Case of Mr.

Dinesh, a cofounder of Infosys

Mr. K. Dinesh was one of the cofounders of Infosys along with Mr. Narayana Murthy and others. Mr. Dinesh was in charge of many key functions at Infosys. Infosys had made spectacular progress after it went public in 1993. Many shareholders of Infosys became millionaires overnight. Mr. Dinesh was one of them. One day, in the midst of his hectic work schedule at Infosys, Mr. Dinesh was reminded about his student days in Bangalore. He hailed from another part of Karnataka and had to stay in a hostel during his student days in Bangalore. The hostel did not charge any fee to the students for their stay. It was run on a donation made by a philanthropist some time ago. Mr. Dinesh decided to visit the hostel one day and try to provide help to it in some way, if it was required. Sometime later, Mr. Dinesh visited the hostel. The hostel was still functional and on speaking with the hostel authorities, Mr. Dinesh came to know that there were plans to build a hostel for girl students too. Mr. Dinesh agreed to provide monetary help for the same. But he had one condition; he would not be providing money for the same in the form of hard cash but would be transferring some of the Infosys shares in his name to the trust that runs the hostel. The hostel authorities told Mr. Dinesh that they would check on how this could be done and get back. It was found that as per the rules of the trust, the trust could only accept cash donations and therefore would not be able to accept donations in the form of equity. For the trust to accept donations in the form of equity, the authorities would have to approach the judicial court and get the rules governing the trust changed. Mr. Dinesh said that he was ready to wait till the rules were changed and asked the authorities to go ahead with the process of getting the rules of the trust changed. As in many other government departments in India, there was lot of corruption in the judicial courts in Bangalore. For a petition to come up for hearing, it had to pass through many levels of bureaucracy and the officials and bureaucrats in the court used to accept bribes for forwarding petitions of people out of turn for hearing. They delayed the passing of petitions for hearing, of people who refused to offer bribes. The news of the trust submitting an application to get their rules changed and of an Infosys co-founder waiting to transfer a lot of shares to the trust, reached the ears of the corrupt bureaucrats. They somehow sent a message through one of their emissaries to Mr.Dinesh saying that they would not forward the trusts application for hearing unless a good amount of money is paid as a bribe to them. Mr. Dinesh did not agree to pay a bribe to them as he was a man of integrity and values. The corrupt bureaucrats in the court saw to that the petition of the hostel trust is not forwarded for hearing. Mr. Dinesh was in no mood to budge from his position of not paying a bribe. He spoke to his lawyer to know whether they could talk to the judge and seek his help for this problem. But his lawyer told that meeting the judge when their petition is in court would be construed as trying to influence the judge, which was against the law. In the meantime the corrupt bureaucrats at the court tried to bargain for a lesser amount of money as bribe. But Mr. Dinesh would have none of it; he steadfastly refused to pay the bribe and waited for their application to come up for hearing at the court. Was Mr. Dinesh right in doing so by refusing to pay a bribe and thereby delaying his donation to the hostel trust?

The solution of the case and the case as it happened later: The corrupt bureaucrats at the court got frustrated in their attempts to extract a bribe from Mr. Dinesh and finally forwarded the hostel trusts petition for hearing. The change in the rules of the trust was accepted by the court and Mr. Dinesh transferred a certain number of shares to the trust as he had promised. The money generated from the shares was used for the construction of the girls hostel. Mr Dinesh had promised to transfer shares to the trust before the recession in the US in 2001 and by the time the court had approved the change of trust rules and the shares were transferred by Mr. Dinesh, the recession was in full swing and the Infosys shares fetched a lower amount compared to the amount it would have fetched earlier. But Mr. Dinesh never regretted his stance and he felt that his refusal to succumb to the demands of the corrupt bureaucrats was definitely worth it. He felt that the girls who would occupy the hostel would definitely be proud of the ideals on which the hostel was built. Mr. Dinesh retired from Infosys in June 2011 and during his stay in Infosys conducted many workshops on values to many Infosys employees, in an organization that laid great emphasis on values.