JOIN USNaming & shaming of Infosys and India's fall into a moral abyss
The naming and shaming of Infosys, India's post-liberalisation poster child software company by Panchjanya, apparently has sent shockwaves in the industry.
A couple of press reports quote anonymous industry honchos that nobody seems to like this pushback for Infy as they are fondly and colloquially called in Bengaluru circles. But this is nothing new for a nation that has largely lost its voice and has stopped speaking truth to power.
Consider, for example, the farmers' protests where laws are being bulldozed through. Not once has the prime minister, the president, or most senior cabinet ministers cared to visit the farmers and check their condition when some 500 plus farmers have lost their lives. Nobody basically denies that India's agricultural sector does need reforms. But if structural changes are to be ushered in through such hectoring and Indian society decides to stay quiet, why should anybody be surprised with Infy being defamed?
For scientists, meanwhile, it is quite commonplace today to be told to suppress or reframe results if they are working on questions of policy interests. Should they be working with administrative datasets, there is always the likelihood of a nudge, most times gentle but firm, to get them vetted by relevant governmental authorities. If one doesn't, access to important data will remain out of reach is the unambiguous message.
Few examples. It's now many months since India's vaccination program for Covid-19 has started. Still, nobody yet knows where the data on adverse events is, if it is getting independently evaluated, or the status of the national genome sequencing data that track variants of interest for Covid-19 in India. Nobody also knows of the migrant database the government was supposed to create after the havoc ushered in with the first lockdown in India in March 2020.
Note that if you thought this was just a Delhi phenomenon, make no mistake. Quite a few conversations with bureaucrats working with state governments indicate a similar slant at the provincial level. We want to be evidence-based, they often say, but you know, "hush, hush - there's Pegasus and look around yourself, times are different. One has to be cautious more than ever before to make sure one doesn't get punishment posting and protect one's post-retirement perks and benefits. Are you not seeing the plight of that particular state's chief secretary who didn't toe the line."
Corporate entities and private data providers have also taken a leaf out of such kowtowing to power, asking researchers apriori, summaries of research papers and findings (even without analyses done) when selling data to them. When pushed back, they plead helplessness. Nobody wants to rub governments in India the wrong way anymore these days, it seems. Such a demand would have resulted in a polite but firm "thanks but no thanks" in more advanced economies. Not so anymore in India.
Of course, if the focal researcher refuses, there are enough compliant champions of marginal science sitting on the fence waiting to prune the bushes and present the particular government's coveted line. Policy and scientific eulogies related to work by certain state governments, amidst various research groups reporting gross discrepancies in mortality reporting with horrifying excess death statistics across states of India, bear testimony to this phenomenon.
Another easy approach is to capture universities and institutes through governmental endowments, land or special concessions to set up centres, let's say for data sciences, climate change, public policy or analytics, the buzz words of choice. These centres then will have special peekaboos to India's surveillance state championed highly multidimensional disaggregated digital data to showcase that a particular state or central policy is indeed generating positive welfare consequences.
In some cases, overseas researchers, either diaspora or foreigners (potentially with sentiments on certain sides of the political spectrum), will join hands with these compliant local researchers or centres to get the paper published; navigating a global, but many times fractured and captured peer review process in scientific journals of repute, thereby giving the evidence its required scientific veneer. Of course, the fruits of labour here can be multiplied if a local or multinational firm can join in this mega endeavour with matching financial support.
Thankfully though, not all of the international scientific community have given in. There is strong pushback yet from many worried about India from abroad. Many influential voices have stepped back too into a quiet corner witnessing the ghoulish turn of events in India as the Infy effect continues proliferating.
It is increasingly clear that it will leave no one untouched across society, be it industry associations, clinicians, medical associations, the average middle-class citizen, non-compliant incumbent firms or new entrepreneurs in the venture capital and startup ecosystem and the sundry. Today it is Infy, and tomorrow it may be (and will be) them. Their inner Martin Niemollers, meanwhile, continue on their Rip Van Winkle sleep undisturbed in peaceful slumber.
For a country that adopted Satyameva Jayate from the Hindu scripture Mundaka Upanishad on January 26, 1950, as its national motto, that is a tragic moral abyss from where there may be fewer and fewer paths of going back.
It is ironic and perhaps intriguing that Infosys was shamed in the journal Panchjanya, which is derived from the name of the demon that the Hindu God Vishnu killed, naming his conch after him. The great war of the Mahabharata began after blowing Panchjanya by Krishna, as the legend goes; perhaps a new Mahabharata is where India's society is now headed towards as the Infy effect loudly and clearly demonstrates.
(The author is a tenured faculty member at the University of Sussex, visiting fellow at Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and visiting faculty at IIM Ahmedabad)
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.
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