He’s been a poster boy of Indian infotech, co-founded a company that has become a byword for participative entrepreneurship, given Thomas Friedman the idea for the bestselling ‘The World Is Flat’, and himself penned a book, ‘Imagining India’.

And now, at the age of 54, his shareholding in Infosys alone worth Rs 3,500 crore, Nandan Nilekani has taken on one of the most ambitious government programs ever envisaged: heading the project to equip every Indian with a biometric Unique Identification Card.

This is the biggest movement from private sector to government in India in re-callable memory.

Back in College when we used to have those personality development classes, each one has to come up and say what they wanted to achieve in their lives. That was one question I hated to answer, not because I didn’t have an answer to that, because how hard I try, I was not able to put the point clearly in front of the class. I used to say, “I want to be Computer Scientist and I want to do something that impacts people lives, enriches them. To do something makes my family and my country proud.” That ’something’ here was very vague to describe, no popular example to put forth.

Today, I have a one word to describe that, Nilekeni.

Personally, there can be nothing bigger than the Mr. Prime Minister of India himself calling you up and giving you an offer to serve the country. That is the ultimate respect I can ask for. In my opinion he did the right thing accepting the offer. An inspiration to both current and future leaders.

If you don’t give a damn or you don’t understand, its like you going nowhere.

Live your life like you care for something, anything, the real thing!
What does it mean to you? How does it feel to you?

If you don’t give a damn or you don’t understand, its like you going nowhere.

—The Freelance Hellraiser

Its your chance to make a big impact by affecting lives of billions of people around the globe. Your idea, Google’s implementation.

Or is it that Google wants to fool people to give them their ideas so that it can get richer? Either ways, its good that someone’s thinking about the Earth.

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgSRwOZtDQ8

Youtube: http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=pHO1JTNPPOU

Reminds me of one of the quotes in my hostel dorm:

Another day passed and you still haven’t done anything!

Youtube: http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=lpc-jGZkbAk

The following short story was forwarded to me by my friend Ameet.

A man once visited a temple under construction where he saw a sculptor making an idol of God. Suddenly he noticed a similar idol lying nearby. Surprised, he asked the sculptor, “Do you need two statues of the same idol?” “No,” said the sculptor without looking up, “We need only one, but the first one got damaged at the last stage.”

The gentleman examined the idol and found no apparent damage. “Where is the damage?” he asked. “There is a scratch on the nose of the idol.” said the sculptor, still busy with his work. “Where are you going to install the idol?” The sculptor replied that it would be installed on a pillar twenty feet high. “If the idol is that far, who is going to know that there is a scratch on the nose?” the gentleman asked.

The sculptor stopped his work, looked up at the gentleman, smiled and said, “I will know it.”

The desire to excel is exclusive of the fact whether someone else appreciates it or not. “Excellence” is a drive from inside, not outside. Excel at a task today – not necessarily for someone else to notice but for your own satisfaction and excellence.

Having said that, there are occasions (very frequent when you are in business, owning it or working for some one, either ways) when you have to let go of the excellence part. Reasons can be various.

• meeting a deadline
• to increase productivity (trade off with QoS)
• to be more efficient (in a diluted way, ofcourse)
• $$$ profits

The same person who strongly defends his principles, ideologies, thoughts while in college (where there are [relatively] less deadlines and lots of time),  tries to reach a compromise as he grows professionally.

So while I don’t think excellence and business are complimentary stuff, I feel the missing link here is “patience“.

Interestingly, the same guy won the 1st prize last year for his presentation Shift Happens. Both of his presentations have a similar theme, they talk about statistics with the motive of generating awareness (or an emotion of insecurity) in the viewer and are thought provoking, I am not too sure about the authenticity of the statistics they bear. Nevertheless the presentation style is awesome. I loved it.


SlideShare: http://www.slideshare.net/jbrenman/thirst

I wrote about one of the contesting presentations earlier. It stood second.

Youtube: http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=TQmz6Rbpnu0

“We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.”

– Albert Einstein