Infosys and Microsoft - I

By Gail Omvedt

INFOSYS SYMBOLISES the information technology (IT) economy in India. It seems to be surviving the current crisis with flying colours; it was voted the most admired company to mark the new millennium; and its CEO, Mr. Narayana Murthy, represents a new kind of corporate leadership, known for having a social conscience it is ``powered by intellect, driven by values, sharing wealth... Murthy's given a new meaning to management jargon,'' as an article in The Economic Times put it on January 3, 2000.

On this basis it seems appropriate to ask why Mr. Murthy should not also take leadership on a social level, to become a pioneer in developing Infosys as a company concerned with social justice, with increasing diversity among its employees so that they come to represent all groups in society and not simply minority upper- caste elite sections. Mr. Bill Gates is leading Microsoft in this way, so why not Infosys?

Though I have written on ``Reservation in the Corporate Sector'' (TheHindu, May 31 and June 1, 2001), I am avoiding the word ``reservation'' here. The word has negative connotations for many; it also symbolises the rigidity and lack of imagination in the way the question of social justice has been taken up in the public sector. ``Diversity'' and ``social justice'' express similar goals with more flexible means; the point is that the majority Bahujan-Dalit sections of Indian society and women should have representation at all levels of the corporate world in India, just as Blacks, other minorities and women should have them in the U.S.

First, though, it is necessary to deal with one point. It is, sadly, often felt by many of the elite that the reason upper castes dominate in high levels in the corporate world and especially in the ``new economy'' of IT is simply because they are more capable; and the reason that Dalits and OBCs do badly is simply that they are not capable of doing better. I bring up this delicate subject because it is necessary to confront openly the question of intelligence and capacity. In the U.S., it has been confronted much more openly, and often bitterly, than in India. Many biological and social scientists have argued that U.S. minorities - specifically Blacks or African Americans - have been behind in education and behind in employment because in fact they are inherently and biologically incapable of doing better. The people who have made this argument have lost the public debate and do not control policy; in any case the openness of the debate has proved useful.

Specifically, the most notorious recent presentation of the position that some ethnic groups (that is, Blacks or African Americans) are less intelligent than others (that is, Whites or Euro-Americans) provides us ammunition to refute its case. The book I am referring to is ``The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life,'' which was published in 1994 and caused an uproar. The authors argued that performance in intelligence tests (IQ tests), which are administered to almost all Americans, is related to economic success, and that in turn IQ test scores reflect actual biological intelligence. There is no denying that some minorities, especially African Americans, score lower on IQ tests as a group than whites as a group; what the authors of the Bell Curve were saying was that these scores measured the ethnic distribution of actual, innate intellectual capacity.

If true, this is a devastating argument for racism (i.e. the belief that some ethnic groups are biologically different, more or less capable than others). But after all their statistical charts, the authors of ``The Bell Curve'' let slip one significant fact: in the past decades ``the national averages (of IQ scores) have in fact changed by amounts that are comparable to the fifteen or so IQ points separating whites and blacks in America'' (page 308). That is, average scores on IQ tests are rising over time! Obviously, genetic capacity does not change in 20 to 30 years. This means that IQ tests have been measuring something else besides (or along with) intellectual capacity. In fact, what IQ tests have measured is the ability to take IQ tests - an ability which varies with training, with nourishment and with education, along with inherited biological capacity.

The same argument holds for all the observable differences in educational performance and in job performance that we see among caste groups in India. It holds to an even greater degree, since in India the academic tests and job recruitment do not have even the degree of objectivity claimed by IQ tests in the U.S., and public education has failed more dismally in developing the capacity of the masses. In other words, Dalits and OBCs are far behind in fields like information technology not because they are less capable of the work, but because they are less ``capable'' of taking tests and passing interviews. They have not been given the opportunity. They are excluded at all levels. The high over- representation of upper castes in education and employment, especially at higher levels, shows this.

I will give one small example. The University of Pune has a computer training programme, one which has admitted 400 students a year over a period of six years. Had they filled the ``reservation'' quota, this would have meant that roughly six hundred ST and SC students would have gotten computer training. However, up to the present not a single SC-ST student has been admitted! As the Ambedkar Association of Pune University points out, this means that 600 Dalits and Adivasis have been excluded from the modern world of computer training, in one university alone.

This has significance for companies such as Infosys because the social processes resulting in the massive exclusion of Dalits and Bahujans (that is, the majority of the Indian population) from access to education and computer training mean a drastic narrowing of the recruitment base. The consequence for the companies can only be guessed at. But the consequences for the nation are easy to see. Statistically: in spite of all the hype, India is far behind in the spread of information technology, in the use of computers per capita, telephone lines per capita and so on. The latest statistics I have seen show an estimated 0.23 ``Internet Hosts'' per 10,000 people in India in January 2000 - this compares to 0.57 for China, 1.00 for Indonesia, 26.22 in Brazil, 40.88 in Mexico, 39.17 in South Africa, 0.73 in Egypt and 1,939.97 for the U.S. Similarly, in 1998 there were 2.7 personal computers per 1000 people in India, 8.9 in China, 8.2 in Indonesia, 30.1 in Brazil, 47.0 in Mexico, 47.4 in South Africa, 9.1 in Egypt and 458.6 in the U.S. (World Development Report, 2000-2001, Table 19). I have selected large developing countries to be ``comparable'' in influence with India. India and other countries in South Asia are only slightly ahead of the majority of African nations in the world of information technology. As I have pointed out before, this extremely low spread of computer use means that, in effect, India is ``competing'' in the world of information technology as if it were a country of fifty million or so, not of one billion.

Of course, it might be argued the use of cybercafes in developing countries makes these statistics slightly deceptive. However, this in turn results from poor infrastructure and the failure to spread PC use, and no true knowledge of computers can be gained from working only at cybercafes or on computers in classrooms. One has to learn such knowledge ``hands on''. It can be noted that India is even farther behind in Internet spread than in computer use as such; this is an additional sign of backwardness and can be related directly to the terrible infrastructure (electricity and telephone) as well as the limping way in which the VSNL has gone about spreading internet use.

But can Infosys really do anything about this dismal situation?

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