Karnataka - Bangalore

Being multinational is a reality, says Baltimore

— Photo: K. Murali Kumar

Impressed: Nobel laureate David Baltimore on the Infosys campus in Bangalore on Thursday.

Bangalore: “I just do not seem to have a word for it,” said Nobel laureateDavid Baltimore, when asked about his impressions of the Infosys campus in the Electronics City, which he visited on Thursday. Prof. Baltimore was intrigued by the Infosys phenomenon after reading Thomas L. Friedman’s bestseller on globalisation, “The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century.”

Settling down for a cup of tea after a golf-cart tour of the sprawling 80-acre campus, where he visited the training centre, media centre, and recreation areas, he said: “Despite all that I have heard about Infosys, I can say that nothing in the time I have spent in India could have prepared me for this. I cannot say it is urban or even suburban. And it is certainly not rural. It is a corporate cocoon. I think I just made up a new phrase!”

“I use ‘corporate cocoon’ in an entirely positive sense,” said Prof. Baltimore, who had his first taste of the famed Indian IT sector. “It envelopes you and has been designed with corporate needs as the primary driving force,” he said.

Prof. Baltimore said: “I wanted to see what Friedman had got so excited about. I knew there was a contradiction between what he wrote and the reality of Indian life. And now, I know that for one, he is wrong in that this is not the dominant image of India. But it is quite remarkable all the same.”

Prof. Baltimore said, “Being multinational is a reality. Indeed if you project five years into the future, there will be less and less India here and a more globalised and multicultural environment.” But there is more to India than its globalised face, the Nobel laureate said. After all “India is still living with its history.”

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