Narayana Murthy has a solution to end poverty in India. And it's not freebies

Infosys Co-Founder N R Narayana Murthy on Wednesday said job creation by innovative entrepreneurs, and not freebies, will help eliminate poverty. Speaking at the Tiecon Mumbai 2025 event here, Murthy exhorted entrepreneurs to focus on creating more businesses.

Poverty will "vanish" like dew on a sunny morning if we are able to create innovative enterprises, he added.

"I have no doubt that each of you will create hundreds of thousands of jobs and that is how you solve the problem of poverty, you don't solve the problem of poverty by freebies, no country has succeeded in that," Murthy said, addressing the entrepreneurs' grouping.


At present, India feeds 80 crore people through monthly cash transfers. The comments from the renowned business leader come as a debate rages on freebies and their costs.

Later, Murthy clarified that he does not know much on politics or governance, but gave some recommendations from a policy framework perspective.

He said there need to be incentives or things which are asked in return against the benefits extended.

Giving the example of free electricity of up to 200 units a month, Murthy said the state can do random surveys at the end of six months in such households to check if the children are studying more or if the parents' interest in the child has gone up.

Meanwhile, the IT services company's co-founder also said most of the artificial intelligence solutions sold these days are "silly, old programmes" touted as futuristic work.

AI consists of machine learning and deep learning abilities, he added.