Figuring out what not to do is often more important than doing something. I have a telegram delivery postman to thank for this realisation.
The late super lawyer JB Dadachanji, Rothschild and myself had been mandated by the Govt of India to corporatise Dept of Telecom. This was to create BSNL. One contentious task involved having to sack 80,000 telegram delivery postmen. The CPI chief came to meet the then DoT secretary Vinod Vaish, telecom minister Ram Vilas Paswan and myself. His argument was potent and simple “the fire brigade personnel play volleyball all day. They play so that they are fit to run in the event of a fire. You don’t make them sweep the streets just because there is no fire.”
IITac was almost ready to launch an indigenous mRNA vaccine. We were ahead of both Pfizer and Moderna. I had visited every mfg facility in India. IITac had the best team in the world. And this included the legendary Arindam Bose, former CTO of Pfizer – the man who had created the original mRNA platform.
And then a young PhD made a statement that shook me, “if you sponsored free food distribution – and those who ate it died of food poisoning – would this be an act of murder or philanthropy”.
We opted out of vaccines. It was the greatest decision we made during covid.
