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"Our work of a decade-and-a-half has made us experience the relentless attempts of the system to tire out the protestor, the dissenter, the victim. Therefore, today’s award I dedicate to one man within the Indian system, who stood — and still stands — mighty in the face of a murderous and vindictive Gujarat administration…Mass murder, mass rape and mass arson were allowed in Gujarat by a complicit and participatory administration and police force. Many police officers stood out. But only one man has remained a stoic and principled dissenter until today, refusing to cave in even as weeks lapsed into months and months into years. (He) is not a victim; he did not lose a family member. He does not hail from the victim community. His only quality is that he refused to sit by and let the mass crimes planned at the highest level go unchallenged. He documented  the illegal and unconstitutional orders spat out  by  (chief minister) Mr (Narendra) Modi in a meti­culously maintained personal diary. He filed well-documented affidavits before the ongoing Nanavaty-Shah Commission. He suffered for these acts by being denied due promotion to the post of Director General of Police, Gujarat,  the highest post in his field  that as a policeman and thrice Presidential Award winner for bravery, he would and should aspire to. He faced attempts to browbeat him in and out of courts. He and his wife live socially and politically ostracized… Mr R. B. Sreekumar, Additional Director General of Police, state of Gujarat, I salute you!”

The ringing peroration by Teesta Setalvad, the winner of the 2006 Nani A. Palkhivala Award for the Preservation and Protection of Civil Liberties in India, brought the packed Tata Theatre to its feet in a standing ovation on January 15, 2007. For the second year the award instituted by the Nani A. Pakhivala Memorial Trust (NAPMT) featured individual battles for justice against the horrific riots in Gujarat when an entire community became the victim of mob violence  because a couple of bogies of the train returning with karsevaks from Ayodhya had caught fire. It still remains to be proved that the fire at Godhra station was indeed an act of arson.

In his preamble to the presentation of the award former Chief Justice of India Justice S. P. Bharucha had noted, "Her courage merits the highest approbation…Nani would have been very happy that this year’s award for the protection and preservation of civil liberties should go to Teesta Setalvad…It would have pleased him all the more that in the fourth generation the Setalvad family was still serving the cause of the law.”

Though Setalvad’s acceptance speech concentrated substantially on the Gujarat carnage, the citation read by  NAPMT member secretary Shirin Bharucha noted, "Teesta has, at no small risk to herself and with courage beyond her years, worked tirelessly to protect the civil liberties and human rights of the deprived. She has through her fearless writings and actions spoken out and moved the courts against the many social ills and discriminations  that plague us…The journal Communalism Combat, of which she is co-editor, analytically studies the mainstream media, exposing fearlessly the underlying cause of events. Her project ‘Khoj’ runs an educational program advocating a tolerant plural society reaching out to as many as possible in order to create equality and an understanding of everyone’s inherent, inviolable human rights…

"(From) Teesta’s actions following the Gujarat atrocities in 2002…has emerged  the organization Citizens for Justice in Gujarat to spearhead the struggle for justice there. The group created by her along with fellow journalists has played a role in raising the debate on the inequities of society which fester just below the surface, erupting in violence at the slightest provocation. The data they have accumulated is a mine of valuable information on the violation of human rights and civil liberties.”

Setalvad recalled how Palkhivala had associated with Communalism Combat in its nascent years. "In response to one of the darkest moments... Bombay has lived through, December 1992 and January 1993, he sat alongside the inimitable and unique, the late H. M. Seervai to speak to the then President of India to ‘call out the army.’ When a subsequent government in the state reaped the benefits of hate politics and in a stroke of executive arrogance scrapped the Justice Srikrishna commission of inquiry investigating  the mass murder and police complicity behind the violence,  Palkhivala stepped down from Bombay House and along  with another captain of industry S. P. Godrej joined us in the nationwide protest that was one of the citizens’ actions that eventually led to the reinstatement of the commission.” She also made a strong plea for the underfed, under nourished third of the country that have been forced into antisocial activities by "narrow and aggressive definitions of patriotism” and "unprofessional if not biased  conduct in the law and order machinery.”

With the increasing activities of the NAPMT, this time the annual event to honor Palkhivala’s memory had three distinct aspects — the award, the launch of Nani A. Palkhivala: A Life, the official biography by M. V. Kamath commissioned by the Trust, as well as the memorial lecture ­— "Making Globalization Work for India” by N. R. Narayana Murthy, the chairman and chief mentor of Infosys Technologies Limited —  the fourth in the series.

In his opening remarks NAPMT chairman Yezdi Malegam thanked the three outstanding personages who constituted the panel of judges for the award ­— former chief justices of India M. N. Venkatachaliah and Bharucha, and industrialist Anu Aga. In the context of the biography Malegam noted that the Trust had been fortunate to secure the services of two individuals who had known Palkhivala well. Kamath, a journalist of standing for more than 40 years, had been the Washington correspondent of The Times of India when Palkhivala was India’s ambassador to the US. Ashok Chopra, CEO of Hay House India,  had published Palkhivala’s book, We, the Nation, and had offered to publish the biography as his contribution for the respect and regard he had for Nani. Malegam noted that 1,000 copies of the biography had been earmarked for distribution to educational institutions.

In a brief acknowledgement Kamath stated that he considered it a great privilege and honor to have been selected for the task. Thanking the Trust and all the individuals who gave of their time and delved into their memory he noted, "There are so many people alive who knew Nani well. Hence it made my task that much more difficult!” (See book review, "Palkhivala’s perceptions,” pg 224)

Introducing the main speaker, Malegam commended Murthy not only for spearheading India’s entry in the world as a source of IT professionalism but for his social consciousness, intellectual integrity, independence and courage in commenting on social issues.

"The only way we can eradicate poverty in India is by creating jobs with disposable income,”  noted Murthy, pointing out the enormity of the problem: 250 to 300 million unemployed, their number increasing  by 35 to 40 million new job seekers aged between 18 and 25 each year, 70 percent of whom are illiterate or barely literate. "As against this, the country has been able to generate hardly two or three million jobs a year.” Also, he pointed out,  650 million Indians depend on agriculture and related services and their income is less than a dollar (Rs 45) per day requiring that they be moved into other economic activities, preferably industrial production for export markets as most other progressive developing countries have done.

A few Murthyisms: "My interactions with many foreigners tell me that Indians are low on humility…While discussions and debates are needed, our leaders have to accept that the surest path to failure is trying to please everybody… Our politicians say one thing when they are in government and exactly the opposite when they are in opposition… Instead of becoming emotional on issues, we should use data to come to conclusions. That is why, at Infosys, we believe and act according to the adage: ‘In God we trust, everybody else brings data to the table’…To improve the quality of education in both primary and higher education... we must liberalize the education sector like we liberalized the industrial sector in 1991... There is no linkage between performance and reward in our governments... The mindset is administrative,  i.e. maintaining status quo. It should become managerial which is all about progress based on completing tasks on time, within budgeted cost and to the satisfaction of the customers…The bureaucrats must have a small fixed salary and large variable salary  which will depend on the progress of the projects handled…

"We should encourage growth in business,” Murthy said, "by reducing friction to business and not by tax incentives. As Nani said, ‘To every economic policy and legislation we must apply the acid test — how far will it bend the talent, energy and time of our people to fruitful  ends and how far will it  dissipate them in coping with legal inanities and a bumbling bureaucracy’… If need be, we should not hesitate to raise both corporate and personal tax rates to 50 percent of the income as long as we install a mechanism to ensure that the money is used properly.”

The Tata Theatre was packed with young people who had come to hear Murthy speak and they applauded him heartily. As NAPMT trustee Deepak Parekh noted in his vote of thanks, Murthy "wrote his legend with the pen of determination and the ink is still not dry. He carried along this flow  people who believed in innovation and his brand of diligence. India will hold him above the firmament  as one of its citizens that did credit to its shores.” Noting the many college and management students  in the audience, Parekh added, "This augurs well for the future of the country.”