Owner's Pride, Neighbour's envy

Indians take tremendous pride if a person of Indian origin is nominated as president/CXO of a leading MNC or other organisations of international repute. In many cases these are IIT or IIM alumnus. Sometimes from lesser known colleges like Satya Nadella of Microsoft. Microsoft is really a big deal as they can hire almost anyone they want to. Probably. At least it brings cheer too a country deeply hurt by corruption, inefficiency, inflation and women safety issues.

At times these alumnus are used to showcase and inflate the capability of an institution which produced this decorated alumnus. One must ask two questions:

1. Is the individual institution responsible for this person's competency ?

2. Is our industry responsible for nurturing & enriching them to this level ?

The answer to both these questions is a "NO". There is no doubt that Indians as a race are talented than many others whether they are from India or abroad. But one must realise that:

1. IITs and other engineering colleges are just supplying raw talent to American universities that are polishing them through their MS, PhD and MBA programmes. A raw uncut diamond is thus made a kohinoor, which becomes priceless.

2. American MNCs provide them the opportunity and platform to excel professionally just as they do to their own citizens and immigrants from other countries. Not only Indians but many Chinese, East European and Jewish immigrants have been successful beyond measure in the land of equal opportunities.

A brilliant scientist from Navy, Dr. Arogyaswami Paulraj went on to teach & research at Stanford university, invented MIMO which is used by every short range to long range wireless transmission technology around. No wonder he has been awarded both the Marconi and Alexander Graham Bell prizes celebrating both theoretical and practical excellence. A rare combo.

IMO these are more Americans than Indians as far as their fame goes. Race, Nationality, Citizenship, Loyalties not withstanding. While Indian pride is justified to some extent (they mined the diamond in the first place from a billion plus possibilities), it is the Americans who should be really proud of the Nadellas and Paulrajs (for they are the craftsmen who polished the gem).

And for some odd reason we do not take the same level of pride in Narayan Murthy, Nandan Nilekani, Kieran Majumdar Shaw and others. These are the real successful Indians, because they slogged and made it big in this land ...