Hillary Clinton, Indra Nooyi and Azim Premji

I am going to take a deviation from the ordinary as I feel like I have to blog about the USIBC meeting I attended today. US India Business Council (USIBC) as the name suggests is an organization to strengthen the trade/ business relationships between the 2 countries.
There were a lot of speakers at the one day convention but the highlight among them were

Indra K Nooyi – Chairman & CEO Pepsi CO
Hillary Clinton – Secretary of State
Azim Premji – Chairman Wipro

I really had no business to attend this convention but thanks to my CIO and AT&T, I got a chance to attend. First of all, I have to say that I was really fortunate to attend this convention.

First about Indra Nooyi – What a great speaker she is. She is eloquent in her speech, well prepared and whenever she talks, it looks as if she has control over the issue. She is also very clear and articulate about the message she wants to give the audience. I had seen videos of her speeches, her interviews before I went into the conference but nothing like seeing her on stage and seeing her talk. She commends a lot of respect from Hillary and the other secretaries of state that were present at the conference. She is respected for what she is doing as a leader and her visionary thinking. In One word – Amazing. I would really like to see her as a Prime Minister for India. I guess she is a US citizen now and hence forfeits’ the rights to become a prime minister of our country.

Hillary Clinton- the moment she walked in, the entire room gave her a standing ovation. We all know how great she is as a person and how good an orator she is. Again, seeing her in person and listening to her talk is a great experience in itself. After the democrat primary last year, media would not get away from the fact that she did not win the primary and continued to say that she was not 100% behind Obama. I thought the media was being crazy. After listening to her today, I think she still regrets not being elected in the primary. At one point she said – India had great leaders like Indira Gandhi and that US has learnt from them but US still has more to do.. now you can read in between the lines here. If you were present at the convention, there would be no need for you to read in between lines – her expressions would say everything.

Azim Premji – A great speaker, Orator, visionary and Leader. He got the award for Global vision. There are few people in India who have taken advantage of the right opportunity at the right time and Premji ranks on the top. He used the occasion to give a stern message. His message was sharp and clear. 3 points that I cannot forget in his speech 1) he called what we are going through right now as a global reset and not a global recession. He thought a lot of things will change after this – the way we live, the way we work, the way governments function and the way countries build relationships. 2) He said the way things are going in the US, one of these days there will not be anything Government will not own and we thought India was backwards in this area. Finally, when there was talk of protectionist policies around the world, Premji gave a classic example and I paraphrase – a subject went to Lord and said – Lord show me Heaven and Hell. Lord took the subject to a room and showed him a group of people who were all unhappy. They had stew in front of them, really long spoons to reach the stew from the pot but the spoons were no good to feed them (they were too big). Then he took the subject to the second room – the same set of people, same stew, same spoons but everyone was happy. The subject asked the Lord – how is this possible and the Lord said they had learnt to feed each other.