Sudha Murty

Overview

Sudha Murty, born 19 August 1950 in Shiggaon in Karnataka, is an Indian educator, author and philanthropist, and the founder chairperson of the Infosys Foundation. She is married to N. R. Narayana Murthy, one of the founders of Infosys, and was nominated to the Rajya Sabha on 8 March 2024 for her work in social welfare and education.^[1]

She began her career as an engineer, working on computer systems before moving into teaching and then into philanthropy and writing. She has published novels, short story collections, travel books, memoirs and technical books in Kannada and English, and her writing is widely read in Indian schools.^[1]

Her public work sits in three places: libraries and education, rural development and public health, and the conservation of Indian classical texts. She is a member of the public health initiatives of the Gates Foundation, and she established the Murty Classical Library of India at Harvard University to publish translations of classical Indian literature.^[1]

Milestones

1. 1950Born in Shiggaon, Haveri district, the daughter of a surgeon and a schoolteacher.
2. 1972Completes a degree in electrical and electronics engineering at BVB College of Engineering, now KLE Technological University.
3. 1974Joins TELCO as a development engineer, the first woman engineer hired by the company, after writing to its chairman about the men only hiring policy.^[1]
4. 1978Marries N. R. Narayana Murthy.^[1]
5. 1981Her savings provide the ₹10,000 with which Infosys is founded.^[1]^[2]
6. 1996Starts the Infosys Foundation and leads it for twenty four years.
7. 2001Dollar Bahu, her novel written in Kannada, is adapted as a television series by Zee TV.^[1]
8. 2006Awarded the Padma Shri for social work.^[1]
9. 2011The Murty Classical Library of India is established with Harvard University Press.^[1]
10. 2020Retires from the Infosys Foundation.^[1]
11. 2023Awarded the Padma Bhushan, and honoured among the Padma awardees announced that year.^[1]^[2]
12. 2024Nominated to the Rajya Sabha on 8 March for contributions to social work and education.^[1]

Engineering and the TELCO postcard

Murty studied electrical and electronics engineering at the BVB College of Engineering and then took a master's degree in computer science at the Indian Institute of Science. Applying to TELCO, then India's largest vehicle manufacturer, she was told the company did not hire women engineers, and she wrote a postcard to the chairman complaining about it. The result was an interview and a job as a development engineer, working in Pune, Mumbai and Jamshedpur, and a place as the company's first woman engineer. She later worked as a senior systems analyst at the Walchand group and taught at Christ University.^[1][2][6][7]

Infosys Foundation

The Foundation, started in 1996, works on education, rural development, healthcare and the arts, and it is the vehicle through which she has built libraries, funded school facilities across Karnataka, supported sanitation programmes and restored heritage structures. She has described the work as a set of small, specific interventions rather than large announcements, and the interviews she gives on it are mostly about execution.^[1][7][8]

She retired as chairperson in 2020, having run the foundation for twenty four years, and remains associated with public health work as a member of the Gates Foundation's initiatives.^[1]

Writing

Her books include How I Taught My Grandmother to Read, Wise and Otherwise, Dollar Bahu and a long list of story collections and memoirs, written first in Kannada and often translated into English and other Indian languages. Dollar Bahu was adapted by Zee TV as a series in 2001, the story Runa became the Marathi film Pitruroon, and she has appeared in a Kannada film herself. She has also written travel writing and books on computing from her engineering years.^[1][4]

The Murty Classical Library of India, established in 2011 with Harvard University Press, publishes translations from Sanskrit, Tamil, Persian, Kannada and other classical Indian languages with the original text facing the translation, which is the most durable of her publishing projects.^[1]

Parliament and public life

Murty was nominated to the Rajya Sabha in March 2024, joining the small group of people brought into Parliament for work outside politics. Her public statements since have stayed close to her earlier subjects, education and health, and she has been a consistent voice on the position of women in Indian households and workplaces.^[1][3][5]

Views and public voice

Murty writes and speaks in plain, short sentences and uses her own family as the evidence, which is why she is read widely in Indian schools and quoted often in the press. Her subjects are the ones she has lived: a middle class girlhood in a small Karnataka town, the men only sign at a factory gate, household work that falls on women, and the habit of giving that she argues should be taught rather than announced.^[1][3][7]

She has been direct about the limits of philanthropy. Her position, stated repeatedly in interviews about the foundation's work in sanitation and heritage restoration, is that a funder should pay for something specific and then leave the running of it to people who live with it.^[7][8]

Recognition

• Padma Shri, 2006, for social work.^[1]
• Padma Bhushan, 2023, announced with that year's list of recipients.^[1][2]
• Rajya Sabha, nominated 8 March 2024 for contributions to social work and education.^[1]
• Murty Classical Library of India, her publishing project with Harvard University Press, established 2011.^[1]
• Infosys Foundation, founded 1996 and led by her until her retirement in 2020.^[1]

Writing and its reception

Her books are read as moral stories more than as literature, and they are reviewed on those terms: short narratives with a lesson, drawn from family and from the towns and villages she knows, published in Kannada first and translated afterwards. Dollar Bahu, about a family split between India and the United States, was adapted for television in 2001; Runa became the Marathi film Pitruroon; and she has appeared in a Kannada film herself.^[1][4][5]

That dual life, as an engineer who became a writer and a philanthropist who became a legislator, is the reason her entry on this directory is not filed only under literature. In Karnataka she is read as a public figure first and an author second.^[1]