Slogans can't make India a World Power: Murthy

Bangalore: India's strive to be a world power is guided more by euphemistic slogans and the country's aim cannot be achieved with it. "Its only with real dedicated performance that India can excel," said Infosys Chairman and Chief Mentor, Narayan Murthy.

The initiative for better performance can be witnessed as the company has rigorously stretched its training period. "Earlier it was not more than 2-3 months, however, now as a measure to enthuse more competition, its extended to seven months," said an employee, who has been a part of the organization for four years. The vast enthusiasm in the IT sector is witnessed by the fact that 70 percent of the employees who join the IT firms do not have graduates as parents, pinpoints the Leader of the Opposition, Karnataka State Legislative Assembly, Siddaramaiah.

Murthy's remarks came in while addressing a crowd during the inauguration of Infosys' second Global Education Center (GEC II). Inaugurated by UPA Chief, Sonia Gandhi, the new education center is spread across an area of 1.44 million square feet. With the emergence of the new center, which took four years to develop, the number of employees who can be trained at the Mysore facility of Infosys invariably increased from 4500 to 14,000 employees. The facility is also contemplating on a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) with a capacity of 3000 seats, which is under construction. The UPA Chief asserted that the facility inauguration gave her a chance to bunk her political life for a few hours. The combined influence of education and the business world makes her pine for a few more days of freedom from politics.

The Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa was also present on the occasion.

In context of infrastructure and size, the centre is the largest corporate education centre in the world. The company's total investment in the Mysore centre is Rs.2,055 crore of which Rs.350 crore has been invested in construction of software development blocks and related services, as another Rs.1,705 crore was spent on education and training related infrastructure.

"In 2008-2009, more than 16,000 new entrants were trained and this financial year around 16,000 more are expected to be trained through this program. In addition, special programs have been conducted at the GEC for students from Australia, Bhutan, China, Columbia, Japan, Malaysia, Mauritius, Panama, Thailand, U.K. and the U.S," said Murthy.

Structured with classical designs, the education center is equipped with smart classrooms. It has 485 faculty rooms, 42 conference rooms, five assessment halls, an induction hall, a cyber cafe and two libraries which can house over 1,40,000 books. The GEC I has a built up area of 4,40,735 square feet, as it has 52 training rooms, 183 faculty rooms and a library that can accommodate 60,000 books. The new GEC has a has 84-'100 seater', three-200 seater, six-60 seater and two-36 seater class rooms, five examination halls and 302 faculty rooms. It also has an induction hall which can seat 400 trainees and a library which can accommodate 80,000 books. The seating capacity of the cyber cafe is 236. It has seven food courts, offering various cuisines ranging from South Indian to continental food.