At a stormy shareholders’ meeting, well over a decade-and-a-half ago, N.R. Narayana Murthy spotted T.V. Mohandas Pai.
Pai’s questions were incisive, causing some uncomfortable moments for members of the management. Murthy decided Pai should be on the other side of the table and inducted him into team Infosys in the year 2000.
During his stint as chief financial officer at Infosys, Pai made a significant difference to the bottomline. However, the exalted position did not curb Pai’s instinct to lash out at anything that violated his sense of justice and fair play.
Now chairman of Manipal Global Education, Pai is still as outspoken as ever. He often takes to Twitter and television to air his views, which are often a tad too controversial for some people’s comfort. Sample this: He has said IT firms behave like cartels to keep salaries of freshers low.
Shaping thoughts
“I have always been a rebel and an activist, standing up for public causes. Your school and college shape your thinking. Even as a student, I had a critical bent of mind and never hesitated to stand up for what I knew to be right,” says Pai, an alumnus of St. Joseph’s Indian High School as well as St. Joseph’s College of Commerce, Bengaluru, where he did his bachelor’s degree in the 1970s.
In his second year at St. Joseph’s, Pai was on the war path, along with his batchmates. “We led a march to the vice-chancellor’s office, demanding revaluation of our examination papers,” he recalls.
The student-activists had their way. Revaluation was ordered. The corrected marks vindicated the students’ position. There was a huge jump in the marks. To give an example, Pai’s marks in accountancy shot up from 50 to 95.
There was never a dull moment in college. He was studying in a co-educational institution for the first time, got ragged by seniors and enjoyed being a part of the student union election.
A sports enthusiast, Pai got to play for the college’s cricket team. The call however came only in his final year as there were many good players staking a claim to the College XI.
Later, at the Law University in Bengaluru, where he did his LLB, Pai would go on to promote sports in a big way. “I was the sports secretary at the college. When we realised that there weren’t many students joining the college through the sports quota, we represented the matter to the management. Thanks to this intervention, soon 15 students joined the campus on sports quota,” says Pai, who was simultaneously pursuing Chartered Accountancy.
If an issue had to be taken to the college management, Pai was never hesitant about it.
“We wanted more money to improve sports infrastructure. Before we could rally around this issue, the college sanctioned the money required to develop sports,” he says.
Pai also remembers a walk down the streets of Bengaluru, expressing solidarity with the movement for Nuclear Disarmament.
“Our professors were liberals; we could argue and have debates with them. They were excellent teachers who encouraged us to think for ourselves,” he says, reeling out names of a long list of teachers who have inspired him.
“College made me a well-rounded personality. Take up as many activities as possible, but don’t give up your studies,”says Pai, who secured third rank in the university in his B.Com and a gold medal for auditing in Inter.
