A Man for All Seasons

Imagine this scenario. Twenty years from now books are being written on the history of Indian ITthey could be definitive histories by serious research scholars or coffee table volumes or even paperbacks pandering to the masses. There are bound to be certain chapters devoted to certain personalities, and these would range from colorful ones like Dewang Mehta and Phaneesh Murthy to statesmen ones of Narayana Murthy and Azim Premji. Chances are that one name might still remain under the radar or, if included, the marketers of the book would not focus their limelight on him.

Kiran Sharadchandra Karnik, whom Dataquest proclaimed as the IT Person of the Decade (2001-10), who, despite his gargantuan and monumental achievements for Indian IT, is still never spoken of in the same breath as a Murthy, Premji or Mehta. However, his fame is gradually rising in the collective conscience of India, Inc.

In a Nutshell

When Nasscom founder president Dewang Mehta (flamboyant, comes to mind) passed away untimely in April 2001 at Sydney, the question everyone asked was: After Dewang who? Once the subsequent headhunt, undertaken by IT industry veterans for a new Nasscom president, zeroed in on Kiran Karnik the question on everyones lip was: Kiran who? Though Karnik had a chequered career with ISRO and launching Discovery Channel in India, his exposure to IT was negligible. The general consensus was that not only would Karnik stumble in carrying forward Dewangs legacy, but by the time he gains some knowledge on Indian IT services dynamics, Nasscom itself would become defunct as an association.

The affable, mild-mannered Karnik however proved all the detractors wrong. He guided the Indian services ship through some choppy waters. One big crisis was prior to the US Presidential Elections of 2004 when John Kerry had managed to raise the anti-outsourcing pitch to a crescendo. The mood amongst Indian software service providers was downbeat. It was Karnik-led Nasscoms efforts around the globe that helped Indian companies tide over that crisis.

But Karniks role at Nasscom cannot be just looked at as that of a crisis manager. If Devang Mehta had started an association and given it a global image, Karnik helped in making it an organization. While many blamed Nasscom as being the exclusive club for the Big Five, during Karniks reign new initiatives like SME forum, one involving educational institutes (to tackle manpower shortage), gender diversity program, anti-poaching agreement among BPOs and a national database of employees were conceived.

And even post-Nasscom, Indian ITs crisis man of the hour was called back again to head the government appointed board to retrieve the Satyam situation. The fiasco had threatened to not just finish off one company, but undermine all the efforts of the Indian IT services industry in the last two decades. The Karnik-led board motivated and managed to retain most of the Satyam workforce during the troubled times, ensured that most customers stayed too, abided with all regulatory and investigative bodies and mechanisms in India and US, successfully found a new and respectable ownerTech Mahindrathrough a fair and transparent bidding process, and created a new model for corporate governance in India.

The Story Before IT

While the Nasscom stint brought Karnik into the IT limelight, he has been a well known name in niche business and technical circles for more than two decades. During his 20+ years stint at ISRO, he held various positions related to the conception, planning and implementation of applications of space technology, focusing especially on the use of communications for development. He was deeply involved in the conception and, for many years, overseeing the Kheda Communications Project. This pioneering effort won wide national and international acclaim, including the first UNESCOIPDC Prize for
rural Communication.

Karnik was also a key member of the management team for the India-USA Satellite Instructional TV Experiment (SITE), which took education and development to remote parts of rural India. In recognition of his efforts in ISRO in 1998, Karnik was awarded the Frank Malina medal for Space Education by the International Astronautical Federation.

In 1991, Karnik joined the Consortium for Educational Communication (CEC) as its first Director. He also worked briefly with the UN in New York and Vienna, serving as Special Assistant to the Secretary-General of UNISPACE 82. He has also done an extended consulting assignment for UNESCO in Afghanistan and has been a consultant for WHO, The World Bank, UN Institute for Disarmament Research, Ford Foundation and a member of the Prasar Bharati Review Committee.

Karnik was the MD at Discovery Networks in India from 1995-2001. During this time, he spearheaded the launch of the Discovery Channel in South Asia in August 1995 as well as Animal Planet in 1999.

Kiran Who?

Karnik about his selection as Nasscom chief, he says, I was familiar with the industry, thanks to my 20-year stint at ISRO. But that was not enough. Not quite. I knew about the dynamics of the IT industry, but not the industry leaders, says Karnik. Two, the industry was more volatile than ever in 2001 when Karnik took over (think 9/11, dotcom bust and global recession). Third, stepping into the shoes of late Dewang Mehta, who was a much larger brand than Nasscom itself. Karnik, however, defends this argument. It is good for the future of an association if the leader stands taller than the entity itself, in the initial years, argues Karnik. The industrys mandate was to professionalize and corporatize Nasscom, and Karnik started work on this front right from the word go. Karnik strengthened Nasscoms functionally and decentralized its operations. He also helped strengthen Nasscoms regional presence.

Karnik spearheaded Indias stand against the anti-outsourcing lobby in the US. His case was: The US economy gets $2 for every $1 that American companies spend on outsourcing in India. Indian companies buy the US hardware and software, Indian tech workers spend wages in the US and pay taxes there, and US consumers save through lower costs at companies.

Even during the reduction in H1B visa crisis it was the sagacious handling and behind-the-scene lobbying by Nasscom under Karnik that diffused the situation. True Karniks stint at Nasscom missed the flamboyance and aggressive lobbying of the previous regime, but ultimately the eras and mandates were different. If Dewang Mehta built Nasscom and helped create and grow the Indian IT juggernaut, Karnik institutionalized Nasscom and ensured the pace never flagged off. That their individual persona too suited their roles was Nasscoms and Indias gain.

The Satyam Saga

However glorious might have been the chapters at Nasscom, ISRO or Discovery, Karniks finest hour came on January 11, 2009 (or started from that date) when the then Coporate Affairs Ministry under Premchand Gupta moved in fast and constituted a board to run the beleaguered Satyam affairs following Ramalinga Rajus confessions. While Karnik was appointed the Chairman of the Board, it constituted of eminent personalities like HDFC Chairman Deepak Parekh and former SEBI member C Achuthan to be joined later by Tarun Das of CII, TN Manoharan and Suryakant Balkrishna Mainak.

Karnik remembers that January 11 was a Sunday, when he got a call from the government...by afternoon we had convened together and started work on the 12th itself, he adds. In hindsight that proved to be masterstroke as there was little time to be lost and and the magnitude of the damage control mission was gargantuan.

Some decisions of the board stood out: foremost, was the decision not to accept government financial doles. Another not to have any bureaucrats on board, not even retired ones, as their mindsets and style of functioning would create a different atmosphere.

Also, while the initial clamoring was to have many eminent IT personalities on board (Satyam being an IT company), the board members argued against the reasoning. The only IT connection in the board was Karnikironic, considering that eight years earlier the IT industry had asked, Kiran Who?, during his appointment as Nasscom president.

Ombudsman and
Conscience Keeper

While ISRO and Discovery were proofs of Karniks leadership qualities, Nasscom and Satyam made him famous (well almost). Not only is he today on the board of a host of companies, but the government approaches him on various critical issues as one of the foremost ombudsmen in the country. Recently, he was appointed to head a committee that was mandated to draft the corporate governance policy amid a growing chorus of voices advocating the need for laws to make transactions in the private sector more accountable
and transparent.

There could not have been a wiser man than Karnik to handle these sensitive issues.

He was also appointed to head a taskforce appointed for community mobilization on the Right to Education front. There is need to create a buzz about key provisions of RTE. For instance, the community should be involved in spreading knowledge about things like zero-detention, no corporal punishment. Ten critical provisions of the bill should be taken to people. Schools should be made RTE-compliant, feels Karnik. Right now, the plan for community mobilization was a work-in-progress, he said. The mobilization program should be decentralized to the district-level and NGOs and civil society should be involved, he added.

And though he quit the Devas board, he was very unequivocal about his stand on the Devas deal with ISRO. In a letter to PM Manmohan Singh, Karnik expressed his distress at the government failing to protect insinuations and innuendos against ISRO in the transponder-spectrum deal with Devas. That, in a nutshell, sums up Karnikprincipled, action-driven and with a straightforward approach. The right candidate to become the national ombudsman? Dataquest is proud to bestow its Lifetime Achievement award on this honorable son of India. n