Sushila Ravindranath finds that the man who gave us a low-cost wireless system in the 1990s is full of plans for transforming India once again

Dr Ashok Jhunjhunwala has just received yet another prestigious award?the Dronacharya award by the Chennai chapter of The Indus Entrepreneurs. This affable, unassuming professor of the Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Madras is the moving spirit behind India?s telecom revolution from 1994 onwards. In the late 1980s, Jhunjhunwala and his colleagues at IIT Madras formed the TeNeT Group (Telecommunications and Computer Networks) with a vision to develop low-cost technologies to enable telecom growth. In 1993, nobody believed him when he said India could be aiming at 100 million telephone lines in a decade. But with the coming together of technology, government policy, the media and the corporate sector, telecom happened. Jhunjhunwala and his group developed corDECT, an advanced, field-proven, wireless access system along with Midas Communication Technologies, a company incubated by them at IIT Madras. Not only was this the lowest-cost

wireless system in the late 1990s, its exchange and base station could work at 55 centigrade and it required less than 10% of power as

compared to other technologies prevalent at the time. It provided a complete wireless access solution for new and expanding telecom networks, with seamless integration of both voice and internet services.

Jhunjhunwala has also been mentoring young entrepreneurs and has supported 45 enterprises from IIT Madras. In 1998, he set up the Rural Technology Business Incubator to help enterprises with a social meaning, focusing on rural markets and the underprivileged. What is he currently preoccupied with? He tells me to drop in at his room at IIT for coffee and vadas. He really is pressed for time given constant travels and a million committee and board meetings. So when I drop in on a rainy Chennai afternoon, he asks me about what I think about the state of the nation. I tell him that there seems to be too much gloom and doom. ?This is the time to dream,? he says.

India is ready for another transformation as had happened15 years ago in telecom.?

Over hot coffee and hotter snacks Jhunjhunwala tells me he is currently looking at energy. ?Energy is going to be a major issue, particularly clean energy. In the next 15 years, we must aim to take care of 50% of the country?s power needs with photovoltaic technology. When I say 50%, I don?t mean today?s demand but the demand which will be there in 15 years. We have to look at specific needs, work in 10 different places and make this happen. I am confident we can achieve this in 15 years. And this will take India far ahead of others.? He is convinced that we need 5-6 dreams like this for any kind of transformation. Big dreams will connect people who want to be part of the transformation.

He recalls the time in the early 1990s when he and his colleagues dreamed out of the box to bring down the cost of land lines. One of the reasons why India wasn?t getting those phones was because the capital and operational

expenditures of telcos were so high that the revenue needed to break even was as much as R1,500 a month per rural home. ?Very, very few people in India can afford that. There was no question of reaching 100 million lines in that situation. We realised we needed to replace the copper local loop with something else. Going forward, we saw that a wireless local loop was our solution. At that time wireless was expensive. That was when we conceived of the corDECT wireless loop. We proved that wireless was the way to go in the future. Wireless brought down the cost of local loop by a factor of 4 or 5.? It was a period of fighting against all odds and of many people giving up their careers to work on this.

Another serious dream of Jhunjhunwala is to bring about a change in the education system. ?We have a large number of engineering colleges?almost 3,500?in the country. There is also equity in admissions. Today almost anybody can get into an engineering college. But sadly quality is lacking in many of them. We have a project for 1,000 reasonably good colleges. IIT faculty members, say 500 of them, can train 10,000 teachers. We will use and leverage technologies like video conferencing for these purposes. We can get young committed teachers. Fortunately pay scales are quite good today. Another project we are working on is setting up a Masters programme in Engineering Education. This MTech, which will be strong on education, will be conducted in the evenings and over weekends.? Jhunjhunwala says if each college has 25-30 good teachers, students will get inspired.

?These are dreams which will not be opposed by the political leadership. They are willing to fund projects which are capable of delivering.? In spite of the present despondent mood, money is available if there is a good programme. Whenever he feels depressed, he always thinks about how the situation was in 1981 when he returned to India. He recalls how he was told that he had to wait for years to get his Bajaj scooter. He still goes around in his updated Bajaj scooter in and around the

IIT campus.

Yet another dream in Jhunjhunwala?s list is to set up a 30-seater BPO in every Indian village. ?This will strengthen the village so much?. He sees people working in cities willing to work in their villages if infrastructure is there. ?These are early days but these are the kind of things we must do.? There are 13 rural engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu doing social networking projects in 55 villages in a couple of southern districts. There is

competition between the teams for the best project report. ?We have to inspire youngsters to work in rural areas.?

Jhunjhunwala is convinced that nurturing entrepreneurship is the best way to inspire young people. He says they must be willing to make mistakes and face multiple failures

before they succeed. When young persons

approach him, the first thing he asks is what their immediate obligations are. ?If they have to support parents and educate siblings, their risk-taking ability gets limited.? Today he finds many youngsters (whichever segment they come from) are more free from commitments as compared to 15 years ago. A little more prosperity has made this happen.

Jhunjhunwala is also pleased that 35% of the youngsters he has trained are women. ?That is transformation for you,? he says.