Category: Speeches

Consists of some wonderful speeches delivered by well-known personalities

  • Guy Kawasaki Hindsights Speech

    An interesting speech by Guy Kawasaki which he has given at many high schools / colleges. The key points he stresses are on (copied verbatim from his blog entry):

    #10: Live off your parents as long as possible.
    #9 Pursue joy, not happiness.
    #8: Challenge the known and embrace the unknown.
    #7: Learn to speak a foreign language, play a musical instrument, and play non-contact sports.
    #6: Continue to learn.
    #5: Learn to like yourself or change yourself until you can like yourself.
    #4: Don’t get married too soon.
    #3: Play to win and win to play.
    #2: Obey the absolutes.
    #1: Enjoy your family and friends before they are gone.

    Read the full speech at http://guykawasaki.com/hindsights-speech/

  • Yes, We Can

    My ex-schoolmate Kishore is part of a club called “Toastmasters” in Infosys, where members give short speeches on various topics. Below is a speech given by him related to voting. And this has definitely come from the heart.


    Yes, We canBy Kishore Kaluri.

    So, What am I going to talk about ? I am not trying to be a Mr. Obama here. So, I am not going to take up “Yes, we can”. So, remove the YES. What is left ? “We can”. No no no, juggle the words a bit. “Can we ?”

    Few days back, I read an article about India. There is an interesting line in the article – “In India, there are no citizens. There are only people living in India”. Unfortunately, maybe it is true to a large extent.

    There are a lot of responsibilities a citizen of India has. But, I am not going to touch upon all of them. In the current context of time, there is one of the most important responsibilities for a citizen of India. Can anybody guess what that is ? Hmm, it is to “Vote”. Good evening toastmaster of the day, fellow toastmasters and dear guests. For the next 5 minutes , I am going to talk about – “Can we Vote ?”

    To vote is one of the biggest responsibilities any citizen has. How sad, not even 50% of the educated mass is voting.

    There is a saying – “When cowards run the State, the nation bleeds.” I am not talking about any one political party here. But, we do know that there are good and bad politicians across all the political parties. We all want good politicians. Do we want to put an end to the bad politics ? Yes, we all want to.

    But, wait a minute. Let us ask ourselves if we want to change ourselves to achieve this ? Hmm, I see people don’t want to say – “Yes , We can”. We just want to hear Mr. Obama say that and want to clap our hands in appreciation. But when it comes to us and our own country, not many people are ready to say “YES, WE CAN”.

    Let us try to find out what is the problem in India. Why is India, after so many years of Independence, is still a developing nation, and to be honest, is too far away from being called a developed nation. Bad politicians ? Yes, maybe, may not be. Let us say we will be a developed nation if we get good politicians. But, are we ready to select our own politicians ? Are we ready to abide by any stringent rule/law that a good politician will make? Are we ready to pay taxes diligently and to stop bribing? Are we ready to dispose the notion that in India, “People don’t cast their vote, they vote their caste” ? First of all, are we ready to even go to the polling both, once in every five years, and cast our vote ?

    “You don’t get anything clean, without getting something else dirty”

    I hear a lot of people asking “Why should I vote ? All politicians are same. Okay, anybody has seen the movie “Shawshank Redmption” ? There is a beautiful dialogue in the movie – “People can take your money. People can take away your position. They can take everything from you. They can destroy everything you have. But, there is one thing which no one can take from you, till you die. It is deep within you, no one snatch it away from you.”Hope” is the most beautiful thing one has.”

    We should never lose hope.

    And moreover, a person can resign to defeat only when he has tried his heart out for a victory.And we haven’t even exercised our votes… Friends, let us just go and vote for the best of the lot available. The best, according to your rationale thinking, the best according to you without any caste barriers. If there are 4 candidates, only one of them will be the best of those four. Let us vote for that person.

    Folks, I am not saying that voting is the biggest weapon and it will destroy all the corrupt politics in India. What I am saying is – Voting is the only weapon we have against corrupt politics, and, we are not using it.

    The notable Winston Churchill said on the eve of Indian Independence – “ Power will go to the hands of ignorant freebooters. All Indian leaders will be of low calibre and men of straw.”

    Sixty years later, it is in our hands to prove him wrong.

  • Richard Dawkin’s Letter To His Ten Year Old Daughter

    Here is a letter by Richard Dawkins to his daughter, when she turned ten, about evidence, belief, tradition, rationalism, authority and revelation. It is slightly long but is definitely worth reading.


    Dear Juliet,

    Now that you are ten, I want to write to you about something that is important to me. Have you ever wondered how we know the things that we know? How do we know, for instance, that the stars, which look like tiny pinpricks in the sky, are really huge balls of fire like the sun and are very far away? And how do we know that Earth is a smaller ball whirling round one of those stars, the sun?

    The answer to these questions is “evidence.” Sometimes evidence means actually seeing ( or hearing, feeling, smelling….. ) that something is true. Astronauts have travelled far enough from earth to see with their own eyes that it is round. Sometimes our eyes need help. The “evening star” looks like a bright twinkle in the sky, but with a telescope, you can see that it is a beautiful ball – the planet we call Venus. Something that you learn by direct seeing ( or hearing or feeling….. ) is called an observation.

    Often, evidence isn’t just an observation on its own, but observation always lies at the back of it. If there’s been a murder, often nobody (except the murderer and the victim!) actually observed it. But detectives can gather together lots or other observations which may all point toward a particular suspect. If a person’s fingerprints match those found on a dagger, this is evidence that he touched it. It doesn’t prove that he did the murder, but it can help when it’s joined up with lots of other evidence. Sometimes a detective can think about a whole lot of observations and suddenly realise that they fall into place and make sense if so-and-so did the murder.

    Scientists – the specialists in discovering what is true about the world and the universe – often work like detectives. They make a guess ( called a hypothesis ) about what might be true. They then say to themselves: If that were really true, we ought to see so-and-so. This is called a prediction. For example, if the world is really round, we can predict that a traveller, going on and on in the same direction, should eventually find himself back where he started.When a doctor says that you have the measles, he doesn’t take one look at you and see measles. His first look gives him a hypothesis that you may have measles. Then he says to himself: If she has measles I ought to see…… Then he runs through the list of predictions and tests them with his eyes ( have you got spots? ); hands ( is your forehead hot? ); and ears ( does your chest wheeze in a measly way? ). Only then does he make his decision and say, ” I diagnose that the child has measles. ” Sometimes doctors need to do other tests like blood tests or X-Rays, which help their eyes, hands, and ears to make observations.

    The way scientists use evidence to learn about the world is much cleverer and more complicated than I can say in a short letter. But now I want to move on from evidence, which is a good reason for believing something , and warn you against three bad reasons for believing anything. They are called “tradition,” “authority,” and “revelation.”

    First, tradition. A few months ago, I went on television to have a discussion with about fifty children. These children were invited because they had been brought up in lots of different religions. Some had been brought up as Christians, others as Jews, Muslims, Hindus, or Sikhs. The man with the microphone went from child to child, asking them what they believed. What they said shows up exactly what I mean by “tradition.” Their beliefs turned out to have no connection with evidence. They just trotted out the beliefs of their parents and grandparents which, in turn, were not based upon evidence either. They said things like: “We Hindus believe so and so”; “We Muslims believe such and such”; “We Christians believe something else.”

    Of course, since they all believed different things, they couldn’t all be right. The man with the microphone seemed to think this quite right and proper, and he didn’t even try to get them to argue out their differences with each other. But that isn’t the point I want to make for the moment. I simply want to ask where their beliefs come from. They came from tradition. Tradition means beliefs handed down from grandparent to parent to child, and so on. Or from books handed down through the centuries. Traditional beliefs often start from almost nothing; perhaps somebody just makes them up originally, like the stories about Thor and Zeus. But after they’ve been handed down over some centuries, the mere fact that they are so old makes them seem special. People believe things simply because people have believed the same thing over the centuries. That’s tradition.

    The trouble with tradition is that, no matter how long ago a story was made up, it is still exactly as true or untrue as the original story was. If you make up a story that isn’t true, handing it down over a number of centuries doesn’t make it any truer!

    Most people in England have been baptised into the Church of England, but this is only one of the branches of the Christian religion. There are other branches such as Russian Orthodox, the Roman Catholic, and the Methodist churches. They all believe different things. The Jewish religion and the Muslim religion are a bit more different still; and there are different kinds of Jews and of Muslims. People who believe even slightly different things from each other go to war over their disagreements. So you might think that they must have some pretty good reasons – evidence – for believing what they believe. But actually, their different beliefs are entirely due to different traditions.

    Let’s talk about one particular tradition. Roman Catholics believe that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was so special that she didn’t die but was lifted bodily in to Heaven. Other Christian traditions disagree, saying that Mary did die like anybody else. These other religions don’t talk about much and, unlike Roman Catholics, they don’t call her the “Queen of Heaven.” The tradition that Mary’s body was lifted into Heaven is not an old one. The bible says nothing on how she died; in fact, the poor woman is scarcely mentioned in the Bible at all. The belief that her body was lifted into Heaven wasn’t invented until about six centuries after Jesus’ time. At first, it was just made up, in the same way as any story like “Snow White” was made up. But, over the centuries, it grew into a tradition and people started to take it seriously simply because the story had been handed down over so many generations. The older the tradition became, the more people took it seriously. It finally was written down as and official Roman Catholic belief only very recently, in 1950, when I was the age you are now. But the story was no more true in 1950 than it was when it was first invented six hundred years after Mary’s death.

    I’ll come back to tradition at the end of my letter, and look at it in another way. But first, I must deal with the two other bad reasons for believing in anything: authority and revelation.

    Authority, as a reason for believing something, means believing in it because you are told to believe it by somebody important. In the Roman Catholic Church, the pope is the most important person, and people believe he must be right just because he is the pope. In one branch of the Muslim religion, the important people are the old men with beards called ayatollahs. Lots of Muslims in this country are prepared to commit murder, purely because the ayatollahs in a faraway country tell them to.

    When I say that it was only in 1950 that Roman Catholics were finally told that they had to believe that Mary’s body shot off to Heaven, what I mean is that in 1950, the pope told people that they had to believe it. That was it. The pope said it was true, so it had to be true! Now, probably some of the things that that pope said in his life were true and some were not true. There is no good reason why, just because he was the pope, you should believe everything he said any more than you believe everything that other people say. The present pope ( 1995 ) has ordered his followers not to limit the number of babies they have. If people follow this authority as slavishly as he would wish, the results could be terrible famines, diseases, and wars, caused by overcrowding.

    Of course, even in science, sometimes we haven’t seen the evidence ourselves and we have to take somebody else’s word for it. I haven’t, with my own eyes, seen the evidence that light travels at a speed of 186,000 miles per second. Instead, I believe books that tell me the speed of light. This looks like “authority.” But actually, it is much better than authority, because the people who wrote the books have seen the evidence and anyone is free to look carefully at the evidence whenever they want. That is very comforting. But not even the priests claim that there is any evidence for their story about Mary’s body zooming off to Heaven.

    The third kind of bad reason for believing anything is called “revelation.” If you had asked the pope in 1950 how he knew that Mary’s body disappeared into Heaven, he would probably have said that it had been “revealed” to him. He shut himself in his room and prayed for guidance. He thought and thought, all by himself, and he became more and more sure inside himself. When religious people just have a feeling inside themselves that something must be true, even though there is no evidence that it is true, they call their feeling “revelation.” It isn’t only popes who claim to have revelations. Lots of religious people do. It is one of their main reasons for believing the things that they do believe. But is it a good reason?

    Suppose I told you that your dog was dead. You’d be very upset, and you’d probably say, “Are you sure? How do you know? How did it happen?” Now suppose I answered: “I don’t actually know that Pepe is dead. I have no evidence. I just have a funny feeling deep inside me that he is dead.” You’d be pretty cross with me for scaring you, because you’d know that an inside “feeling” on its own is not a good reason for believing that a whippet is dead. You need evidence. We all have inside feelings from time to time, sometimes they turn out to be right and sometimes they don’t. Anyway, different people have opposite feelings, so how are we to decide whose feeling is right? The only way to be sure that a dog is dead is to see him dead, or hear that his heart has stopped; or be told by somebody who has seen or heard some real evidence that he is dead.

    People sometimes say that you must believe in feelings deep inside, otherwise, you’ d never be confident of things like “My wife loves me.” But this is a bad argument. There can be plenty of evidence that somebody loves you. All through the day when you are with somebody who loves you, you see and hear lots of little titbits of evidence, and they all add up. It isn’t a purely inside feeling, like the feeling that priests call revelation. There are outside things to back up the inside feeling: looks in the eye, tender notes in the voice, little favors and kindnesses; this is all real evidence.

    Sometimes people have a strong inside feeling that somebody loves them when it is not based upon any evidence, and then they are likely to be completely wrong. There are people with a strong inside feeling that a famous film star loves them, when really the film star hasn’t even met them. People like that are ill in their minds. Inside feelings must be backed up by evidence, otherwise you just can’t trust them.

    Inside feelings are valuable in science, too, but only for giving you ideas that you later test by looking for evidence. A scientist can have a “hunch’” about an idea that just “feels” right. In itself, this is not a good reason for believing something. But it can be a good reason for spending some time doing a particular experiment, or looking in a particular way for evidence. Scientists use inside feelings all the time to get ideas. But they are not worth anything until they are supported by evidence.

    I promised that I’d come back to tradition, and look at it in another way. I want to try to explain why tradition is so important to us. All animals are built (by the process called evolution) to survive in the normal place in which their kind live. Lions are built to be good at surviving on the plains of Africa. Crayfish to be good at surviving in fresh, water, while lobsters are built to be good at surviving in the salt sea. People are animals, too, and we are built to be good at surviving in a world full of ….. other people. Most of us don’t hunt for our own food like lions or lobsters; we buy it from other people who have bought it from yet other people. We ”swim” through a “sea of people.” Just as a fish needs gills to survive in water, people need brains that make them able to deal with other people. Just as the sea is full of salt water, the sea of people is full of difficult things to learn. Like language.

    You speak English, but your friend Ann-Kathrin speaks German. You each speak the language that fits you to ‘`swim about” in your own separate “people sea.” Language is passed down by tradition. There is no other way . In England, Pepe is a dog. In Germany he is ein Hund. Neither of these words is more correct, or more true than the other. Both are simply handed down. In order to be good at “swimming about in their people sea,” children have to learn the language of their own country, and lots of other things about their own people; and this means that they have to absorb, like blotting paper, an enormous amount of traditional information. (Remember that traditional information just means things that are handed down from grandparents to parents to children.) The child’s brain has to be a sucker for traditional information. And the child can’t be expected to sort out good and useful traditional information, like the words of a language, from bad or silly traditional information, like believing in witches and devils and ever-living virgins.

    It’s a pity, but it can’t help being the case, that because children have to be suckers for traditional information, they are likely to believe anything the grown-ups tell them, whether true or false, right or wrong. Lots of what the grown-ups tell them is true and based on evidence, or at least sensible. But if some of it is false, silly, or even wicked, there is nothing to stop the children believing that, too. Now, when the children grow up, what do they do? Well, of course, they tell it to the next generation of children. So, once something gets itself strongly believed – even if it is completely untrue and there never was any reason to believe it in the first place – it can go on forever.

    Could this be what has happened with religions ? Belief that there is a god or gods, belief in Heaven, belief that Mary never died, belief that Jesus never had a human father, belief that prayers are answered, belief that wine turns into blood – not one of these beliefs is backed up by any good evidence. Yet millions of people believe them. Perhaps this because they were told to believe them when they were told to believe them when they were young enough to believe anything.

    Millions of other people believe quite different things, because they were told different things when they were children. Muslim children are told different things from Christian children, and both grow up utterly convinced that they are right and the others are wrong. Even within Christians, Roman Catholics believe different things from Church of England people or Episcopalians, Shakers or Quakers , Mormons or Holy Rollers, and are all utterly covinced that they are right and the others are wrong. They believe different things for exactly the same kind of reason as you speak English and Ann-Kathrin speaks German. Both languages are, in their own country, the right language to speak. But it can’t be true that different religions are right in their own countries, because different religions claim that opposite things are true. Mary can’t be alive in Catholic Southern Ireland but dead in Protestant Northern Ireland.

    What can we do about all this ? It is not easy for you to do anything, because you are only ten. But you could try this. Next time somebody tells you something that sounds important, think to yourself: “Is this the kind of thing that people probably know because of evidence? Or is it the kind of thing that people only believe because of tradition, authority, or revelation?” And, next time somebody tells you that something is true, why not say to them: “What kind of evidence is there for that?” And if they can’t give you a good answer, I hope you’ll think very carefully before you believe a word they say.

    Your loving
    Daddy.

  • Global Imbalance

    Below is a speech given by CA M.R.Venkatesh titled “Global Imbalance – An imminent Dollar Crisis” . The interesting part is that this speech was given by the economist long back before the current financial crisis in the USA. This is a must watch for everyone as it gives insight into some of the reasons for the current state USA is in.

  • Keep The Spark

    http://www.chetanbhagat.com/blog/general/sparks

    Inaugural Speech for the new batch at the Symbiosis BBA program 2008 by Chetan Bhagat

  • Sudha Murthy

    Below is a very interesting story of the life of Sudha Murthy. If you don’t know who Sudha Murthy is, then read till the end to find out.


    It was probably the April of 1974. Bangalore was getting warm and gulmohars were blooming at the IISc campus. I was the only girl in my postgraduate department and was staying at the ladies’ hostel. Other girls were pursuing research in different departments of Science.

    I was looking forward to going abroad to complete a doctorate in computer science. I had been offered scholarships from Universities in the US … I had not thought of taking up a job in India ..

    One day, while on the way to my hostel from our lecture-hall complex, I saw an advertisement on the notice board. It was a standard job-requirement notice from the famous automobile company Telco (now Tata Motors)… It stated that the company required young, bright engineers, hardworking and with an excellent academic background, etc.

    At the bottom was a small line: ‘Lady Candidates need not apply.’

    I read it and was very upset. For the first time in my life I was up against gender discrimination.

    Though I was not keen on taking up the job, I saw it as a challenge. I had done extremely well in academics, better than most of my male peers…
    Little did I know then that in real life academic excellence is not enough to be successful?

    After reading the notice I went fuming to my room. I decided to inform the topmost person in Telco’s management about the injustice the company was perpetrating. I got a postcard and started to write, but there was a problem: I did not know who headed Telco

    I thought it must be one of the Tatas. I knew JRD Tata was the head of the Tata Group; I had seen his pictures in newspapers (actually, Sumant Moolgaokar was the company’s chairman then) I took the card, addressed it to JRD and started writing. To this day I remember clearly what I wrote.

    ‘The great Tatas have always been pioneers. They are the people who started the basic infrastructure industries in India , such as iron and steel, chemicals, textiles and locomotives they have cared for higher education in India since 1900 and they were responsible for the establishment of the Indian Institute of Science. Fortunately, I study there. But I am surprised how a company such as Telco is discriminating on the basis of gender.’

    I posted the letter and forgot about it. Less than 10 days later, I received a telegram stating that I had to appear for an interview at Telco’s Pune facility at the company’s expense. I was taken aback by the telegram. My hostel mate told me I should use the opportunity to go to Pune free of cost and buy them the famous Pune saris for cheap! I collected Rs30 each from everyone who wanted a sari when I look back, I feel like laughing at the reasons for my going, but back then they seemed good enough to make the trip.

    It was my first visit to Pune and I immediately fell in love with the city.

    To this day it remains dear to me. I feel as much at home in Pune as I do in Hubli, my hometown. The place changed my life in so many ways. As directed, I went to Telco’s Pimpri office for the interview.

    There were six people on the panel and I realized then that this was serious business.

    ‘This is the girl who wrote to JRD,’ I heard somebody whisper as soon as I entered the room. By then I knew for sure that I would not get the job. The realization abolished all fear from my mind, so I was rather cool while the interview was being conducted.

    Even before the interview started, I reckoned the panel was biased, so I told them, rather impolitely, ‘I hope this is only a technical interview.’

    They were taken aback by my rudeness, and even today I am ashamed about my attitude.
    The panel asked me technical questions and I answered all of them.

    Then an elderly gentleman with an affectionate voice told me, ‘Do you know why we said lady candidates need not apply? The reason is that we have never employed any ladies on the shop floor. This is not a co-ed college; this is a factory. When it comes to academics, you are a first ranker throughout. We appreciate that, but people like you should work in research laboratories.

    I was a young girl from small-town Hubli. My world had been a limited place.

    I did not know the ways of large corporate houses and their difficulties, so I answered, ‘But you must start somewhere, otherwise no woman will ever be able to work in your factories.’

    Finally, after a long interview, I was told I had been successful. So this was what the future had in store for me. Never had I thought I would take up a job in Pune. I met a shy young man from Karnataka there, we became good friends and we got married.

    It was only after joining Telco that I realized who JRD was: the uncrowned king of Indian industry. Now I was scared, but I did not get to meet him till I was transferred to Bombay. One day I had to show some reports to Mr Moolgaokar, our chairman, who we all knew as SM… I was in his office on the first floor of Bombay House (the Tata headquarters) when, suddenly JRD walked in. That was the first time I saw ‘appro JRD’. Appro means ‘our’ in Gujarati. This was the affectionate term by which people at Bombay House called him.

    I was feeling very nervous, remembering my postcard episode. SM introduced me nicely, ‘Jeh (that’s what his close associates called him), this young woman is an engineer and that too a postgraduate.

    She is the first woman to work on the Telco shop floor.’ JRD looked at me. I was praying he would not ask me any questions about my interview (or the postcard that preceded it).

    Thankfully, he didn’t. Instead, he remarked. ‘It is nice that girls are getting into engineering in our country. By the way, what is your name?’

    ‘When I joined Telco I was Sudha Kulkarni, Sir,’ I replied. ‘Now I am Sudha Murthy.’ He smiled and kindly smile and started a discussion with SM. As for me, I almost ran out of the room.

    After that I used to see JRD on and off. He was the Tata Group chairman and I was merely an engineer. There was nothing that we had in common. I was in awe of him.

    One day I was waiting for Murthy, my husband, to pick me up after office hours. To my surprise I saw JRD standing next to me. I did not know how to react. Yet again I started worrying about that postcard. Looking back, I realize JRD had forgotten about it. It must have been a small incident for him, but not so for me.

    ‘Young lady, why are you here?’ he asked. ‘Office time is over.’ I said, ‘Sir, I’m waiting for my husband to come and pick me up.’ JRD said, ‘It is getting dark and there’s no one in the corridor.

    I’ll wait with you till your husband comes.’

    I was quite used to waiting for Murthy, but having JRD waiting alongside made me extremely uncomfortable.

    I was nervous. Out of the corner of my eye I looked at him. He wore a simple white pant and shirt. He was old, yet his face was glowing. There wasn’t any air of superiority about him. I was thinking, ‘Look at this person. He is a chairman, a well-respected man in our country and he is waiting for the sake of an ordinary employee.’

    Then I saw Murthy and I rushed out. JRD called and said, ‘Young lady, tell your husband never to make his wife wait again..’ In 1982 I had to resign from my job at Telco. I was reluctant to go, but I really did not have a choice. I was coming down the steps of Bombay House after wrapping up my final settlement when I saw JRD coming up. He was absorbed in thought. I wanted to say goodbye to him, so I stopped. He saw me and paused.

    Gently, he said, ‘So what are you doing, Mrs. Kulkarni?’ (That was the way he always addressed me..) ‘Sir, I am leaving Telco.’

    ‘Where are you going?’ he asked. ‘Pune, Sir. My husband is starting a company called Infosys and I’m shifting to Pune.’

    ‘Oh! And what will you do when you are successful.’

    ‘Sir, I don’t know whether we will be successful.’ ‘Never start with diffidence,’ he advised me ‘Always start with confidence. When you are successful you must give back to society. Society gives us so much; we must reciprocate. Wish you all the best.’

    Then JRD continued walking up the stairs. I stood there for what seemed like a millennium. That was the last time I saw him alive.

    Many years later I met Ratan Tata in the same Bombay House, occupying the chair JRD once did. I told him of my many sweet memories of working with Telco. Later, he wrote to me, ‘It was nice hearing about Jeh from you.
    The sad part is that he’s not alive to see you today.’

    I consider JRD a great man because, despite being an extremely busy person, he valued one postcard written by a young girl seeking justice. He must have received thousands of letters everyday. He could have thrown mine away, but he didn’t do that. He respected the intentions of that unknown girl, who had neither influence nor money, and gave her an opportunity in his company. He did not merely give her a job; he changed her life and mindset forever.

    Close to 50 per cent of the students in today’s engineering colleges are girls. And there are women on the shop floor in many industry segments. I see these changes and I think of JRD. If at all time stops and asks me what I want from life, I would say I wish JRD were alive today to see how the company we started has grown. He would have enjoyed it wholeheartedly.

    My love and respect for the House of Tata remains undiminished by the passage of time. I always looked up to JRD. I saw him as a role model for his simplicity, his generosity, his kindness and the care he took of his employees. Those blue eyes always reminded me of the sky; they had the same vastness and magnificence..
    (Sudha Murthy is a widely published writer and chairperson of the Infosys Foundation involved in a number of social development initiatives. Infosys chairman Narayana Murthy is her husband.)

  • Speech by Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan at Mumbai University

    Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan is a physician by training, a public servant by choice, and a democrat by conviction. He joined the IAS in 1980. During his 16 years of public service in various capacities, he had many accomplishments to his credit. He is still remembered fondly by the people of the districts he once worked for. In spite of an impressive personal achievement, Dr. JP’s experience in government convinced him that faulty governance process is the biggest hurdle in India’s path of progress. In order to translate his vision into practical reality, he resigned from the IAS in 1996, and with like-minded citizens formed Lok Satta Movement in 1997. Lok Satta has now emerged as India’s leading civil society initiative for political and governance reforms with wide popular base in Andhra Pradesh.

    Personally I think this is one of the best speeches I have ever heard to. The insights Dr. Jayaprakash has into the current political scenario are awesome. JP believes that no politicians are villains. All of us are just caught up in the messed up system. And the solution to this he says is not lesser politics but more politics and better politics. This is the main reason why Lok Satta highly encourages participation of the youth in politics.

  • Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture – Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

    Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch, who is dying from pancreatic cancer, gave his last lecture at the university Sept. 18, 2007, before a packed McConomy Auditorium. In his moving talk, “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” Pausch talked about his lessons learned and gave advice to students on how to achieve their own career and personal goals.

    Pausch, a professor of computer science, human computer interaction and design, is a co-founder of Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center and the creator of the Alice interactive computing program, which is being used by students worldwide.

    Full Lecture on Google Video

    Download the Video

    Download the transcript

    Randy Pausch’s Home Page

  • My Stupid Suicide Plan

    My Stupid Suicide Plan

    Last week, an IITian committed suicide. People who commit suicide do it when they feel there’s no future. But wait, isn’t IIT the one place where a bright and shining future is a foregone conclusion? It just doesn’t add up, does it? Why would a young, hardworking, bright student who has the world ahead of him do something like this? But the answer is this-in our constant reverence for the great institution (and I do believe IITs are great), we forget the dark side. And the dark side is that the IITs are afflicted by the quintessential Indian phenomenon of academic pressure, probably the highest in the world.
    I can rant about the educational system and how it requires serious fixing, or I can address the immediate-try my best to prevent such suicides. For this column I have chosen the latter, and I do so with a personal story.

    News of a suicide always brings back one particular childhood memory. I was 14 years old when I first seriously contemplated suicide. I had done badly in chemistry in the Class X half yearly exam. I was an IIT aspirant, and 68% was nowhere near what an IIT candidate should be getting. I don’t know what had made me screw up the exam, but I did know this, I was going to kill myself. The only debate was about method.

    Ironically, chemistry offered a way. I had read about copper sulphate, and that it was both cheap and poisonous. Copper sulphate was available at the kirana store. I had it all worked out.

    My rationale for killing myself was simple-nobody loved me, my chemistry score was awful, I had no future and what difference would it make to the world if I was not there. I bought the copper sulphate for two rupees-probably the cheapest exit strategy in the world.

    I didn’t do it for two reasons. One, I had a casual chat with the aunty next door about copper sulphate, and my knowledgeable aunty knew about a woman who had died that way. She said it was the most painful death possible, all your veins burst and you suffer for hours. This tale made my insides shudder. Second, on the day I was to do it, I noticed a street dog outside my house being teased by the neighborhood kids as he hunted for scraps of food. Nobody loved him. It would make no difference to the world if the dog wasn’t there. And I was pretty sure that its chemistry score would be awful. Yet, the dog wasn’t trotting off to the kirana store. He was only interested in figuring out a strategy for his next meal. And when he was full, he merely curled up in a corner with one eye open, clearly content and not giving a damn about the world. If he wasn’t planning to die anytime soon what the hell was I ranting about? I threw the copper sulphate in the bin. It was the best two bucks I ever wasted.

    So why did I tell you this story? Because sometimes the pressure gets too much; like it did for the IITian who couldn’t take it no more. On the day he took that dreadful decision, his family and friends were shattered, and India lost a wonderful, bright child. And as the silly but true copper sulphate story tells you-it could happen to any of us or those around us. So please be on the lookout, if you see a distressed young soul, lend a supportive, non-judgmental ear. When I look back, I thank that aunt and that dog for unwittingly saving my life. If God wanted us to take our own life, he would have provided a power off button. He didn’t, so have faith and let his plan for you unfold. Because no matter how tough life gets and how much it hurts, if street dogs don’t give up, there is no reason why we, the smart species, should. Makes sense right?

    – CHETAN BHAGAT (IIT Delhi, IIM Ahmedabad)

  • Convocation address delivered by Dr.R.A.Mashelkar, Director General, CSIR, at the 4th Convocation of IIIT-H

    Following is the (truly inspiring) convocation address delivered by Dr. R.A.
    Mashelkar, Director General, CSIR, at the 4th Convocation of our institute on
    20th August 2005.

    “India’s Future: “IT” as in “Indian Talent”

    1. Dr. Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, Hon.ble Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh,
    Prof. Rajeev Sangal, Director, International Institute of Information
    Technology, Hyderabad, proud graduates, their equally proud parents and
    friends, all members of the family of IIIT, distinguished guests, ladies
    and gentlemen.

    2. I consider it to be a great honour and a special privilege to have been
    invited to deliver the convocation address of IIIT. In a short span of
    time, this institute has created a unique niche for itself. The institute
    has the dream of becoming a global center of excellence in IT education,
    research and technology development. This dream that can be converted into
    reality, if we create the right .ambition. and the right .ambience.. I see
    the presence of both here. I have no doubt, therefore, that this dream
    will be fulfilled.

    3. Let me begin by extending my wholehearted congratulations and my very
    best wishes to the young graduates. You are going to enter a new exciting
    world, which is changing rapidly. There are extra-ordinary opportunities
    for those, who are prepared to face the challenge of change. Indeed, only
    those of us will survive and succeed, who will be able to anticipate the
    change and also exploit the change. And those who do this will one day
    lead the change. We in India should have the ambition of leading the
    change and make things happen on our own terms.

    4. Speaking about change, there are several things that have undergone a
    change in recent times. One of the most important one is the perception
    about India. Let me explain. I was reading Times magazine recently. I
    browsed through the interview of Peter Mandelson, who is Tony Blair.s most
    valued adviser. I was struck by what I read. He said .in the space of a
    decade, China and India have emerged as dramatic, dynamic competitors.
    Over here and in America, there is a sense that this has put our jobs and
    livelihoods at stake.. Would you have ever imagined a change of perception
    of India from a poor and deprived country to a challenger to US & Europe?

    5. Just about an year ago, I was having a dinner with the famous economist
    Jeffrey Sachs. We were discussing the Goldman Sachs report, which predicts
    that India along with China and USA will be the three top economies of the
    world by 2050. Jeffrey Sachs said that he disagreed with this report. I
    wondered why. I thought he meant that India could not perhaps be the part
    of this privileged pack. I was surprised when he said something quite to
    the contrary. He said that this could happen sooner than 2050, and also
    that if India plays its card right, it could occupy even a higher
    position.

    6. What factors cause a rapid turnaround for a country? The turnaround in
    the fortune of different countries at different points in their history
    has been attributed to different factors. For USA, it was roads and
    railways, which led to the big spurt in its economic growth. For Britain,
    the same factor was textiles. For Denmark, it was milk and milk products.
    For Sweden, it was timber and timber products. For Middle East, it was
    oil. What is the oil for India in the 21st Century? I strongly believe
    that it is IT. And by that I do not mean IT as in .Information
    Technology. but IT as in .Indian talent.. It is this talent that is going
    to catapult India to great heights in the comity of nations. Other nations
    have already recognized the power of Indian talent. Let me share my own
    experience with you.

    7. As a member of Indo-German Consultative Committee, I remember attending
    a meeting in Bonn. There was a presentation by a senior German member. He
    expressed a concern that one third of Germany in the next 10 to 15 years
    will be more than 60 years old. A question was put to our German friend.
    Germany and Japan became economic powerhouses because they excelled in
    technological innovations. But then innovation is the domain of the
    young. How could a predominantly old Germany survive when it becomes old?
    The reply came quickly from our German friend. He asserted that in the
    twenty first century, Germany will be sourcing the innovations from a
    country that is expected to lead in innovation due to the quality of its
    talent, namely, the Indian talent!

    8. We all thought that he was being nice to the Indian delegation. But
    that is not the case. What he predicted is already happening. One hundred
    and fifty major companies from USA and Europe have set up their research,
    design and development centres in India in the last five years and they
    are not small. Some of them employ 2000 to 3000 employees. They include
    big names such as Boeing, Daimler Chrysler, Du Point, General Electric,
    General Motors, Intel, IBM, Microsoft, Siemens, Unilever and so on. And
    more are coming every day. Why is this happening? As legendary Jack
    Welch, the CEO of General Electric (GE) said during the inauguration of
    GE.s R&D Centre in Bangalore .India is a developing country but it is a
    developed country as far as its intellectual capital is concerned. We get
    the best intellectual capital per dollar here . thanks to the amazing
    quality of Indian talent.. I believe the key word in his remarks is
    .Indian talent..

    9. What is so unique about Indian talent? The uniqueness of the Indian
    mind has been well accepted. It was the Indian mind which recognised the
    power of the fusion of mind, body and spirit for the first time. The
    products of Indian mind have influenced the events of the twentieth
    century. For example, we could not talk about digital economy if binary
    digits, comprising the numerals .zero. and .one. did not exist. But who
    invented zero? We all know that it was the Indian mind, which invented the
    concept of .shunya. or the zero.

    10. But then you would say here he is one more of those Indians gloating
    about the glory of our past. Let me assure you that this great journey of
    Indian mind continues unabated. For instance, we always worry about the
    fact that in Olympics after Olympics we hardly win any medals inspite of
    being a country of a billion. But I am proud to say that when it comes to
    the Olympics of mind, we win all the time. Last year, in the Science
    Olympiads for the school children, we had sent 19 young Indian children.
    There was a competition amongst eighty nations. Do you know how many of
    them returned with medals? All 19 of them. So powerful was the quality of
    those young minds. And so is the case with the quality of all the minds,
    who have gathered here in this hall today.

    11. It is the power of the Indian talent that has given the prestige to
    Indian IT industry like in no other industry. Infosys and Wipro have
    caught the imagination of the world. Around 600,000 software professionals
    contribute to 20% of our exports, and their average age is just around 27
    years. Can you imagine 0.06 percent of Indian population making such a
    difference?

    12. This Indian talent has created great waves across the shores of India.
    The dominant position of Indian diaspora in the American IT industry is
    legendary. Whether it is Suhas Patil of Cirrus Logic or Gururaj Deshpande
    of Sycamore Networks or Vinod Khosla of Sun Microsystems, all of them have
    been stars in their own right. And the Indian talent goes beyond IT. We
    are then reminded of Victor Menezes of Citibank and Rajat Gupta of
    McKinsey and Raghuram Rajan of IMF and Rakesh Gangwal of US Airways and
    Arun Netravali of Bell Laboratories. The list goes on. They have all done
    us proud. But then you would say that I am citing these examples of
    Indians in USA. What about India? Would Patil, Khosla, Gupta, Netravali
    have succeeded in India? Let me respond to this question by narrating an
    anecdote again.

    13. I was involved in the process of interview for the Chief Innovation
    Officer of National Innovation Foundation, which I chair. I found that the
    individual that we were interviewing had an experience in branding a
    product. I said .I want to brand my India. How would you do that?. He was
    puzzled. He had branded a soap, a refrigerator, but he wondered as to how
    he could brand a nation? I said .I will make it easy for you. Let me tell
    you as to how other nations brand themselves. For instance, US brands
    itself as a land of opportunity!. He immediately replied, .I will brand
    India as a land of ideas.. Now here is the issue. India is a land of
    ideas but it is US that is a land of opportunities. That is why our young
    people with aspirations go to USA, which provides them an opportunity to
    reach their own potential. The challenge before all Indians, whether they
    are in India or abroad, is to make India the land of opportunity.

    14. Is India becoming a land of opportunity? I believe it is. Look at
    the of Indian industry today. It is beginning to realize that if they do
    not innovate, they will perish. Indian drugs and pharmaceutical industry
    survived so far by copying known molecules. Now at least ten Indian
    companies are inventing their own new molecules by getting into discovery
    research. I spoke to several pharma industry leaders. Collectively, they
    are looking to employ now hundreds of bright young Ph.D.s. In fact, they
    are complaining about the shortage of suitably skilled Ph.D.s. in India!

    15. There are other sectors where magical changes are taking place. In
    auto industry, the wheel has turned the full circle. Fifty years ago, it
    was British Morris Oxford, which was sold as Indian Ambassador on Indian
    roads. Today, it is Indian Indica that is being sold as City Rover on
    London roads! Why did this happen? It happened because Indian talent was
    given an opportunity due to a vision of a leader and because of a
    conducive policy of the Government.

    16. In March 1978, JRD Tata had said .If Telco was allowed to make a car,
    we would have been as good in it as we were in trucks.. But he was not
    allowed to make the Tata car. Why? Because India was a closed economy. It
    had not opened up. It had policies which killed competition. In 1991,
    the then Finance Minister and the present Prime Minister opened this
    economy up. Ratan Tata was allowed to make the cars. He had the courage
    to give this challenge to 700 engineers, who had never done an auto-design
    in their life. He invested Rs. 1760 crores, the highest that have been
    invested in backing up an indigenously designed, developed and
    manufactured product. What was the result. The result was a world class
    car, namely Indica. What is the lesson in this? The .Indian Talent. of
    700 engineers found an expression only when the Government policies
    allowed competition and a visionary leader, who trusted the .Indian
    Talent. baited on them. The winner was India.

    17. We lament the loss of the best Indian Talent to the western world. But
    as we make India as a .land of opportunity., more talent will return to
    India. This is already beginning to happen. I spoke to the Chairman of
    NASSCOM, Dr. Kiran Karnik, recently. NASSCOM have done research on
    returning Indian professionals. He told me that during the last two years
    over 20,000 professionals have returned. I went to Jack Welch R&D Centre
    in Bangalore a few months ago. They have 2400 professionals working there.
    They told me that 700 of them were young Indians, who had returned in the
    last 3 to 4 years. I met someone from Intel last month. He told me that
    in their Indian R&D Centre, they are having 2600 professionals. 400 of
    them have come back from USA over the last 3 to 4 years. Admittedly, this
    is a trickle of Indian talent in returning. It is not a torrent yet. But
    it is heartening to see the change.

    18. The challenge before us is to convert this trickle into a torrent.
    Government can do a lot in this. I am happy to see some recent initiatives
    taken by the Government of India through its Department of Science &
    Technology. One of the notable initiatives is Ramanujan Fellowship. Any
    young outstanding Indian scientist, who wants to return to India, will be
    given a monthly remuneration of Rs. 50,000 with Rs. 5.00 lakh per year for
    contingency to help him in his research. This Fellowship will be available
    upto 5 years. There is no upper limit on the number of such Fellows.
    Hopefully, such Fellows will find a challenging opportunity in an
    institution or industry. We need many more such initiatives.

    19. I have talked about getting the Indian talent back that was lost to
    us. But what about spotting talent and nurturing it in India? We need to
    .catch them young., as they say and then mentor them. Let me give an
    example of what my own CSIR is doing.

    20. CSIR has set up the CSIR Diamond Jubilee Invention Award for school
    children. The objectives of this to spot creativity and innovativeness
    amongst children and create interest and awareness for intellectual
    property amongst the children. Any Indian student enrolled in an Indian
    school below the age of 18 years can compete in this award competition. We
    have run this competition for three years. We have received thousands of
    enteries. It was amazing to see the power of Indian talent. The age group
    of these young inventors ranged between 11-18 and from class six to
    twelve.

    21. The Braille developed by Madhav Pathak from a Jabalpur school received
    the first CSIR Diamond Jubilee Award. Madhav Pathak improved a
    conventional Braille slate to make writing easier for the blind. It was
    very tedious for a blind child to memorize more than 300 combinations,
    since reading and writing is done in the opposite way for a conventional
    Braille slate. Madhav.s innovation makes it possible to read and write
    from left to right. This invention later received international prizes
    too.

    22. But CSIR does not stop at just spotting the talent. It nurtures it
    too. CSIR applied for patents in the name of Madhav. Further, the model
    developed by Madhav was improved by one of CSIR.s laboratory, namely,
    Central Scientific Instruments Organization (CSIO) in Chandigarh. A
    prototype was developed by CSIO and was evaluated at a blind school in
    Chandigarh. The new prototype is an improved pocket version providing more
    space to read and write both for conventional Braille writers and the new
    Braille writers. We will take Madhav.s innovation forward now. Who knows
    what difference the product coming out from this young Indian talent can
    make to the blind of the world?

    23. I do strongly believe that we need to do much more to spot and nurture
    young talent all around the country. This process has to begin from the
    level of school children itself. And this cannot just be the
    responsibility of the Government. The corporate world must contribute it
    in a big way. In this context, I am happy to see the efforts by leading
    corporates, such as Tatas, Birals, Reliance, Mahindras, WIPRO, etc.
    Interestingly even multinational companies such as Microsoft, INTEL, BASF,
    Dupont are also searching and recognizing young Indian talent.

    24. A timely spotting and supporting of talent can make a huge
    difference. Let me tell you my own story. I was born in a very poor
    family. My father died when I was six. My mother, who was uneducated, did
    menial work to bring me up. I went barefoot till I was twelve. I studied
    under streetlights. I remember that after my Secondary School Certificate
    Examination in 1960, although I had secured eleventh rank among 135,000
    students in the state, I was about to leave the school, because my mother
    could not fund my college education. And I remember Sir Dorab Tata Trust
    coming in with a scholarship of 60 rupees per month. This Trust by Tatas
    supported me until my graduation. That 60 rupees added so much value to my
    life but it did not subtract any value from the Tatas.

    25. I would say that every Indian, whether in India or abroad must help
    the cause. On 3rd July this year, I addressed 3,000 NRIs in Atlanta in
    USA. At the end of my talk I gave an idea. Apparently, there are 300,000
    professionals in Silicon Valley whose average income is more than 200,000
    USA dollars. This makes it an annual income of 60 billion dollars.
    Supposing they would be able to spare one cent out of 10 dollars in
    supporting and nurturing young Indian talent, we would have 300 crores in
    Indian rupees. If we assume that a total support to a single student will
    need Rs. 10,000 per year, we are talking in terms of helping 3 lakh
    students. The central point I made is that the loss of one cent out of 10
    dollars will not make any difference to them. But it will add so much to
    the Indian talent pool. The idea was received with great enthusiasm. That
    convinced me that you can take an .Indian out of India. but not .India out
    of an Indian.. Therein lies our hope.

    26. I have, by now, developed the reputation of being a .dangerous
    optimist. about the great future of India. The reason I earned this
    reputation is attributed by some to the address that I delivered to the
    gathering of 5000 scientists at the Science Congress in the year 2000 in
    Pune. I had said .The next century will belong to India, which will become
    a unique intellectual and economic power to reckon with, recapturing all
    its glory, which it had in the millennia gone by.. This confidence comes
    to me because of the demonstrated power of this great Indians talent, to
    which I have made a repeated reference today.

    27. Finally, I would like to again congratulate IIIT. Let IIIT assume the
    reputation of become .Indian Institute of Innovative Talent., well known
    not only for capturing and nurturing talent but building the innovative
    capacity in this talent to create world beating products, process and
    services that will catapult this nation to great heights. I wish all the
    IIIT family the very best in its journey up the limitless ladder of
    excellence.