Infosys Chairman Narayana Murthy plays down US Senator's 'chop shop' comment India News and Travel Times Provides India-centric and other News and Features

Infosys Technologies chairman and chief mentor NR Narayana Murthy has played down U.S Senator Charles Schumer's statement that likened Infosys to a 'chop shop.' Refusing to be drawn into a verbal duel, Murthy, however, made it aptly clear that the remarks were uncalled for. "Well, the culture at Infosys is to collect data, make analysis, come to conclusions and then speak about it. I wish everybody did that," said Murthy. Indian outsourcing companies, including Infosys, have been facing scathing criticism from some U.S. politicians like Schumer who say foreign firms add to the rising unemployment in the US by outsourcing jobs to foreign workers. However, Murthy's diplomatic chiding has effectively closed the chapter which had created a controversy in India. Revealing his succession plan, he said that a committee headed by Cornell University professor Jeffrey Sean Lehman and including ICICI Bank's non-executive chairman K.V. Kamath has been constituted to formulate a strategy to identify the next chief of the company. "Jeff Lehman is the chairman of the nominations committee and he has a very clear charter. Certainly, he and his committee will come out with a successor in time before I retire on 20th August 2011," said Murthy. Murthy also addressed a range of issues including allegations of corruption and mismanagement in the projects related to the upcoming Commonwealth Games. "Possibly, if we had adopted better project management systems, tools and right from day one, every week if we had given transparency to the progress, how amounts had been utilised etc, then probably we could have overcome some of the overruns, and also, everybody would have been happy. That's all," said Murthy.