‘Need a powerful mayor to run the city, as in London’

N.R. NARAYANA MURTHY, 76 Founder and Chairman Emeritus, Infosys

He first came to Bengaluru in 1961 at the age of 15 to visit his sister in Jayanagar, then a new locality in the city. He remembers walking to her house from the railway station. Sixty years later, Murthy, founder and chairman emeritus of a global software giant, prefers to live in a quiet, middle-class lane in Jayanagar despite his vast personal wealth. It is an area he has been living in ever since he shifted base to Bengaluru in the mid-’80s and set up Infosys. He chose the city because of its wealth of engineering talent as well as easier rental rules. Among the first ones to move to the exclusive Electronic City, he recalls how it would be a two-hour commute as the infrastructure was poor. His perseverance, however, paid off, and today the Infosys campus is among the best in an area that has become as famous as California’s Silicon Valley, with most of the top IT companies located here. Murthy believes that Bengaluru needs a powerful mayor to administer it, to whom all agencies involved in civic amenities report, as is the case in, say, London or New York. “The best political leaders should be encouraged to take charge of the city,” he says. “Boris Johnson earned his spurs as mayor of London and subsequently went on to become prime minister.” He also believes that the Centre and state government should allocate a certain part of the budget based on the financial contribution that Bengaluru makes to the country. His advice: “We should look for solutions rather than analysis.”