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Ms Middle Finger

Sunit Arora

INDRA Nooyi, among the world’s most powerful women in business, is disarmingly frank when asked about the constant noise around her becoming— sometime in the not-too-distant future—the next head of the $27-billion foods and beverages giant that is PepsiCo.

‘‘I’m pretty happy doing what I’m doing these days, what comes, comes,’’ said the 46-year-old President and CFO at PepsiCo during a media interaction in India a couple of months ago.

While her reply was suitably Karmic, in keeping with her Indian origin and audience, she would do well to re-work the mantra to ‘‘what comes, goes’’ in the fervent hope that the ‘‘middle-finger’’ storm quickly blows over.

To recap, Nooyi used the analogy of the raised middle finger to warn graduating students of Columbia Business School of how the world views the US, a country she lives and works in.

For the moment, at least, Nooyi is like a deer caught in the headlights of an America that is questioning her patriotism (the US is at war, remember), her timing (‘‘When hundreds of families gather on a day to honour the hard work and achievements of students’’), and her attitude (‘‘This savaging of the hand that feeds you well...it’s abhorrent’’).

While an apology has been quickly made, the obvious questions remain: did the soft-spoken but firm Nooyi speak out to provoke or to sensitize? Was she swayed by her location in liberal New York or would she have made the same speech at a invocation of the University of Texas at Austin? Did she forget that the products she sells are America’s largest export to the world?

Nooyi is far too intelligent to have simply thrown her comments at an audience celebrating a quintessential American moment, but clearly her background and thinking suggest that she would have wanted to impart more than one of those ‘‘50
lessons for life’’ homilies.

BORN and brought up in India, living and working in the US, successfully climbing steep corporate ladders and representing a transnational corporation all over the world, Nooyi, like many senior managers today, sees herself as a citizen of the world.

In fact, when asked about her message for young Indian managers, she said, ‘‘They should think global and learn languages. For instance, while in India, I learnt French, German and Italian, and this has been one of the wisest decisions I have made.’’

Indeed, this graduate of Madras Christian College and IIM-Calcutta has come a long way. After spending the first 23 years of her life in India, she has worked in a variety of firms, Boston Consulting, Motorola and ABB, before joining PepsiCo in 1994.

And she has never shied away from her Indian origins. ‘‘I remind them (top Pepsi management) of India everyday,’’ she famously said during her last trip to India. There’s more than just rhetoric here: she — along with Victor Menezes, Rajat Gupta, Vinod Khosla and Parag Saxena — have worked on a report to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on how India can hike annual FDI inflows to $10 billion.

Whatever her reasons, then, Nooyi clearly sought to bring this global view to an audience of students, American and overseas. Surely, many Americans know that large sections of the world see them as arrogant, among other things. But many things — including the ability to handle criticism — have changed post 9/11.

Ultimately, what has got Nooyi into trouble (and no, rapidly-disseminated blogs, or online journals, are just the medium here) is that she is seen as speaking for a large transnational that is exporting products and jobs to the rest of the world.

Mini-nations that they are seen to be, transnationals too require diplomats at the helm—in the global village, and at home. Finally, will this mis-adventure on the lawns of Columbia arrest Nooyi’s chances to further glory in the land of opportunity? If it does, it would indeed be a pity.