Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu has recalled studying at IIT with Raju Narayana Swamy, a brilliant student who would go on to become an IAS officer. Vembu was responding to a viral X post about Swamy’s career and his anti-corruption crusade.
In his post, Vembu recalled Swamy’s academic brilliance and his decision to stay back in India even as most other IIT classmates went abroad. Both Swamy and Sridhar Vembu studied computer science at IIT Madras.
“Raju Narayana Swamy was my classmate in IIT Madras. He also had a very high rank in IIT JEE 1985, my recollection was AIR 10 and he came from small town Kerala and most top rankers were from the big cities so he stood out,” Vembu recalled.
“Most of our classmates – including me – went abroad. He chose to stay in India,” added the founder of Zoho.
Who is Raju Narayana Swamy?
Raju Narayana Swamy is an IAS officer of the Kerala cadre. He topped the UPSC civil services exam in 1991.
Born into a middle-class family in Ulloor, Thiruvananthapuram in 1968, Swamy obtained a B.Tech. in Computer Science from IIT Madras in 1989. He ranked first in his class.
Despite a full scholarship from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he opted to stay in India and study for the UPSC exam.
The viral post on X, to which Vembu responded, attributed this decision to Swamy’s urge to serve the people of his country. “He had a computer science degree from IIT Madras. MIT offered him a scholarship. He turned it down. He said the poorest Indians had paid for his IIT education through their taxes. He owed them something back,” the post said.
Swamy topped the notoriously difficult UPSC examination and joined the Kerala Cadre in 1991.
Anti-corruption crusade
Raju Narayana Swamy’s career is marked by several transfers, allegedly because of his refusal to turn a blind eye towards corruption.
A post on the IIT Kanpur website reads: “Dr. Raju Narayana Swamy is an IAS officer highly known for his staunch stand against corruption. His relentless fight against illegal land dealings, real-estate businessmen and political bureaucrats comes from his ‘stubborn’ nature, as he likes to put it, when things turn ‘unjustifiable’. His career may be marked with political controversies, but he has found immense support from the common man.”