Rahul Gandhi's emotional appeal

"My mother refused to leave parliament when the food bill was passed ...I tried stopping her but she went inside parliament after a medical check-up... I dragged her to a hospital... She was unable to breathe when she landed in the hospital and she had tears in her eyes. She said she fought for the bill and wanted to vote on it. But she could not." This is Rahul Gandhi's dramatisation of his mother's concern for the poor.

If the concern were real, so many scams would not have been facilitated. The Congress party is in such a terrible mess today that only emotional appeals are possible. A party once nurtured by stalwarts like Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel is now trivialised by reckless leaders and selfish and slavish followers.

Narayana Murthy re-enters, but slips right away

It is not all that unusual for a company to requisition the services of a former CEO or Chairman. Quite a few CEOs have staged a comeback in the same position. Dell, Apple, Coca Cola and recently P & G are notable examples. However, it does not reflect well on the ability of these companies to groom leaders.

NRN's reentry as Executive Chairman of Infosys has been widely welcomed and perhaps rightly so. Yet, creation of an aura of indispensability around anyone is not desirable.

Further NRN has made a few maladroit moves. He has over-emotionalised the development which is not the hallmark of a great leader. Unable to justify his departure from his proclaimed endeavour to keep family members away from leadership roles at Infosys, he has sought to rationalise his son's entry as his Executive Assistant saying, "This was an emotional decision for him as my entire family has an enormous emotional connect with the company". Emotionalising nepotism does not make it any different. It is a pity that two great exemplars of corporate governance, NRN and Azim Premji have both thought it fit to drag their progeny into the public limited companies chaired by them. This is ofcourse not to question the credentials of their highly qualified, and perhaps unwilling, children.

K.V.Kamath will be the lead independent director. It is anomalous that a person whose leadership of the company failed to produce positive results will be vested with the responsibilty of having to 'objectively and independently' assess the company's performance. Some ironies remain widely unnoticed.