The Exchanges

Q And can you describe a couple of more powerful stories? Because I'm really moved by the story of Munitiga, and I believe my listeners would also be having the same once they listen to this conversation.

A Well, you know, that, uh, nice t-shirt you are wearing, um, and this shirt that I am wearing, and suddenly the, you know, trousers we are wearing, chances are very high that, uh, they come from a tiny municipal town in India, in Tamil Nadu, called Tirupur. Now Tirupur is the Bangalore equivalent of the government export industry. A few years back, Tirupur actually is a municipal town, ok, not even a city. Uh, it produced almost like six billion dollars of government exports for India. It's, it's done by close to, um, uh, 600,000, uh, uh, workers. Half of them are from Tamil Nadu. And half of them are migrant workers from Bihar and Chhattisgarh and UP and Odisha. So out of that half, 50% come from Odisha. And 98% of government workers are women who are school dropouts. So when you wear an H&M product or a Tommy Hilfiger or you wear a pair of, you know, Dockers, uh, chances are an Odia girl has touched that before he has adorned you. Should you look at mannequins in Madrid and in Paris and in Barcelona and in New York and London, uh, the cloth, the, the, the dress draping the mannequin could be from Tirupur. Might have been touched Uh, with, with the hands of an ODIA worker. So where is the story going? The story where it is going is the average government, uh, worker, uh, who's a girl comes there because, uh, she needs to get married and the family can't afford it. Typically you…

AI assessment note: “The story where it is going is the average government, uh, worker”

Q You know, during this podcast, we'll discuss various life stories of you and the people related with you. So can you describe, you know, Mr. Naveen Patnaik as, because he was a CEO in his own right, a CEO of a state, right? Your experience, how did you knew him, your experience working with him and some of the transformations that he brought in the state of Odessa?

A So first of all, I didn't know him. You know, I knew of him. I had no past association and I had nothing to do with politics. Maintree started its global learning center in Bhuvaneswar. It was called Maintree Kalinga at one point in time. That was when the government of Bodhisar was quoting IT companies to come and set up campuses. So during the course of that, he came for the foundation stone laying, and then he came to inaugurate it. So it was very polite interaction during that time. Um, it didn't build any familiarity. Then what happened was, ah, I stepped down from Maintree, ah, on the first March, 2016, and on second April, I had a talk to Deliver, um, at the behest of the Odisha government. This is called Odisha Knowledge Forum, and, ah, they typically bring all the top bureaucrats together. And get somebody who's from the outside world to talk on, you know, eclectic set of subjects. Um, so it was a third edition of the Odisha Knowledge Hub, and on second April, I delivered that talk. Uh, prior to me, um, Raghuram Rajan was one of the speakers, and Nachiket Moore, I was the third in that series. Um, I didn't realize that when I was talking to the top bureaucrats, Uh, a feed was made available to the chief minister's room. Uh, he never sits in this because he wants his offices to have a free willing, uh, no innovations kind of interaction. So unknown to me, uh, he was lis…

AI assessment note: “So first of all, I didn't know him. You know, I knew of him.”

Q These are amazing stories, and the kind of a pride that I see, and delight I see in your eyes, ah, on narrating these stories, are they more powerful than your Maintree experience?

A Oh, any day. Absolutely. You know, Maintree defined me. I don't think you'd be speaking to me if Maintree had not happened. Maintree is the joy and the beauty of my life. But as I told you before, um, In the private sector, if you are able to push something by a millimeter, you make an inch of progress. With the government, if you can push something by a millimeter, if you can, then you can, your progress that you make is a mile long. Joy of that is very different. In mind, you're dealing with engineers mostly. Uh, if you're an engineer, you work with a company like Mindtree, Infosys, TCS, whatever, you're already privileged in a country like India. But when you see Munitiga, you meet Sumati Naik, you truly understand the power of India. And the frustrations. I only told you the success stories, and there are very difficult, very, very difficult stories of people who are trying hard, and they, they barely come up to the surface level, and they fall apart. So for one Basanti Pradhan, there are dozens of girls who come, In a garment factory, wherever, many other production places. And, you know, somebody says, give me your savings. I'll make it double in under a year.

AI assessment note: “Oh, any day. Absolutely. You know, Maintree defined me.”

Q And can you describe those eight years and what made you stick for those eight years and the experience of working with Mr. Naveen Patnaik and the broader team?

A More than working with Mr. Naveen Patnaik, as I was telling you, he gave me free hand. It was working with people at the bottom of the pyramid. That was exciting. Um, my entire life has been, um, has been inspired by the possibility of making ordinary people achieve extraordinary things. And I did it in many ways when I was building MineTree prior to MineTree. Some of my best years were the 10 years that I spent in Wipro. So, uh, all that was good. But the excitement of being part of a government is you get to work with people at a very different scale. And, uh, you know, I, I sensed the high Uh, you talk about those eight years. I sensed the high, felt the high, lived the high, because I was telling some people the other day that in the private sector, if you push something by a millimeter, you make progress worth an inch. But if you can push things by a millimeter as part of the government, then you can go a mile long. So that is a dimensional, you know. So if you're looking at transformative change, um, and you're part of a government, and you have the right empowerment, you have the right agency, then it is just mind boggling as to how much of impact you can create. And, uh, some of the impact can be intergenerational.

AI assessment note: “he gave me free hand. It was working with people at the bottom”

Q And how has, have these stories during these eight years changed you as a person now?

A It's difficult to summarize that. I can only tell you that, you know, I feel humbled. I feel responsible. I feel lucky. I feel blessed that I was able to engage with these people. Each day I learned something different. You know, How many of people watching this podcast would have heard about words called stunting and wasting? India is the stunting and wasting capital of the world. 46% of Indian kids have malnutrition. 46%. And when you have early childhood malnutrition, it affects your learning capability, your judgmental capability. The brain does not develop after the age of eight, and the brain requires protein. So till the age of eight, if you are protein deficient, they'll not be able to do math, will not be able to have linguistic capability. You have the capability to connect the dots, which is essential in life. So I didn't know about the words called stunting and wasting. I didn't know about terms like DDUGKY or PMKVY. I didn't pay attention to the fact, you go to a hospital, you go to Manipal Hospital, you go to Fortis, you go to Apollo. I see, you know, if you ever got admitted or your near and dear one got admitted there, you're only focused on the, on the doctor. You don't ask yourself, where did the nurse come from? How did that nurse take on this job? You don't even realize that at hospital is not about doctors and nurses. It's about the bedside attendant and wh…

AI assessment note: “I feel humbled. I feel responsible. I feel lucky. I feel blessed”

Q how did it change during these eight years? Like, as you initially said during the, the beginning of the podcast, you know, our perception of the government is, it's laggard, it's corrupt, and it doesn't want any change. Example, you know, Bangalore is the GDP capital of Karnataka, and also maybe in some way of India also, in some sense. What do you see the quality of infrastructure here? Yeah.

A So we, we think that this for all failures is a government that is responsible. We don't pause and say that society is responsible. We certainly don't pause and say I'm responsible. So who is, who is clogging the Bangalore road? I'm clogging the Bangalore road. Who is causing the, you know, the, the sewage mess of Bangalore? I'm causing it. Who is, you know, causing the strain on the medical system? I'm causing it. I have a, I have a role to fulfill. So, you know, when we want the COVID shot, ok, Then for a fleeting moment, till the jab goes in, we think and probably thank the government, right? But it's policy makers who made that happen. So we're talking about the stereotypes, actually slot of corruption. There is slot, there is corruption, but it's a societal problem. So there was a time when the politician was corrupt. The bureaucrat was not corrupt. Then there was a time when the many bureaucrats became corrupt. But now we are entering a time where society is corrupt. So demonetization happened, right? Society is back in business. Even today you want to buy and sell a real estate. Educated people want money in cash and educated people pay money in cash. You go to buy anything, you know, uh, anything above maybe 5010 thousand rupees. The guy will say, uh, do you want a bill or you don't want a bill? And he said, what's the difference? The guy says, Bill Lengit or GST Lagjay…

AI assessment note: “So we blame the government too easily for the ails that are social problems.”