Sam Pitroda: Lifetime Achievement Award 2002

If there’s one man who built the foundation of the revolution in telephony
usage in India in the last two decades of the 20th century, it is Sam Pitroda.

His vision, and his technology, helped connect the people of India–in its
far-flung regions and remotest corners, to each other and to the world. When the
developed world saw a resource-strained country heading toward a billion people
separated by large distances, it saw a tele-density gap nearly impossible to
bridge. Looking at the same mammoth problem, Sam Pitroda saw access, not tele-density,
as the solution.

He visualized a countrywide network of thousands of phone booths to provide
this access. He battled conventional wisdom and lobbies that questioned why
impoverished people needed telecom.

Pitroda has been a crusader for long. As a young man, he battled stiff
opposition from the ‘roti, kapda aur makaan’ lobby, which was against the
concept of a ‘connected’ India. But this young man stood his ground, making
the case that telecommunication–along with substantial food, clean water and
adequate shelter–was a fundamental component in the process of modernization.
The smattering of bright yellow STD PCO boxes in India today, is a manifestation
of his efforts.

Timeline: Sam Pitroda, WorldTel
	Sam Pitroda was born in Titilagarh Orissa.
	He did his schooling from Anand Vallabh Vidyalaya in Gujarat.
	He did his Masters in physics and electronics in Baroda.
	In the mid 60s, he went to the US and did his masters in electrical engineering.
	In 1966, he got a job in GTE, Chicago, which focussed on digital communications.
	In 1974, he left GTE and started his own company called Wescom Switching in Chicago, which was sold to Rockwell International six years later.
	He joined Rockwell where he was head of telecom and stayed with Rockwell for three years.
	In 1981, Pitroda returned to India and founded the Center for Development of Telematics in 1984.
	In 1987 he became Chief Technology Advisor to the late Prime Minister Rajeev Gandhi.
	In 1989 he was elected first chairman of India’s Telecom Commission, where he was responsible for all aspects of national and international Telecom and over 500 000 employees.
	After his stint in India, Pitroda went back to the US and worked on WorldTel, an organization initiated by ITU to help develop telecom infrastructure in developing countries. Currently, he is the chairman of WorldTel.

Pitroda’s tenacity helped create the concept and technology behind the
network of ‘STD/PCO’ phone booths across the country, in every village. The
600,000 booths, providing employment for a million people, today dot the
remotest regions of India. This model is unique in the world, unparalleled to
this day.

The basic technology behind this network was simple and cheap. Created by
Pitroda’s team at the Center for Development of Telematics, which he founded
in 1984, it was a device that displayed the phone call cost and generated an
instant bill at the user’s end, instead of at the telephone exchange. This
changed Indian telephony. In revolutionizing the state of telecom in India, he
also created a model for other developing nations. Along the way, he also
notched up over 50 patents, for digital switching, synchronization, tone
generation, tone receiving, conferencing, and 10 of them for m-commerce.

Along the way, this crusader also notched up over 50 patents. On the
m-commerce front, Pitroda has ten patents to his credit and is currently working
on an ‘electronic wallet’, which would have all kinds of cards–credit
card, debit card, health card, insurance card, and even the driving license.
Everything is stored electronically and delivered over the air. "The future
lies in electronic payment systems. The payment systems that exist are obsolete.
It would make such good sense for the Indian government to deposit the salaries
of its employees in a bank straight away, cutting out the logistics of writing
out checks and waiting in queues to deposit them. The same goes for the payment
of electricity and telephone bills," says Pitroda.

Under Pitroda, C-DoT’s key contribution was the RAX, or rural automatic
exchange–small, cheap and robust phone switches that helped take telephony to
rural India, forming its telecom backbone.

Sam Pitroda then moved on to helping shape telecom policy. In 1987, he was
appointed advisor to the Prime Minister of India, with the rank of minister on
national technology missions. In 1989, he became the first chairman of India’s
Telecom Commission, responsible for all aspects of telecom legislation and
development for the country.

Back in the US, in 1995, Pitroda founded WorldTel–a global organization
backed by the ITU–to help develop telecom infrastructure in less developed
countries, as CEO and subsequently as Chairman. Today, as India begins to use
infotech for administration, it is the telecom network’s reach and usage that
it depends on. If not for Pitroda’s vision and his team’s technology, this
network would have been much smaller, and the IT revolution would have been
later in the coming.

Born in Titilagarh, Orissa, Pitroda did his Masters in Physics and
Electronics from Baroda.

Pitroda grew up in a large family with seven brothers and sisters. His father
had studied till just grade four, but believed in letting his children do what
they wanted to, which helped in the grooming of the young Pitroda. His greatest
asset is the friend circle that is spread across different countries. In fact,
he has a collection of over 20,000 business cards. Ironically, this father of
the Indian telecom revolution first used a telephone only after moving to the US
to study electrical engineering. "Since the fascination of that first call,
my dream was to set up small, rural exchanges and connect my country," he
says.

Soon after this first phone call, came Pitroda’s transition to working on
digital switch technology at GTE. After spending ten years in GTE Inc, Chicago,
he started a company, Wescom Switching, in 1974, later sold to Rockwell, where
he was became head of telecom. In the early 1980s, he began to dream of wiring
up India. His dreams crystallized later to providing access, and setting up
cheap rural exchanges. In the course of a decade, he turned those dreams into
reality. C -DOT found its true moorings and moved along the path to success.
With the setting upof C-DoT, he introduced small, rural exchanges to India and
brought the telephone to some of the world’s most previously isolated regions.
With about 40,000 exchanges totaling about 20 million telephone lines installed
in India, C-Dot exports in bulk to about 22 countries such as Vietnam,
Bangladesh, Nepal, Ethiopia, Nepal, Ghana, Uganda. C-DOT sells its design
licenses to about 20 different Indian equipment manufacturers. Instead of
spending that decade building up a profitable corporation, he connected and
transform a country. And for that decade, he did not take a salary.

Pitroda is also a founding member of the World Telecommunications Advisory
Council of the ITU in Geneva. He is also adviser to Kofi Annan on the ICT
Advisory Committee. He is the recipient of India’s National Citizen’s Award
for work on telecom from the Prime Minister of India. In 1993, he was awarded
the IIT Alumni Medal, and in 1995 the International Distinguished Leadership
Award.

It is for connecting India and helping provide phone access to a billion
people, and building a foundation for a wired India’s future as an information
industry powerhouse, Dataquest has presented the IT Lifetime Achievement Award
for 2002 to Sam Pitroda.

Team DQ

Time for the Harvest

A host of government initiatives are piggybacking on the nationwide PCO
network that Sam Pitroda conceived

Come 2003 and you can walk into the nearest PCO wallah, flash your 32-KB chip
and complete your banking transaction.

Hold on, if you thought this was some new service that banks in India are
going to launch. Thank the department of information technology (DIT) and the
Reserve Bank of India instead, which plans to roll out these services as part of
its financial application based pilot project for smart card implementation in
India.

In fact, the RBI has also decided to issue a speciaA host of government
initiatives are piggybacking on the nation-wide PCO network Sam Pitroda
conceivedl directive enabling 22,500 PCOs across the country to act as
multifunctional service delivery points (SDPs). As per earlier RBI guidelines,
only banks can function as SDPs. However, the decision to amend this rule was
taken keeping in mind the high penetration and accessibility factors of PCOs
that are essential for the success of this roll out.

The pilot project proposes to upgrade 22,500 PCOs to act as multifunctional
service delivery points (SDPs) having smart cards based payment system and
acting as franchises of various banks. Each PCO booth would be upgraded with a
telephone terminal, an Internet appliance, and two pocket sized e-purse-only
terminals.

The respective PCO owners will have accounts with a bank where they will
deposit the cash thus collected, and will be paid a service charge in lieu. The
project is primarily aimed at benefiting the poorest of the poor–a bhaji walih
for instance, can go to any of these PCOs authorized by the banks as an outlet
and complete her transaction. She may chose to pay back her loan on a daily
basis, instead of the normal monthly EMI that usually is difficult to pay for
most people below the poverty line.

Shubhendu Parth and Sudarshana Banerjee

CNS

Crystal-gazing by the Master

l Sam Pitroda’s
vision of what information technology can do for India…

IT is not about software exports or Internet access but a whole new way of
doing things. It is badly needed in the country. I would like the IT revolution
to change work culture and work values. IT has the potential to bring about
openness, democratization and decentralization. It can bring about a change in
our political system, our bureaucracy, judiciary, banking systems and make the
very functioning of our country open and user friendly.

If I need to set up a business, I should be able to do it in an hour with a
computer and Internet connection at my disposal. All approvals and processes
should be done online. Why should I wait for some babu to be available to get
things rolling? Why should he be a gatekeeper? I want IT to question
fundamentals in India. It is a historic opportunity for a nation to leave behind
all that has held back rapid development so far. I want IT to throw all that and
create a new India.

l And what
does Sam Pitroda contributing to this new India?

Nothing. If I don’t have a big enough role in this scheme of things, I do
not want to give up my time for any projects. I am 60 years old now, I probably
have only 10 years of life left and I don’t want to fritter it away on small
things. If I can’t bring about a generational change, I am not interested in
spending three of those 10 years on any committee. I am not being arrogant, but
practical.