50 PEOPLE

"Probably the happiest period in life is one's middle

age. When the eager passions of youth are cooled, and the infirmities of age

have not yet begun. Like the shadows, which at morning and evening are so large,

but almost entirely disappear at midday"



-Thomas Arnold

Nothing better describes the state of the Indian IT industry as

it touches 50: it has never been happier in the half a century of its existence;

middle age blues do not seem to catch up with it; rather, its virility and

execution zeal has become a wonder for the whole world.

However, ultimately, no industry is ever complete without the

people who constitute its soul. It is no different with the Indian IT sector

too: from 1956 when the first digital computer came up at the Indian Statistical

Institute to 2006 when TCS crossed $3 bn in revenues. Ultimately it has been a

story of different people making their marks in their own ways-a fascinating

story of triumphs, achievements, disappointments and sometimes even failures.

But, thanks to the efforts of all these personalities, the industry might have

aged by 50 years, but in terms of maturity it has almost made a leap of 500

years.

Therefore, the celebration of the IT industry's golden jubilee

actually lies in celebrating the stories of these numerous generals,

lieutenants, colonels and foot soldiers who shaped these years. Since, for

obvious space and time constraints, it was not possible to delineate the

achievements of every one of them, Dataquest selected 50 eminent

personalities whom we felt were the most instrumental in shaping the 50 years of

Indian computing.

As with any selection procedure, there would obviously be names

missed out or some inclusions or exclusions that would cause intense debate.

Since we wanted to restrict the list to 50 only, our sincere apologies are due

to a number of eminent people we might have missed out-the names of Prof

Narsimhan, Prof Phatak, Dr Ramani or PP Gupta immediately come to mind.

Amongst the list of the elite 50, it has not only been industry

pioneers like Narayana Murthy, Premji or FC Kohli who find a place, we have

included a number of politicians, bureaucrats and academicians too. Unless

people like Rajiv Gandhi, Chandrababu Naidu or Pramod Mahajan showed the

political willingness that they did, or bureaucrats like N Vittal and Sam

Pitroda set the ball rolling, the industry would never come this far for lack of

policies. While bureaucrats might have framed the policies, nothing would have

happened without the efforts of lobbyists like Dewang Mehta and Kiran Karnik.

Not to forget a handful of eminent educationists, who especially

nurtured the industry in the first three decades of its growth and who have

found adequate representation here. While the industry has grown, everyone would

agree that this growth has been disproportionate between hardware and software-the

main reason why we've tried to highlight the pioneering efforts of hardware

manufacturers like Raj Saraf, Deepak Puri or Ajai Chowdhry among others.

There are people like Dadan Bhai (sadly no more), Vinay Bharat

Ram or Hemant Sonawala who have now either passed into oblivion or are in

virtual retirement; but that in any way should not detract us from acknowledging

what they achieved and how they helped shape up this industry. One sad

clarification: though women now constitute 30% of the workforce of the IT

industry, we could find only two representations, Neelam Dhawan and Revathy

Kasturi in this list. Hopefully, this anomaly would be redressed when some

future journalist would sit to compile the Dataquest list in the

centenary of Indian computing.

Rajneesh De



rajneeshd@cybermedia.co.in



Profiles compiled by Rajneesh De

& Shashwat Chaturvedi

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