Successful entrepreneurship is about a lot many things, but none perhaps more important than having an idea. Everything else?the money, the work, the toil?follows the idea. If the idea is original and workable, the rest will follow. If the idea is flawed, or indeed if there isn?t an idea at all, the rest is irrelevant.
Sam Pitroda, who makes a return to government as advisor to the PM on infrastructure, innovation and information, is an entrepreneur par excellence, a man with brilliant ideas which he can then make work with equal panache in the private (for profit) sphere and in the public (not for private profit) sphere.
To most people, from within and outside the system of government, being assigned the rank of a cabinet minister would be an irresistible allure. But for Sam Pitroda, it is likely to be incidental. Because occupying office and acquiring the trappings of power in themselves have never been a motivation enough for this serial entrepreneur, who never seems satiated by success. If they were, his personal proximity to the first family of the Congress party?Rahul Gandhi, in particular, leans on his father?s friend for advice?could have got him those more directly.
Like many other ?techies? from his generation?he was born in 1942?he went to a US university to complete his education and then began his tryst with telecom and computing in the 1960s and 1970s while settled in the US. Primarily an engineer, he actually designed and patented a number of innovations in the telecom and computing sphere. Unlike many research oriented engineers though, he was successful in turning his ideas into successful business ventures.
Also, unlike many other Indian ?techies? in the US, he actually chose to give up his multi-million dollar business empire, arguably at its peak, and returned to India in 1984 to head up C-DOT, a new (and autonomous) research body for telecommunications set up by the Government of India.
It was here, with the full support of the young Rajiv Gandhi, he brought about India?s first telecom revolution. Now, in the era of cheap mobile phones and even cheaper mobile tariffs, the PCO revolution of the 1980s seems insignificant. However, it was as significant as the mobile revolution given the available technologies at that time. The STD-ISD booths, which one still sees commonly even in a city like Delhi, took telephones to people who never had access to them before. Sure, it wasn?t a one phone for every person sort of revolution, but it was a one phone for every area revolution. And that in many cases, at least till mobile phones came, was very effective?low cost and vast reach.
Pitroda might well have gone on to herald more revolutions had he not left the government and the country after Rajiv Gandhi lost power and the next government refused to grant him the autonomy that was so necessary for efficient work within the government setup.
Curiously enough, the next task he was to take up in government, some 15 years later, as head of the National Knowledge Commission, did much to promote the cause of autonomy?in the functioning of educational institutions. The Knowledge Commission gave an impressive array of recommendations on various aspects of India?s knowledge economy. The Commission?s report on higher education which calls for an independent regulator and more autonomy to institutions from government is the blueprint for reform in UPA-II, and was mentioned prominently in President Pratibha Patil?s most recent address to Parliament after the new government took office. Pitroda, from his own experience of studying and researching in India and the US, would have been familiar with the constraints faced by Indian researchers, particularly in the sciences and engineering, which are the most crucial for technological advance.
Now, as advisor to the PM on infrastructure, innovation and information, he probably has his broadest mandate in government to date. The three I?s are critically important for India as we recover from this recession and aspire to return to a 9% growth trajectory. It is still quite telling how little we have been able to use our relative prowess in information technology to deliver public goods and bypass some of the physical infrastructure hurdles that hobble the development project in India. Some of the work on how to improve this was done by the National Knowledge Commission. Much more needs to be done to turn ideas into policy action. And no one in India perhaps knows how to convert good ideas into successful action, or indeed revolution, like Sam Pitroda does. Welcome back, Uncle Sam.