“if We Don't have Politics, We Will have War”

In a freewheeling interview with Forbes India through the Zoho Meeting app, Sridhar Vembu shares his views on a wide range of subjects, from the significance of Swadeshi and the imperative of politics, to changes in migration trends to leadership in a crisis. Edited excerpts:

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On the significance of ‘Swadeshi’ (make in India) in a recent Zoho initiative called Swadeshi Sankalp

Under this initiative, we launched tools and programmes for the education and government sectors of India to help them tide over the pandemic. Zoho’s current priority is to survive and serve.

India is at peace today because of our social institutions and families. I’ll give an example from my current location. There are many poor widows in this village and they are able to have a reasonably dignified life because they’re surrounded by friends and family. Not only that, their extended families are taking care of them. This is the local social solidarity that we can never lose, which in the West is largely lost, particularly in America’s atomised society. Such a person [a widow] in America would be all alone, she would have to face life’s miseries all by herself.

I would also like to say that global warming is real. All of this that we are currently facing, this pandemic is a wakeup call. It’s time to go backwards—back to smaller towns and villages, live closer to the roots, both human and our natural roots.

On whether tech founders like him should play a bigger role in governance and policy formulation