Lesson in imbroglio Biased narrative

The imbroglio at Infosys reminds one of the blinding insights of the management savant, Peter Drucker, who said that culture eats strategy for breakfast in the corporate context.

After the founders had run through their terms as managing directors and chief executives at Infosys, the world’s most reputed and expensive headhunter was tasked with selecting the successor. The headhunter came up with tech wizard and then SAP rising star, Vishal Sikka ( pictured). No one, not even the founders, had any doubt about Infosys continuing its journey under Sikka. Did the best brains in the business ignore the dictum that unless a CEO and the company he leads are a perfect culture fit, the experiment has little chance of success? The situation at Infosys proves the dictum even more.

K K Krishnan Greater Noida What nobody dared to say, Congress VicePresident Rahul Gandhi did. He was correct when he said the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was infiltrating every institution in the country — be it the bureaucracy, the media, the army or the judiciary. Most civil servants are from the upper crust of society and their support to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is to be expected.

Large sections of the media treat the Narendra Modi government with kid gloves and sing paeans to him. One only needs to watch prime-time TV programmes and panel discussions to understand what Gandhi said. The army is brought in to justify the nationalist narrative and instil patriotism. Anyone critical of the army is dubbed anti-national. The judiciary betrays where its sympathies lie through its rulings and observations. Its handling of triple talaq and love jihad cases proves the point.

Gandhi is caricatured as a leader without the winning formula because of his opposition of the RSS and its politics of polarisation. He is more principled and pro-poor than his father and grandmother.

G David Milton Maruthancode