proportions. May many more Nilekanis bloom. India will be the better for it.

UIC project fits Nandan’s passion
New Delhi/Bangalore: The Unique Identification Card (UIC) project could have as huge an impact as Sam Pitroda’s Technology Mission. In its first phase, it will identify the beneficiaries of schemes on which the government has been spending billions with little guarantee that the money was actually reaching the deserving.

It is learnt that beneficiaries of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), the public distribution system and the still-to-be-enacted Food Security Act will be the first to be given the cards. “The aim is to ensure that development objectives are achieved without leakages and pilferage. It will be targeted at the marginalised population in the first phase,’’ a source said. Other UPA flagship schemes—Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan, National Rural Health Mission and Bharat Nirman—will also be covered.

Nilekani first got a call from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in early June, with an offer to join the Planning Commission. He declined, but was intrigued by the prospect of becoming an effective change agent—especially since he’s still relatively young. He stepped down as CEO a couple of years ago to become co-chairman of Infy—which has no other co-chairman, or chairman, but does have an enviable succession process. In a sense, Nilekani’s ability to influence policy from the outside had reached its zenith, it made sense to shape it now from within.

So, when the UIC opportunity came up, it proved irresistible, especially since it is a technologydriven initiative that dovetails perfectly with the core competence of this electrical engineer from IITBombay. The move also fits into his passion for public service. And it has the blessings of his longtime mentor, N R Narayana Murthy.

“It’s like a younger brother going out of home, seeking nobler aspirations. Nandan was the third person I spoke to when I founded Infosys. He is a good conceptualiser, a good thinker, a big picture man...I rank this project on the scale of importance and impact with Sam Pitroda’s telecom project, M S Swaminathan’s green revolution and Prof Yashpal’s Sites (satellite instruction & TV experiment) project,’’ Murthy told TOI.

Other leaders of India Inc also welcomed the move enthusiastically. “It’s a very good development. We need many more Nandans if the government is in the mood to induct professionals. The key is to task them with a specific responsibility that no one else is doing, and give them independence,’’ said HDFC chairman Deepak Parekh.

Nandan Nilekani at home in Bangalore with wife Rohini. He will head the government’s mega ID card program