P E O P L E

ON RECORD
‘Need to bridge trust gap with forces’
Avinash Chander, Director General, DRDO, says the organisation needs to start delivering on promises to the Services
Raj chengappa, Editor-in-Chief, talks to Avinash Chander, Director General, DRDO.
Avinash Chander, who took over as the chief of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Scientific Adviser to the Defence Minister, brings to the chair a wealth of experience and achievement.

Last Word
Can the trusted racehorse put Infosys back on track?
He’s violated the principal of retiring at 60 — set by the founders, including him — and keeping family away from Infosys, but the directors could see Murthy as the only option available. With the stock rising, the shareholders are not complaining.
Narayana Murthy, executive chairman, Infosys
by Shubhadeep Choudhury
sometime in 2010, when “Leadership@Infosys”, a book written by Matthew Barney of the Mysore-based Infosys Leadership Institute, was released at a function on the Infosys campus here in the presence of Narayana Murthy, the audience included about 70-odd potential leaders.

ON RECORD
‘Need to bridge trust gap with forces’
Avinash Chander, Director General, DRDO, says the organisation needs to start delivering on promises to the Services
Raj chengappa, Editor-in-Chief, talks to Avinash Chander, Director General, DRDO.

Avinash Chander, who took over as the chief of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Scientific Adviser to the Defence Minister, brings to the chair a wealth of experience and achievement. He has an air of quiet confidence and firmness and was a major contributor to the success of the Agni missile programme that has become India’s premier nuclear strike vehicle.

Chander takes over at a time when the DRDO finds itself at the crossroads again. There is a trust deficit between the armed forces and the DRDO, particularly over the delivery of promised indigenously developed weaponry. There is also need for a total makeover in the functioning of the DRDO, as recommended by the Rama Rao Committee that went into its functioning five years ago. Chander, a Punjabi by birth (the family migrated from Mirpur in Pakistan during Partition), studied at IIT-Delhi before joining the DRDO and has been with the organisation ever since. He brings to the job competence and clarity, qualities that are needed to execute the tough challenges ahead for the organisation. He spoke exclusively to Raj Chengappa, Editor-in-Chief, The Tribune Group of Newspapers, at the DRDO headquarters in Delhi recently. Excerpts:

What are the priorities that you have set yourself?

The DRDO’s image as a technology generator has been well accepted across various forums. However, it is the organisation’s ability to deliver in time that is repeatedly getting questioned and unfortunately we have many past legacies. My first aim is to create an environment where things can move faster and build a better structure to remove that legacy. We must start LCA (Light Combat Aircraft) production within this year; Agni IV and V have to go into induction by the end of next year; and Arjun 2 has to go into the next tests and also go into production so that these backlogs are cleared apart from other ongoing ventures. Bringing the production system together into the culture is one of the challenges, and the fact that we have to produce so many systems within the next two years is the major focus area for us.

What about gaps in terms of technology and armament?

We are also focusing on how to overcome the critical gaps in our armed forces’ armoury. For example, today we are dependent on import for ammunitions for the Bofors guns. We do not have a gun of our own for the past 40 years. The two areas of indigenous ammunition and indigenous gun are what we have to deliver on in the next two-three years. My hope is that once I do these things, and they are inducted in the armed forces, the DRDO’s image will be transformed. Users should come to us as the first-choice system. With a new policy to involve the industry, the combination is going to be the most effective solution. The DRDO as technology provider and the industry developing its own capability to produce systems will result in us going into a spiral acceleration mode.

What are the reasons for the lack of delivery by the DRDO?

Our decision making has been sequential. First we do a prototype, then we see whether we get an order for making or developing a system, then after we develop a system we see how many are needed. For each of these cycles it takes five years. No industry is willing to commit to such a process. Regarding strategic systems there has never been doubt in anybody’s mind that India has no other option but to develop them indigenously. So we need to develop the raw material and production processes in parallel to cut down on time cycles.

Second, equally critical is that the industrial base in the country, except for the past five years, has been pretty weak. Each item of the LCA had to be designed by our team as there is practically nothing available in the country. There is no design base in the industry which could have done it. Everything has to be done in-house. Now the industry has to come up to a maturity level where they can take on systems like this. If that happens, half of our load will be gone, and the spared manpower could concentrate on making much better products, and our time cycle will be cut.

Third, programme management at the DRDO needs to be more focused and strengthened. Today we have no professional management training process. We are good scientists but when it comes to programme management we have intuitive managers. We need to train them.

The Rama Rao Committee report five years back had made several recommendations to revamp the DRDO. Have those been implemented?

First, the committee wanted to bring synergy between the policy makers, the armed forces and the research and production agencies so that the decision making process was integrated. It recommended a Defence Technology Commission to be chaired by the Raksha Mantri. We have already put up a note for approval of the Cabinet. We have also put up to the government the setting up of a commercial arm for utilising the capability as recommended.

Second, the committee wanted the formation and empowerment of clusters and to make the heads of clusters and their teams accountable for delivery. We are aiming to constitute the clusters within the next three months. A corporate office will monitor and enhance the synergy between them, taking policy decisions about future activities and, of course, evaluating the performance gaps and taking suitable actions so that the control is not lost but freedom is increased. Third, we are looking at strengthening the HR skills. Fourth, we are also working on a new initiative to create four or five technology centres in academic institutions. The world over basic research happens on university campuses.

Which are the areas of pure research that you are looking at?

We are identifying futuristic areas. The robotic soldier, for example, is one area where a lot of new technologies have to come — materials, mechanisms, kinematics, mathematical modelling, fuzzy logic controls, communication, recognition, differentiating between enemy and friend. There are a whole lot of new capabilities — cyber space, materials, devices, products — that have to be merged, which are going to be at least two levels above what is there today. We want to work in all these fields so that research can be directed towards creating a robotic soldier.

Why should India focus on developing robotic soldiers?

Today there is a focus on unmanned warfare — drones are already there. Future wars are going to be fought with unmanned systems, so you have to plan now. You cannot have Indian soldiers fighting others’ robots; you have to prepare for that. There is a huge amount of work going on in this direction in advanced countries. Given that scenario, we have to catch up, and that is going to be a thrust area.

Where have we reached in our target of indigenisation in defence production?

In strategic systems we are 80-85 per cent indigenous because there was no choice. Everything was built indigenously except for things like IC chips and sensors. In other systems too we are indigenising gradually. The LCA is about 60-65 per cent indigenous. Its engine is imported.

Why can’t India make aircraft engines?

We are going to make it one of our thrusts areas. Today, the country does not make any engine, whether for automobiles, aircraft or tanks. So we have taken up a National Engine Mission to do precisely this.

Despite years of development, the Army does not seem to be enamoured of Arjun Tank.

Arjun’s fire performance is one of the best. The main problem with the tank is its weight. We have made 73 modifications from Arjun Mark 1 to Mark 2, and most of them have passed the tests. We are going in for user trials in the next couple of months.

Given the spread of cyber warfare, is the DRDO pursuing that too?

The DRDO is a technology organisation and we have a strong programme to develop cyber tools and technologies to enable our intelligences agencies do whatever they want to do besides cyber defence.

Last Word
Can the trusted racehorse put Infosys back on track?
He’s violated the principal of retiring at 60 — set by the founders, including him — and keeping family away from Infosys, but the directors could see Murthy as the only option available. With the stock rising, the shareholders are not complaining.
Narayana Murthy, executive chairman, Infosys
by Shubhadeep Choudhury

Sandeep Joshi

sometime in 2010, when “Leadership@Infosys”, a book written by Matthew Barney of the Mysore-based Infosys Leadership Institute, was released at a function on the Infosys campus here in the presence of Narayana Murthy, the audience included about 70-odd potential leaders. Mostly men, this section of the audience was conspicuously silent when the floor was thrown open to questions. The only question asked by a “potential leader” was whether the book will be available in the market. The silence gave rise to doubts in the minds of those present about the calibre of the lot identified as “potential leaders” by the company.

Flash forward to April 2011, when former ICICI Bank CEO K.V. Kamath replaced Narayana Murthy as chairman of Infosys in August 2011. Kamath was on the three-member search committee set up by Infosys to find Murthy’s replacement. At the press conference in Bangalore to announce the appointment of Kamath as chairman of Infosys, a reporter asked how could someone assigned the job of finding a new chairman could choose himself for the post? The reply was that once it started emerging that Kamath could be nominated for the chairman’s position, he stopped attending meetings of the search committee. Evidently, it was a shortage of leaders that compelled the search committee to choose Kamath, an independent director on the Infosys board then, to head the company.

Forward again, to 2013. In a development regarding which the media had no inkling, Infosys announced recalling Murthy from retirement and putting him back in harness to head the company as executive chairman. Kamath went back to become the lead independent director on the board.

Though Murthy has spoken extensively in various fora on leadership development, obviously there is a vacuum in this respect in his own backyard. The Infosys founders, i.e. Murthy and six others, who set up the company in 1981, had decided years ago that they would all retire by 60. This was to create opportunities for younger people to play leadership roles. Murthy moved to a non-executive position in Infosys after he reached the age of 60 in 2006 and was designated ‘chairman emeritus’ after his formal retirement in August 2011.

Post retirement, Murthy focused on his venture capital fund called Catamaran Venture Fund with the money he raised by selling 8,00,000 Infosys shares worth Rs 174 crore. Wife Sudha Murthy, who is said to have given Murthy Rs 10,000 as initial capital to set up Infosys, helped him once again, this time by giving him Rs 430 crore, which she got from selling a quarter of her stake in Infosys.

Murthy is now back again, doing what he has done for 21 years of his life — heading Infosys. The firm reported better-than-expected performance during the April-June quarter, showing signs it was already on the path to recovery. The once acclaimed Indian organisation that became a symbol of India’s economic growth globally had been hit adversely since Murthy’s exit. Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTS) displaced Infosys to become the second-largest Indian IT services provider by revenues, according to global technology research and advisory company Gartner. After a gradual downfall in Infosys stocks, shareholders were concerned over the company’s fortunes, which prompted Kamath and to urge Murthy to rejoin.

Infosys had been underperforming over the previous few quarters. Murthy is expected to turn it around in a climate that is quite different from 2006, when he had moved to a non-executive position. There was no recession in the West then and the USA, which provides the lion’s share of the revenue to Indian IT companies, was yet to turn protectionist.

From a humble beginning (the son of a high school teacher, and one among eight siblings) Murthy, an alumnus of IIT Kanpur, rose to become one of India’s richest man (worth $ 2 billion). As a young professional in France in the ’60s, he was a Communist sympathiser. Left-wing student movements were then sweeping across Europe and it would have been actually quite odd if he felt affinity to any other ideology at that time.

What rid him of his brief infatuation with Communism was reportedly his incarceration in Bulgaria, which was then a socialist country. A young Murthy had decided to hitchhike to Mysore from France. While on a train in Bulgaria, he was arrested by the local police for criticising the “iron curtain” policies of the country during a conversation in French he had struck up with a young woman passenger in the train. Murthy was held in a bitterly cold room without food and water for three days and then let off since he was from a “friendly country”. The incident disillusioned Murthy about Communism.

“It is a rich life and not a cocooned and sheltered one. He has experienced everything. Guys like him become better leaders than others because they can appreciate people with diverse backgrounds,” says Devesh Aggarwal, a Bangalore-based entrepreneur.

Unfortunately though, with Murthy’s return at the helm to revive Infosys, the company’s cherished philosophy of retiring its top management at 60, of which it was justly proud, lies shattered. To facilitate the return of Murthy, the company has been forced to increase the age limit for holding the chairman’s post to 75 from the previous 60.

Infosys also had to accept Murthy’s decision to induct his US-educated son Rohan as his executive assistant. This was a blow to Murthy’s own avowed principle of keeping family members away from the company. It is speculated that children of other board members will also follow suit.

However, who really matter are the shareholders, and they are not complaining. While they believe that Murthy’s return will help Infosys shed sluggishness, the glittering academic career of his son has convinced them he too will be an asset to the company.

A profusion of accolades was showered on Murthy by shareholders who assembled at Christ University Auditorium in Bangalore on June 15 for the Infosys Annual General Meeting. In his exuberance, one shareholder even compared Murthy with cricket maestro Don Bradman. One suggested that having inducted his son, Murthy must now bring in his daughter too. The question is, will Infosys move out of the Murthy shadow?