I knelt a lot outside class for being naughty: Premji

 Reminiscing about his school days, Wipro chief Azim Premji on Saturday said he spent a lot of time outside the classroom kneeling for being naughty.

“Yes, I was very naughty when I was a kid and those days, we got rapped on the knuckles and hit on the head and you had to be kneeling outside the class for a long time. Some of these practices are no longer there, but I spent a lot of time outside the class kneeling,” he said.

He was replying to a query in an interaction with students at the celebrations of Wipro’s 2016 Earthian Awards here.

Asked why he left college early in his life, Premji said he did it for taking up responsibilities of his father who died very young, but completed masters in electrical engineering many years later.

“I left the college in between, primarily because I had to take responsibilities from my father who died at a very young age, but eventually many years later I did get a masters degree in electrical engineering,” he said.

Asked about the future of children, especially girls, Premji said girls are more serious than boys about their career, provided they are getting support from parents.

“Girls take their careers much more seriously, and girls particularly in villages take their careers even more seriously, once the parents give them the latitudinal support,” he said.

“Unfortunately, many parents put young girls to take care of the younger child, because the mother goes out to earn in addition to husband’s earning,” he said.

Premji further said girls fare better than boys in getting academic awards and are street-smart.

“I have travelled enough to schools in villages and colleges too, the girls always turn out to be street-smart, consistently. Just look at the quality of questions you get from the ladies in the audience. In my opinion, girls ask far more intelligent questions than boys,” he said.

“I also find, wherever the schools are following ranking system, 50% of the awards go to girls in a class,” Premji added.