AI hub row: ‘No north-south politics please’, Sridhar Vembu tells Mohandas Pai
Accusing Centre of meting out step-motherly treatment to southern India, Pai had asked why Bengaluru was not selected as a destination for its AI hubs
Former Infosys director and venture capitalist TV Mohandas Pai’s social media post, demanding an answer from the Centre for not considering Bengaluru as a destination to set up AI Centres of Excellence (CoE) has drawn widespread criticism from industry peers including Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu, who urged the former to refrain from sparking north-politics over the issue.
Pai’s post came after Union Minister Dhamendra Pradhan on Tuesday (October 16) announced the establishment of three Artificial Intelligence (AI) CoEs at AIIMS and IIT-Delhi, IIT-Ropar (Punjab) and IIT-Kanpur (Uttar Pradesh). The minister said the CoEs would focus on healthcare, agriculture and sustainable cities.
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“Minister @dpradhanbjp nothing in Bengaluru, the technology capital of India? Why are you and @AshwiniVaishnaw ignoring the South in IT, ignoring Bengaluru?" Pai, the former CFO of Infosys, said in his post.
“Bengaluru voted for NDA but all we get is step motherly treatment. Citizens here are very angry and upset at you folks repeatedly ignoring us in the South! Are we children of a lesser God here?” he wrote.
Pai demands ranking criteria, slams Cong govt
In a barrage of posts, Pai demanded the government to release the ranking criteria and scoring used in the selection process for transparency.
He also asked the centre government why it is reluctant to loosen its purse strings and set up more AI hubs than the current three.
“Can you release your scoring and comments to the public Pl? Why this secrecy? It is surprising that instititions like @iitmadras and @iiscbangalore who stand out for the work in this area did not come on top. This is about Hi tech, futuristic, institutional capacity, eco system around institutions which matter for the output. Further the issue is with Minister@dpradhanbjp and Edu dept. why only 3 AI COE. If the issue is to take India forward there should be many more COE with India’s best institutions which lead in this area being included. Why be parsimonious in this area?” he posted.
Pai who tagged Prime Minister Narendra Modi, MPs Tejasvi Surya and Union minister HD Kumaraswamy and Nirmala Sitharaman in his post, also accused the Congress government in Karnataka of not investing enough in Bengaluru.
Selection based on thorough evaluation: Zoho CEO
Vembu, who said he was a co-chair of the committee which selected the three AI hubs, sought to clear Pai’s doubts on the issue.
In response to Pai’s posts, Vembu said members of the committee were predominantly from the south and the private sector and narrowed down on the hubs only based on “a very thorough evaluation of actual projects done”.
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“I want to respond to this because I was the Co-chair of the apex committee that decided the 3 AI Centres of Excellence. The committee itself had plenty of us from the South (probably the majority). Most of us came from the private sector and the Government did not tell us who we should select. We in the committee (again with so many of us from the South and so many from the private sector) did the selection based on a very thorough evaluation of actual projects done,” Vembu said.
‘Don’t bring in north-south arguments’
Vembu said that all the IITs based in the south couldn’t make the cut despite presenting strong proposals as the institutes that were selected “stood out in the end”.
“The responsibility for this decision on the AI Centres of Excellence should be with us in the committee and personally with me as co-chair and I beg people to not inject North-South politics in this IISc Bengaluru, IIT Chennai, NIT Calicut, IIT Hyderabad, IIT Mumbai all presented very strong proposals but the ones we selected stood out in the end. The committee was unanimous in this decision. We stand by our judgment,” he added.
“IISc and IIT-M are part of the AIIMS-led consortium for AI CoE on Health. The committee had distinguished people from both Bengaluru and Chennai. I went to IIT-M myself. Again I beg people to avoid the North-South arguments in this please,” Vembu said in another post.
Vembu was seconded by Google DeepMind director Manish Gupta, who said the decisions were taking for the country’s wellbeing.
“…I fully stand by our collective decisions. We made our decisions based on what we felt was good for India,” Gupta, who operates from Bengaluru said.
