R.K. Sinha
Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of Infosys Technologies, has set a wonderful example for the country’s moneylenders. He has donated Rs 315 crore to the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay. This is the largest donation made by any alumnus to his institute or college in India. Earlier also, he had donated Rs 85 crore to IIT Bombay. That is, till now he has donated Rs 400 crore to IIT Bombay. He has been a student of the same institute. In fact, successful students of various schools, colleges and universities of the country should also provide financial help to their educational institutions. These institutions cannot be left dependent on the help of the government. Government has its limits. In America, alumni provide a great deal of support to their colleges and universities. Research and other facilities can be increased in their educational institutions only with the help of alumni. Before moving forward, let us tell you that the biggest success of Nilekani is Aadhaar card. He successfully implemented the plan to provide a unique identification number or unique identification number to every citizen of the country.
So we were talking earlier that the successful people of the society, including entrepreneurs, businessmen, bureaucrats etc., should support the temples of education from where they have studied and today they are among the successful entrepreneurs.
Look, Nandan Nilekani is not just any profit making entrepreneur. They prove time and time again that they are a different kind of entrepreneur. Not only in India but in the IT sector of the whole world, Infosys Technology, celebrating the completion of 30 years of its establishment, gifted thousands of its employees with the gift of e-sops. The employees of the company were given e-sops based on the year of their tenure. Infosys started the tradition of e-shops in the country. The most respected IT company in the IT sector started e-shops under the guidance of illustrious personalities like N. Narayanamurthy and Nandan Nilekani, the patriarch of India’s IT sector. Needless to say, this decision of Infosys created a sense of ownership among the employees. So it is very clear that Neelkeni keeps on doing something different.
Meanwhile, it is well known that IITians have a significant number of students who have gone on to achieve great success in India or outside India. N. Narayanamurthy himself is from IIT Kanpur. Former Twitter CEO Parag Agarwal has also studied in IIT, Mumbai. It has given top CEOs to engineers to the country and the world. You talk about new entrepreneurs, especially related to e-commerce, and it is not possible not to mention Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal. Both of them founded Flipkart. Both of them stayed in IIT, Delhi. The first IIT in India was established in 1950 at Kharagpur, near Kolkata. The Parliament of India approved the IIT Act on 15 September 1956, declaring it as an “Institute of National Importance”. On the same lines, other IITs were established in Mumbai (1958), Madras (1959), Kanpur (1959), and New Delhi (1961). Then IIT was established in Guwahati. In the year 2001, the University of Roorkee located in Roorkee was also given the status of IIT. Students studying in IITs are scattered all over the world. All of them are taking a hefty salary or are earning a lot by doing their business. Apart from their IITs, all of them should also help the schools from where they studied. It should be remembered that the foundation of any person’s knowledge is laid in his school only. That’s why the importance of schools should be understood. We have to make all our colleges and universities at the level of St. Stephen’s College, IITs and IIMs. They have to be equipped with modern facilities. Yes, the challenge to reach this status will be to recruit the best faculty. We have to encourage those teachers who have a sense of dedication towards their students. Teachers have to keep themselves updated continuously. Generally, many of our teachers do not read and write once they get a permanent job.
I feel like talking about Bill Gates on the pretext of Nandan Nilekani. They are college drop outs. He has resigned from the board of directors of Microsoft and is completely engaged in human service. Remember that people with money have been there in all ages. But, Gates sets an example for the whole world. Bill Gates’ focus remains on social and charitable work like health, development and education. He dreams of eradicating poverty and illiteracy from the world. Nilekani has in a way inspired India’s wealthy society to do charity work. Apart from the spread of education, other rich people should not hold back from giving money for the construction of new hospitals or for the modernization of the already running hospitals. The Ratan Tata Library was established at the prestigious Delhi School of Economics (D-School) in collaboration with the Tata Group. It is considered an ideal library for studies and research in economics and related subjects. The Tata group itself played a decisive role in setting up the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. It was conceived as a research institute or research university by Jamshedji Tata in the last years of the nineteenth century. The interesting thing is that this huge IIS campus was built by Jamshed ji only after receiving a letter from Swami Vivekananda in which Swami ji wrote to Tata that you are earning good money from Jamshedpur steel plant, it is good It is a matter, but South India needs a good institute for the study of science, establish that. After a gap of about thirteen years, this institute was born on 27 May 1909. Homi Bhabha, Satish Dhawan, G. N. Ramachandran, Sir C.V. Raman, Raja Ramanna, C.N. R. Rao, Vikram Sarabhai, Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya, A.P.J.Abdul Kalam, great science personalities have been students of this institute or have been associated with it in one way or the other. If the Tata group had not generously provided funds for the establishment of this institute, the country might not have got this institute. So the bottom line is that the rich people of India will have to actively participate in nation building. Now India should get not one but dozens of Nandan Nilekanis. (The author is a senior editor, columnist and former parliamentarian.)
