Not Such a 'Hard Talk'!!

The Interview:

I was eagerly looking out for this interview (termed as Hard Talk) on The Devil’s Advocate. It could well have been termed as a good watch, with Mr. Murthy a person of impeccably clean image and Karan Thapar not letting go of any opportunity to challenge, provoke and accuse on any front. One led his business very well and another does his research with sheer brilliance unearthing reports and facts. I expected it to be different.

However the interview was as interesting as to predict in what digits are Sehwag and Sachin are going to score these days in a match. When I read the whole transcript, I found that Karan mainly talked about the following points

• Capitalism and entrepreneurship


• Governance Issues


• Public-Private partnership


• Importance of privatization


• Lack of political will and vision


• Why does NRM not want to join politics?

Now I think the media as a whole need to do a better job at interviewing when it comes to NRM. Abhishek and Ash wouldn’t have been thrown as many questions on their relationship as Mr. Murthy has oft reiterated:

• Success story of Infosys with particular mention of seed capital of 10000 Rs borrowed from Mrs. Murthy.


• “Those days”, with Infy as just a start-up.


• The whole saga of transformation from Marxism to capitalism following an arrest


• “Breaking-up” with GE Money, one of the biggest customers of Infosys.


• ………

Soft Grounds:

There are so many troubling issues which Karan didn’t even come close to.

• One of them as pointed out on Reality Check, the issue of seemingly perpetual tax-holidays for IT sector.


• Issues like haphazard expansion of SEZs and STPIs, for example.


• Some probing questions like blind hiring rate which seems to mask otherwise high attrition rate of Infosys would have been a food for thought for audience.


• If he sees that current Infosys model is efficient enough to insulate it from the growing threat because of the shift that Google is bringing in.


• Some questions related to socio-corporate issues as to how is Infy going to take initiative on reservation issues, skewed ratio of women in top management etc.

These questions are not what I want to ask but I feel Karan would have done a good job by watching the Quarterly Town Hall (event in which Infy declares its results and CEO addresses employees) and heard what questions are generally asked there(Here is the Nandan’s interview aired on the day Infy declared the Q3’07 results). Not all of them are very relevant to general Indian audience but some of them do make a compelling case.

From the transcript available, it seemed Karan either seemed intimidated to challenge or just chose oft-repeated questions to put forward to. In another interview of Ratan Tata (the only link I could find was this. NDTV, it seems doesn’t publish the transcripts of interviews; something which they should) taken by Barkha Dutt, she was forthcoming in challenging his position on Singur, his position on Corus deal and realizing that Ratan Tata is far more reserved than this wonderful orator, DA didn’t do justice to the task at hand.