"I am A Mother First": Indra Nooyi

Here is interesting insight from Indra Nooyi , Chairman & CEO of PepsiCo. who says she is a mother first, then a CEO and then a wife.

Asked about her priorities in life, the 51 year old CEO, of the $ 35 billion plus convenient foods and beverage giant which employs 168,000 people world wide, said “The order is mother, CEO and wife,”

Ms. Nooyi was participating in a discussion on “Women and Global Leadership” organised at the Yale Club of New York city as part of the ongoing Incredible India @ 60 celebrations.

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Educating a Kid in India

Quality education was and will always remain expensive. In recent years, education has become a big item in the expenditure basket. Primarily due to the huge increases in real estate, it has become much more expensive to establish and administer schools, especially in the big cities. The unbridled increase in school fees even led to the intervention of India’s Supreme Court which decreed a cap in school fees.

In this context, The Economic Times estimates that it would cost an average of Rs. 21 lakhs – at today’s prices- to educate a child through school till college.

The Columbia U Incident:Culture Clash

There is already a controversy on the recent visit of Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Columbia University. President Leo Bollinger’s opening remarks to his guest included his saying “Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator,” adding, “You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated.”

Whether such remarks befit a welcome to a guest is debatable and a matter of culture. I am not supporting Iran’s President in any way. Bollinger possibly thought it right to surface issues and deal with them upfront. His supporters would credit him with the courage to raise issues.

Others would question his stand and say that if he was so much against Ahmadinejad he should not have invited him in the first place. In certain cultures there is nothing more offensive than berating your guests.

The debate will rage for a few days. A thought: How would the US media and people have reacted if President Bush was given such a reception at Tehran University?