Speaking on how know-how generally is a nice equiliser, Narayana Murthy stated, ‘It does not care whether or not you’re wealthy or poor, whether or not you’re educated, or not so effectively educated, so long as you should utilize the machine.’

Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy believes know-how performs an necessary function in breaking class boundaries in society and rising confidence amongst human beings. In a current podcast with former CFO and board member at Infosys Mohandas Pai, Murthy shared an incident that cemented this perception.

It was in 1995 when ICICI put in its first ATM on the Infosys workplace campus. Murthy and Pai have been each ready in a queue on the workplace canteen when the previous struck up a dialog with a janitor.

“You know, we all stood in the same queue in the first canteen. And whether you are, a janitor or the CEO, or the CFO all in the same line. I was standing. It was 1995, you installed the first ATM from ICICI Bank in our place. So I just struck up a conversation with the person in front of me, the janitor,” Narayana Murthy stated within the first episode of The Record.

When he requested the janitor about how he had been, the person apparently had a giant smile on his face and stated that he was very comfortable after the ATM was put in on the campus. On being requested the way it made him comfortable, Murthy recollected him saying, “He said, ‘Sir, when we had the bank branch, the clerk would not give me the same attention as they give to the suited-booted software engineers. But when I go to this machine, whether you go or I go because it will give me the same amount of money, it would take the same time, no issue.’ So in other words, technology is a great leveller.”

Elaborating on this, Narayana Murthy added that know-how does not create boundaries amongst human beings so long as one is aware of the right way to use it. “It doesn’t care whether you are rich or poor, whether you are educated, or not so well educated, as long as you can use the machine, whether you are from urban India, a rural India, whether you are a powerful man or a weak person, doesn’t matter. So technology has to be embraced by everybody,” he concluded.

Read more: When Narayana Murthy made his cook order his diabetes atta on Amazon at 10pm