Read Bhagavad Gita several times in US prison: Rajat Gupta

NEW DELHI: India-born former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta, who served 19 months in US jail for insider trading, Tuesday said he fell back on Bhagavad Gita during his stint in the prison.

Gupta was sentenced to two years in prison after being found guilty in 2012 of passing confidential boardroom information about Goldman Sachs to the then hedge fund manager and founder of the Galleon Group Raj Rajaratnam, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison for insider trading.

"I had Bhagavad Gita with me (in prison).... Although I was familiar with Bhagavad Gita, I had the chance to read it several times and some ideas of Bhagavad Gita helped me to cope with solitary confinement punishment of 8 weeks," he said while discussing his book titled 'Mind Without Fear' organised by The Circle.

Gupta further said that he does not feel bitter about friends who treated him unfairly.

He was released from prison in 2016.

India-born Gupta, a former IIT alumnus, said that talent is India's biggest exports, "we are great in information technology (IT) services but we have not created truely global brand like Google or Facebook," he noted.

On India's education system, Gupta pointed out that IITs/IIMs have excelled but they have draconian selection process.

"The value addition by IITs/IIMs may not be as high as we like to be, as none of the IITs are in top 100 engineering colleges in the world.... There is need of reforming and scaling up the IIT system," he said.

Gupta said that although India is the fastest growing major economy, the country's economic growth rate is perhaps 'not high enough' in terms of job creation.

"Think about whatever they said, statistics you believe or not believe, the point is the job growth probably is not as much as we need" Gupta said.

According to Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Asian Development Bank (ADB), India is projected to grow at 7.2 per cent in 2019-20.