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replied, “If I were you, I will focus on learning.” It was a nudge in the right direction. Taking this job
at a salary of Rs. 800 a month was the best decision of Murthy’s life. Murthy’s mentors at the crucial
5
juncture were his friends at the hostel and HVS!

Krishnayya was the person who influenced Murthy the most. He taught the team how important it was
to aspire and the team members used to work 20 hours a day. The team designed and implemented
a basic interpreter for ECIL. During his stay at IIMA, Murthy learnt that it is not the theory but
application of the theory to solve problems, which makes a difference to society. Murthy acknowledges
that the decision to join Krishnayya, coupled with his training at IIMA and the opportunity to develop
an operating system for an airport in Paris indeed helped him in setting up Infosys.

Two Main Shortcomings of the Indian Higher Education System

An article by Narayana Murthy, published by IIMA, about 11 years ago, captured the Indian science
scenario quite aptly in the following words: “In addition to new funding mechanisms, India must
improve its recruiting process and the mentoring of young faculty. In the past, Indian Institutes
and Universities had significant amount of inbreeding, with former students returning to their prior
establishments as faculty members, in sometimes less than fully-open searches. While this practice
is diminishing, Institutes/Universities must continue to improve their searching/hiring strategies to
bring in the best candidates. Besides, newly hired faculty must learn the necessary skills to become
successful, such as choosing good research problems and managing their laboratories” (Vale and
Dell, 2009).

Unfortunately, not many concrete steps have been taken in the last 11 years to alleviate these problems.
Few simple steps need to be taken for initiating a well-planned mentorship programme for Ph. D.
students as well as young assistant professors. It is meant for execution in colleges and universities in
India, which account for large manpower in academics in the country.

Suggestions for a Future Mentoring Programme in India

A new mentoring programme in colleges and universities in India must be initiated. As mentioned
earlier, many books exist on various aspects of mentoring and detailed research works exploring many
new facets of the subject. Apart from face-to-face mentoring, another possibility, viz. E-mentoring has
emerged with the advent of the Internet and mobile phones, wherein the interaction between mentors and
protégés can happen in two ways. It can be synchronous, for example, while interacting via a video/audio
call, chat, or an online lecture. The communication can also be asynchronous, such as a pre-recorded
video lecture, the use of emails or forums where there may be some time lag, say minutes to hours,
between sending and receiving messages. UGC’s publication on Good Academic Research Practices
(GARP) presents a detailed and critical discussion of the advantages and limitations of E-mentoring. 6

It will be worthwhile to embark upon mentoring programmes for Ph.D. students, and young faculty
recruited during the last two or three years in all academic institutions governed by UGC and AICTE,
for example, in colleges and universities. Mentoring programmes for students in several IITs already
exist, although the performance analysis of these programmes is not publicly available. Numerous
studies on mentoring have been globally reported for the past 50 or more years. Some important
observations from these studies suggest a pragmatic approach for going further.

In a study published several years ago (Berg and Ferber, 1983), it was reported that students and
faculty seem to relate more ‘comfortably’ with persons of the same gender, but with a small pool of

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