Founder and Executive Chairman of Onward Technologies Ltd., Harish Mehta, is renowned for also co-founding, and for years, leading India’s famous software industry body, The National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM). To selectively quote N.R Narayana Murthy’s blurb for the book – Murthy also calls it “definitive and authoritative” – this is a “biography of NASSCOM”. It describes the birth, growth and present state of NASSCOM, its significant contributions to the Indian software industry, and its key members. The book tells us what NASSCOM is doing to stay useful to its stakeholders at the present time. Engagingly written, The Maverick Effect also is a memoir of the author, Harish Mehta, as software entrepreneur and family man whose values guided his choices in business and the public sphere. The memoiristic narrative is shorter than the overarching theme of the birth and work of NASSCOM, which is described through the eyes of an intimate insider.
Several interesting chapters highlight how NASSCOM catalyzed the fortunes of its industry by interacting with the government. For instance, we are told it was at NASSCOM’s urging, BSNL chairperson B.K. Syngal and Union minister Pt. Sukh Ram had the Union government invest in internet bandwidth. This higher speed enabled Indian software companies to gain and successfully work for foreign clients in the 1990s. Another example: we’re told, NASSCOM helped N. Vittal of the Department of Electronics to formulate a proposal for what was realized as Software Technology Parks of India, which came with no taxes and high speed (for that time) internet connections for software companies. We are also informed how NASSCOM “helped put together the initial draft of India’s first Internet policy in the late 1990s. Eventually, that led to the new telecom policy, which, in turn, led to the privatization of Internet service providers”. Similarly, the National Telecom Policy of 1999 contributed to the growth of information technology enabled services and business processing outsourcing units in the country.
The author makes the point land well, that for the Indian software industry, industry-government interface was one of the aces in the hole. The ministers and government officials who helped the Indian software industry are mentioned fondly in the book. Rather oddly, though, the author seems to give more credit for Indian prosperity to NASSCOM than to those who are well known as the architects of liberalization – P.V. Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh, along with low-profile folks such as Montek Singh Ahluwalia. Also curious is the fact that the shambles about the Section 66(A) of the Information Technology Act, 2000, which the Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional, wasn’t mentioned at all in the book. Section 66(A) criminalized “offensive” online posts, and was being used to stifle criticism of the government, until a PIL went to the Supreme Court. The rest is history. But when the Act was being drafted, was NASSCOM kept away from seeing the draft, despite having connections in the IT ministry? (After the case ended, NASSCOM welcomed the Supreme Court judgement.) What happened, exactly? In any case, the book breathes not a word on the whole episode.
Thankfully, there are other insights on tap. We learn NASSCOM was based on ‘coopetition’: the radical idea that competing companies can band together to create a better terrain in which to operate. We learn what kind of mindset enables coopetition, which is invaluable for any industry that’s budding or upcoming. Here we gain insight into the culture of NASSCOM as the author saw it. We are told how important it is for the culture to have the right people. For instance, we are told of NASSCOM presidents, from the author himself, to his successor, the publicity-loving and too-highly driven Devang Mehta, whose love for publicity rivalled his work for his industry. We are told of his successor, Kiran Karnik. Quiet and low-key Karnik, we’re told, transformed NASSCOM into a data-driven house of record and forecast for the industry. We learn of NASSCOM president Som Mittal, who moved fast to halt the runaway train that was Satyam after its founder admitted to inflating profit figures by billions of rupees. We are told what NASSCOM and Mittal did – no spoilers – for Satyam, and it restored clients’ faith in Indian software companies.