Anna's protest is naive and simplistic says Nandan Nilekani

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/annas-protest-unjustified-nandan-nilekani/176743-3.html
It was interesting to read this interview given by Nandan Nilekani to CNN-IBN. Its good that the intellectuals from Corporate India also participate in this debate. Irrespective of the side they take, their views deserve all the respect. To that extent, I appreciate Mr. Nilekani for having given his honest opinion.

In the interview, the ex-CEO of Infosys and current chairman of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) puts forth an argument based on the notion that Jan Lokpal is not going to eliminate all the corruption and hence the protests by Anna are naive and simplistic. He goes on to say how Aadhar (UID) will go a long way to bring in transparency in people's interaction with the State.

Mr. Nilekani, you have made an assumption that the protesters believe that Jan Lokpal, to the exclusion of all other things is going to make the nation corruption-free. It would be foolish to believe that Jan Lokpal is going to eliminate all the corruption in the country. No one, and certainly not the Team Anna is saying that. Just like Jan Lokpal, even the project under your chairmanship, Aadhar (UID) is not guaranteed to remove corruption from its roots.

The company Infosys on whose rolls, you served as CEO and Co-chairman, has earned a lot of prosperity for its stakeholders and above all, made India proud in many ways besides just being the IT bellwether of India. It is under your and Mr. Narayan Murthy's leadership that it introduced a whistle-blower in its system. Your organization set a trend for all the IT and non-IT companies of India to follow. Ombudsman now exists almost in all major organizations in India. Did you ever question your colleagues at Infosys as to how an Ombudsman is going to solve all kind of issues related to corporate ethics in its work environment? Does the top management at Infy enjoy immunity from this Ombudsman?

It is good that the government accepted the idea of Unique Identification Cards and went ahead with its implementation. But hypothetically, if it would not have agreed to it, do you or don't you agree that it is the job of citizens of India, including yourself to make the government realize that they are wrong in not implementing this project? Would you then, accept someone else's line of argument that UID is not a magical mantra that is going to solve all the corruption related issues and hence it would be naive to protest against its non-implementation?

Aadhar (UID) is a good thing that has happened to India, under your able leadership. So is another piece of enactment - the Right To Information Act (RTI). Likewise, the nation needs a strong ombudsman to whom all public offices will be held accountable. Each one of these are a building block and not a complete structure in itself. There may be many such blocks required. But it does not require a Construction Engineer to figure out that if one of the building blocks is weak/missing, the structure is incomplete! So please don't say that the protests against a weak Lokpal draft are naive just because Jan Lokpal by itself, can not eliminate all the corruption in this nation.

The nation certainly expects much better line of thinking from the best intellectuals it has got. But I guess, since you are currently on the government payrolls, probably your tongue is tied!