Fallen titan: Re-examining Rajat Gupta’s tainted legacy

McKinsey, the world’s foremost consulting company, so influential that it was referred to merely as The Firm. He was the first Asian and the first Indian to head the consulting giant during its glory years, when it still enjoyed a pristine reputation, before scandals like its advising of Purdue Pharma during the opioid epidemic and the Transnet affair in South Africa tarnished its name.During his sterling career, Gupta also helped set up institutions like the Indian School of Business (ISB) and the American India Foundation (AIF).

He sat on the boards of Goldman Sachs, Procter & Gamble, and AMR Corporation, and advised global philanthropic bodies, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, and the Rockefeller Foundation.According to letters written by Friends of Rajat Gupta—a cohort that included Mukesh Ambani, Bill Gates, Kofi Annan, and Nandan Nilekani—to the judge during his trial, Gupta was “a man of exceptional integrity, generosity, and service”.So who is the real Rajat Gupta? The man who, for 40 years, was one of India’s finest ambassadors, someone who had used his diligence and education to summit the world of business? Or the convicted felon who has spent the years after serving his term in near obscurity, shunned by colleagues and friends, with the institution he once led erasing his name from its alumni rolls?This month, he probably spent his 77th birthday quietly, contemplating what might have been.Gupta’s life started far away from Wall Street. Born in Kolkata in 1948 to a journalist father and a school teacher mother, he lost both parents by the age of 18.