Ravi Venkatesan, former chairman, Microsoft India, in conversation with Ratan Tata and Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev during INSIGHT: The DNA of Success organized by Isha Foundation in December 2014. Excerpts:  

You have seen the full spectrum of market entry mechanisms. Do you want to reflect on growing overseas opportunities?

Ratan Tata: I think we all need to have a sense of pride in what we do. The good thing about going overseas through an acquisition or through yourself is that it gives you an opportunity to compete in a more competitive market place. One might think why would you want to be in the UK with a car company? To have access to technologies and reversely bring here is a great plus and if you blur the issue of boundaries, color of skin and culture and so on and merge it into one strong entity, then you got to assume overtime that good things are going to most likely happen.

Sadhguru: In a nation like this where we are busy producing an underdeveloped population and all that we have is population and nothing else in this country, unless we have an army of dedicated people on the ground who can educate and transform that situation, just trying to do something from the top, either from the government or even from corporate sector may not really make a difference.

We have been in rural India, working there. There is electricity, bore wells, internet kiosk, everybody has cell phones but their nourishment value has gone down because they don’t have the mentality to buy necessary food. To bring back the culture of nourishment, fruits and vegetables into people’s lives, we have taken many steps for that, the next step we have taken is to install fish ponds in every village. Innovative ways of doing this has to happen because this is a silent disaster which is just progressing and it will overwhelm the nation at some point.

Is this a beginning to influence priorities of the trust that you (Tata) chair, moving some of the grant making into newer issues?

Rattan Tata: We have suddenly realized as a trust/foundation we have been helping communities in a variety of ways, helping individuals too but we have ignored the fact that what we are doing may not be sustainable. And if we want to take what we are giving to one NGO or one rural group and replicate it, you can’t pull out because when you pull out, the NGO collapses, that community collapses and you have done something wrong.

You have created a complacency factor that money flow is going to come, be it from the government or a trust or a company. The trust has failed in not providing something to make the community stronger, more productive, gives it a sense of wanting to do more for itself. Perhaps we have to change what we are doing to be idea givers rather than money givers.

You say you have to hear the inner calling to do the right thing. The question is with all that you have seen in your life, do you believe that is safe to leave it to individuals or do we need to regulate to some extent, the behavior of companies?

Sadhguru: I don’t think to some extent, I think the law should be 100% clear. This is what you can do and this is what you cannot do because people are very capable of interpreting and subverting their own morality in so many ways. There are people who will do things out of their heart and that’s different, you don’t have to worry about them; they will do the right things. But for everybody else regulation is the best thing. For important things like ecology, health, leaving it to people’s ethics and morality is irresponsible for a nation

Ratan Tata: I would agree with you because you can’t leave what I have said to itself. There is going to be followed by a minuscule number of people, you can’t run a nation on that, that’s what governments are there for.