How a business leader gave wings to young minds
At a recent event, Azim Premji shared with students his
childhood memories, his success mantra and the key to getting eagles back to a
village
If you could ask Wipro chairman Azim Premji one question, what
would it be?
Would you ask him about the best way to bring back the eagles to
your village?
Probably not. It takes a child's imagination (and daring) to ask
such a question. And it takes someone of Premji's stature and experience to
appreciate its beauty.
At the recent Earthian Awards in Bengaluru, Premji took many
such creative questions from a room filled with school and college students,
working on sustainability projects. The responses were tailor-made for the
young audience -direct and insightful, minus any grandiosity or pretence.
Were you
naughty when you were a kid?
Yes, I was very naughty when I was a kid. And in those days, you
got rapped on the knuckles, you got hit on your head and you had to be kneeling
outside the class for a really long time. At least some of those practices are
no longer there. But I spent a lot of time outside the class, kneeling.
A lot of eagles
used to come to our village earlier. They don't anymore. How will they come
back?
One is throw grains for them. Second, you must grow trees all
along the paths of the eagles.They don't normally come and sit on the ground.
They come and sit on the trees.
What are the
sacrifices that you make to reach this stage?
I worked very hard and I neglected my family.
Who and what
inspired you to start Wipro?
Wipro was not started by me. It was started by my father. But I
think I contributed to expand its existing product range and to diversify. What
inspired me was just the ambition to do better than what we were doing and to
grow much faster than we had in the past.
What is the
mantra of your success?
Hard work and a lot of luck. Two major things.
How do you get
luck?
It just comes by itself. You can't search for it.
You left your
college in between. Did it affect your life and ambition?
Well, I left college because I had to take over the
responsibilities from my father, who died at very young, at the age of 51. But
eventually, many, many years later, I did get a bachelor's degree in electrical
engineering from Stanford University.
Getting
successful is difficult, but re maining successful is even more so.How do you
stay successful?
I agree with you 100 per cent be cause the moment you have
success, your expecta tions from the profes sion goes up. But more im
portantly, your expectations from yourself go up. And, I think, the only way to
have sustained success is to keep competing with yourself.
That's the only enduring thing according to me.
What do you
think will be the future of Indian children, especially girls?
My experience says that the girls are always turning out to be
smarter consistently. You just look at the quality of questions that you get
from the ladies in the audience. They are, in my opinion, far more intelligent
than the questions you get from the boys. Girls take their careers more
seriously. And girls, particularly in villages, take their careers even more
seriously, once their parents give them the latitude to do that.
There are some developed nations, some developing and many
under-developed.There is already much environmental damage. What will happen if
all the countries run to get the tag of a developed nation?
Development is a concept of relativity. A nation is more developed
compared to another nation primarily based on its per capita income. That's the
most important criteria that people use for development versus lack of
development. But there are also many qualitative aspects that get ignored in
the process. The quality of education for instance. Some countries are less
developed, but have a very good quality education system.Some countries are
very developed, but have a very poor quality education system. Secondly, social
values should also be used in the concept of development. There are many
developed nations that have social values which are significantly inferior to
those of developing nations.
I think it's also a matter of how satisfied people in that
country are. There are many people who are not satisfied in very developed
countries.The typical example of the American election is the result of a
revolt by the middle class, which thought it was getting a raw deal. I think
the satisfaction index also becomes important.
What is Wipro's
contribution to the smart cities project?
The smart cities project today is more talk than action. It is
very unfortunate. It got a lot of attention from the Prime Minister, but its
implementation has been very shallow. And wherever the implementation has been
there, we have participated actively.I think the key priority for the
government today is to get it moving. They first did a shortlist of 25
cities.Then they added another 25 cities. But there is very little action on
the ground.
What are the changes that you would like to see in the nation
today?
I have seen a lot of changes in my career. But the pace of
change today is probably 3x what it was even five and ten years ago. And the
changes are across the board. There are changes in society, changes in
business, there are changes in the global scene as we've seen with two major
election results. Change is just everywhere. And unless you learn to cope with
change, you will fall behind. It requires a lot of ef fort and it requires a
lot of keeping your eyes open all the time. It requires a lot of relearning
from you all the time.
masoom gupte
ET17FEB17
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