Qualification accepted as the only criteria.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: The promotion of Satya Nadella to CEO of Microsoft has been met with almost unanimous praise all around the world, particularly in the US and in India, Nadella’s two home nations.
In fact, one of the most noteworthy aspects of Nadella, 46, being announced as the tech giant’s new leader is that it did not come with the usual inundation of racist and derogatory remarks. Unlike other recent Indian achievements in the Western world – most notably, that of Nina Davuluri becoming the new Miss America in September of last year – Nadella’s announcement did not meet with any significant backlash.
People throughout the news world and blogosphere point to the fact that Nadella is more than qualified enough for the position, and that his ascension has less to do with random subjective judgments and more with whether or not he really is a good fit for the job. In that regard, Nadella more than passes. And this is compounded by the fact that people of Indian origin, in the American professional world, are highly regarded as hard-working, intelligent people.
“Nadella’s journey to Microsoft’s top post moved along the same path furrowed by thousands of other Indians,” says TIME writer and editor Ishaan Tharoor in an editorial published on February 4. “A hypercompetitive college education in India […] followed by graduate studies in the U.S. and a berth in Silicon Valley. But the application, the ingenuity, the business savvy and the drive that saw him excel were all his own.”
Indians have long maintained a stable foothold in the IT sector in the US, with several desis already at the head of large international corporations, such as PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi. Many say it was only a matter of time before an Indian American found himself at the helm of a large IT company – that the one Nadella now heads up is a giant like Microsoft is just slightly bigger news.
But not all welcome Nadella’s new achievement. A piece, written by popular internet writer Arun Gupta and published by UK newspaper The Guardian, bears the headline “Actually,Satya Nadella’s selection as Microsoft CEO isn’t great for Indians.”
In the piece, Gupta commends Nadella for his personal achievement in becoming the new CEO but says that such accomplishments don’t really help India or Indians at all – rather, they simply allow a nation to hold up a rarified few while hundreds of millions still struggle. Gupta also criticizes Microsoft itself for making “mediocre” products, and asks why it should be so exalted that an Indian is at the head of such a company.
The piece tries to say that the achievements of individual Indians, great though they are, do little to help the perception of India as a country with smart emigrants but a decaying social structure back home.
“Ethnic pride also tends to be marked by childlike cravings for normalcy to mask shame,” Gupta says. “Each success is another sign [that] India’s greatness will erase images of a land of female infanticide, ethnic cleansing, gang rapes and slave labor.”
Yet Gupta’s reaction is a rare one out of the vast majority that welcomes not just Nadella, but diversity as a whole within the corporate world. In addition to Nadella, Microsoft also appointed African-American John W. Thompson to be its Chairman of the Board of Directors, replacing Microsoft co-founder and master puppeteer Bill Gates.
And in terms of Indian diversity, Nadella joins Nooyi, Ajay Banga (CEO, MasterCard), and Sanjay Mehrotra (CEO of SanDisk) as heads of huge American corporations. Gender diversity is also growing, with 23 companies in the Fortune 500 now run by female CEOs.
The point being that diversity is here to stay, and Nadella’s widespread acceptance is hopefully a sign of great things to come – for both Microsoft and the billions of people it serves.