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Opinion
Behind India's Rise as IT Power
Lies 25 Years of C-DOT
by Sam Pitroda
This month
marks the 25th anniversary of what is now widely acknowledged to be
India's first defining steps towards an information and communications
revolution. It was in August 1984 that the Centre for Development of
Telematics or C-DOT was set up with the specific intention of
indigenizing digital switching technology to meet India's unique
requirements.
At the celebratory level, all those who worked at C-DOT in one capacity
or another have come together on the Internet to create a virtual
community spread from America to Australia and India to Indonesia. Over
a thousand professionals have interacted from all over the world to
design a series of events to celebrate their work. This is a generation
of young professionals who believed in themselves 25 years ago and
focused on creating something unique from scratch for the nation as
opposed to merely copying western products from multinationals.
C-DOT was established as an independent society to help develop a series
of digital switching products to meet Indian requirements. Then we had
over two million phones for 750 million people. It used to take 15 years
to get a telephone connection. In the short span of 25 years India now
has close to 500 million phones. We are adding 10 to 15 million phones
every month. And a telephone connection can be obtained on your way to
buy grocery. C-DOT planted the right seeds for this information and
communication technology (ICT) revolution in the country a quarter
century ago. The spirit of private enterprise helped it grow to a
substantial industry. Now is a good time to review and reflect on what
was so unique about the C-DOT endeavour.
To begin with it was a big idea with an opportunity for generational
change. It was an idea which could affect people in urban and rural
areas in all walks of life and connect the nation in a very modern way.
It was crucial that this big idea was articulated in a manner that would
convince the political leadership of the day and compel it to commit to
realizing that dream. It required political will at the level of then
prime minister Rajiv Gandhi with national visibility, unconditional
support and egalitarian management approach. It also required
unconventional and selfless leadership at the helm of C-DOT with
clarity, simplicity and values.
The concept was to build indigenous Indian technology for digital
switching system with focus on rural connectivity, accessibility as
opposed to telephone density, ancillary industries and young talent with
new energy and new work culture, work ethics, work norms and work
values. The overall strategy was to design, develop and manufacture
products to suit Indian climate conditions, especially for rural
exchanges without air conditioning at substantially lower costs and at
the same time train human resource in ICT to manage, maintain and
develop products for the future.
C-DOT made a public commitment to develop products in 36 months for
Rs.36 crore. As a result of openness, transparency and public
accountability C-DOT was fortunate to get substantial support from
national and local media. Right from day one C-DOT focused on
public-private partnership with a clear understanding that the products
designed by C-DOT will be manufactured by public and private companies.
It will require support of the unions and new regulations. All of this
was not possible without organizational innovation where hierarchies
were systematically broken, young people were empowered with autonomy,
freedom, and flexibility, to work long hours and give their best. The
mood at work was upbeat with a mission to help build information
infrastructure for India. Young people were systematically shielded from
the day-to-day bureaucratic bottlenecks. It was their energy,
self-confidence, hard work and can-do mentality which were the key to
delivering various products.
The first product was a small rural exchange to connect villages.
Thereafter a small PBX was delivered for the business community. Then
came a medium-sized 2,000-line digital exchange, a 16,000-line exchange
and eventually a 40,000-line large exchange to meet urban needs. All of
this was achieved with young talent whose average age was 23 years
without any experience or background in digital communications
technologies. Most of them were right out of colleges like IITs with no
experience but a dream to help build the nation. Today over 20 million
lines of C-DOT exchanges are in service. The rural exchanges were used
to provide STD/PCO to improve access to telephones nationwide. Because
of the perceived benefit of STD/PCO to masses, the privatization of
telecom had little resistance in India.
C-DOT was essentially a bypass to the legacy system which was full of
bureaucracy, vested interests, large unions, confused priorities and
political interference. It was clear then that to plant any new ideas
and initiatives in the Indian system, bypass was essential with
catalysts to engender out-of-the-box thinking. If the same new
experiment had been initiated within the Department of Telecom as one of
the projects it would have been killed instantly. Rajiv Gandhi
understood and appreciated the bypass mechanism to expedite the process
of development. In fact, the Technology Missions that he launched
related to rural drinking water, immunization, literacy, edible oils,
dairy development and telecom were essentially a bypass mechanism with
measurable milestones, deliverables, clarity and mission directors to
help accomplish specific objectives with the support of the central and
state governments.
Twenty five years ago the system was very resistant to new ideas from
outside. The C-DOT experiment was seen with a great deal of suspicion
and there were many multinational lobbying groups constantly trying to
kill the initiative. C-DOT was seen by multinational companies as a
direct threat to their business interests in India. It survived due to
the political will of the prime minister and it got accomplished simply
due to the energy of the young.
It is gratifying that despite many ups and downs, C-DOT stuck to its
mandate steadfastly and created telecom infrastructure in areas of the
country which suffered from woeful neglect until then. In many ways
C-DOT became the signature project of India's quest for modernization
and infused in a technologically diffident nation new vigor. C-Dot was
also an experiment in problem solving to make generational change with
scalable and sustainable systems to improve lives of the masses in
India. It is for technology historians to make a definite judgement but
in my limited, and admittedly subjective, view C-DOT stands at the
vanguard of India's rise as an information and communications
powerhouse. The C-DOT journey is a tribute to Rajiv Gandhi and the
energy of the young engineers. It is also a tribute to the system that
allowed the bypass to give new life and new meaning to connecting India.
However, we have a long way to go. The next big challenge is to benefit
from the ICT revolution to improve education, health, agriculture,
financial services and governance to bring growth and prosperity to the
doorsteps of the people at the bottom of the pyramid.
(Sam Pitroda is chairman of India's
Knowledge Commission. He was head of C-Dot and chaired the various
technology missions set up by late prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. He can
be contacted at sam.pitroda@c-sam.com)
IANS | August
14,
2009
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