Cover Story

Can Sam Pitroda spark India's overdue knowledge revolution

After more than a decade in the wilderness US-based multi-millionaire Satyen (‘Sam’) Pitroda, widely acknowledged as the author of India’s astonishing telecom revolution has been recalled to head the National Knowledge Commission. Its mission impossible: to transform the world’s most illiterate nation into a knowledge society. Dilip Thakore reports

National Knowledge Commission at full strength: big idea of monumental potential

Indeed the differentiating factor between the lead parties of the two coalitions is that for all its numerous faults — perhaps because of its secular credentials — the Congress party attracts high calibre intellectuals who dream big and produce great ideas, even if they suffer in implementation. On the other hand during the five-year term (1999-2004) of the BJP-led coalition, its intelligentsia wasted its energies plotting regressive agendas which turned the electorate against the NDA government.

Now from deep within the inner councils of the Congress party comes another big idea of monumental potential, offering the exciting vision of transforming India — which currently harbours the largest number of illiterates of any nation worldwide — into a full-fledged 21st century knowledge society. On June 13 the Union government gazetted a notification constituting India’s first ever National Knowledge Commission chaired by Satyen (‘Sam’) Pitroda, the charismatic technologist-visionary widely acknowledged as the leader of India’s astonishing telecom revolution which leapfrogged the number of telephone connections countrywide from 5 million in the mid-nineties to over 100 million today. And to support Pitroda as he sets about engineering an unprecedented learning revolution within the world’s most illiterate nation, the powers that be have constituted a stellar panel of commission members comprising intellectuals, businessmen and academics — the choice and master spirits of the Indian establishment (see box).

Manmohan Singh (left) with Pitroda: second institutional building wave

Formally inaugurating the National Knowledge Commission in New Delhi on August 2, prime minister Manmohan Singh assured the commission of the government’s "fullest possible support". "I would like the Knowledge Commission to come forward with bold proposals aimed at improving excellence in research and teaching, especially in the frontier areas of mathematics, science and technology. India cannot afford to lag behind the rest of the world. The leaders of our national movement were resolutely committed to excellence and to making India a powerhouse of intellectual endeavour. It was this vision that informed Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s perspective when he created institutions of higher learning and excellence that have stood the nation in such good stead. The time has come for us to create a second wave of institution building of excellence in the fields of education, research and capability building in India so that we are better prepared for the 21st century," said Singh speaking on the occasion.

Following decades of neglect of the education sector into which investment has averaged a mere 3.5 percent of GDP annually for half a century, and particularly neglect of primary education, transforming resource-starved contemporary India into a knowledge society is a formidably challenging assignment. The statistical data is depressing. Fifty-three percent of the 190 million children who enroll in primary schools across the country never make it beyond class VIII; 20 percent of the country’s one million schools offer single-teacher-multigrade instruction; another 20 percent don’t have proper buildings; 58 percent can’t provide drinking water and 70 percent are without toilets and sanitation. And on any given day, 25 percent of the nation’s 5 million teachers are absent. Moreover at the tertiary level, insufficient capacity creation has limited the number of youth who enter institutions of higher education to a mere 7 percent (cf. 60 percent in the US), even as education is peripheral to the election manifestoes of all major political parties.

Box 1

Knowledge Commission’s stellar cast

But Pitroda is unfazed by the scary scale and magnitude of the challenge. "I have accepted chairmanship of the Knowledge Commission because it gives me yet another opportunity to consolidate the gains made when I worked on the technology missions on literacy, immunisation, water, edible oil, dairy development and telecom in the Rajiv Gandhi government which touched the lives of millions of people across the country. At that time I also acquired an understanding of the working of the Central and state governments. I believe this experience could help in transforming the knowledge related agenda of the country. Then I was in my forties, now I am in my early sixties. It gives me one last chance to paint on a broader canvas and perhaps change the lives of 500 million people of this country who are below the age of 25," says Pitroda with disarming candour.

This optimism is undoubtedly backed by confidence that the commission has top level support within the Congress party-led Union government and in 10 Janpath, from where the party’s president and leader in Parliament Sonia Gandhi, calls the shots. It is hardly a secret that Pitroda’s brilliant engineering of India’s telecom revolution, as also the key role he reportedly played in developing the Congress party’s general election strategy last year which enabled the then beleaguered party to out-maneouvre the BJP riding high with its India Shining election campaign, has dazzled Sonia Gandhi as much as it has Manmohan Singh and other party top brass.

Hence the Knowledge Commission is backed by a high-powered National Steering Group chaired by the prime minister and comprising the most powerful ministers of the Union cabinet, i.e minister of human resource development (Arjun Singh); minister of agriculture (Sharad Pawar); minister of commerce and industry (Kamal Nath); minister for communication and information technology (Dayanidhi Maran); deputy chairman of the planning commission (Montek Singh Ahluwalia) and minister of state for science and technology (Kapil Sibal). Formally notified under the Planning Commission which serves as its nodal agency, the Knowledge Commission has been given an initial three-year term ending October 2, 2008.

Bhargava: education overhaul unanimity

With all the stellar members having reputations to lose if the commission turns out to be a damp squib three years on, there is a discernible sense of urgency within it. Although its premises in Delhi’s Samrat Hotel are still under negotiation, two full-house brainstorming meetings each spread over two-three days have been held and subgroups which will focus upon education, agriculture, science and technology, e-governance etc have been constituted. Simultaneously consult-ations with influential institutions such as state governments, FICCI, CII, NGOs and the World Bank have begun.

Mehta: excellent chemistry

Mehta also stresses that the Knowledge Commission won’t produce voluminous reports as per established tradition. "The modus operandi we have agreed upon is that the subgroups will produce lean and to-the-point reports after consultations with stakeholders in each focus area included in the commission’s terms of reference. On the basis of the subgroup reports, the commission will issue white papers for public debate. Following this, itemised action recommendations will be submitted from time to time to the cabinet which will pass them on to the appropriate ministries for implem-entation. Within the next 36 months we will recommend almost 150 action items," vows Mehta.

Such is the scale of the challenge and the potential it offers for Knowledge Commission’s members to go down in the history books that the enthusiasm reflected by Mehta is infectious. "The terms of reference of the Knowledge Commission are so broad that we have a unique oppor-tunity to optimise the use of land, labour, capital and human resources of the entire nation and to set it on the road to high economic and social growth. All of us within the commis-sion think big and think long to generate high quality ideas capable of transforming India into a prosperous, egalitarian society within the next 25 years. Following extensive study and debate, these ideas will be presented to the government without inhibition," promises Dr. Deepak Nayyar, the Oxford educated former vice chancellor of Delhi University (2000-2005) who has reverted to teaching economics at JNU and is also a member of the Knowledge Commission.

Nayyar: unique opportunity

The evident determination of its members to do a thorough job of this challenging assignment to ensure that the commission doesn’t disappear into the footnotes of history apart, the commission’s balanced composition augurs well for its success. Inevitably given its strong education focus, Indian academia is well represented in the commission with the inclusion of Bhargava, Mehta, Nayyar as well as Dr. Andre Beteille, chairman of ICSSR (Indian Council for Social Sciences Research) and Dr. Jayati Ghosh, professor of economics at JNU. Corporate India is represented by two outstandingly successful business professionals — Dr. Ashok Ganguly, former chairman of Hindustan Lever and Nandan Nilekani, managing director of the transnational Bangalore-based IT software heavyweight Infosys Technologies. Quite obviously the members of the Knowledge Commission have been selected with considerable care and deliberation, because even within the academic contingent there’s a fine balance between the liberal Bhargava and Mehta and the Left-leaning Beteille, Nayyar and Ghosh.

Yet the unique selling proposition of the National Knowledge Commission and the epicentre of the swelling tide of enthusiasm which this innocuously titled task-force is generating across the country is the brooding, messianic personality of Sam Pitroda, which has acquired larger than life dimensions. The rags to riches story of Pitroda born on November 16, 1942 into the family of Gangaram, a poor, low-caste carpenter who was obliged to migrate from his native Gujarat to Orissa where he prospered modestly, is compellingly narrated in Sam Pitroda — A Biography (Konark Publishers, 1992) authored by Mayank Chhaya, the then Delhi correspondent of the New York-based India Abroad. Pitroda graduated in physics from Baroda’s well-known Maharaj Sayaji (MS) University and his mark sheet was good enough to get him an admission invitation from the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. Just about managing to rustle up the airfare in those days of draconian foreign exchange rationing, Pitroda financed the acquisition of his Masters in electrical engineering by simultaneously working as a technician in an electro paramagnetic laboratory.

Sam Pitroda — A Biography recites numerous instances of the hard times Pitroda and his Baroda college sweetheart-turned-wife Anju experie-nced in the windy city (Chicago), where they set up house. In the late 1960s after graduation, Pitroda began working with GTE (General Telephone and Electronics) where he stayed put for a decade. "In the early 60s and 70s digital electronic switching systems were still in their early stages. GTE was at the forefront of its development. In GTE Sam was a member of the core group working on state-of-the-art technology. Every invention small or big, was patentable and Satyan (Sam) began filing patents after patent," writes Chhaya. As is common with Indians abroad, the entrepreneurial bug inevitably bit him, and in 1974 Pitroda and two American venture capitalists promoted Wescom Switching Inc with Pitroda as the company’s star engineer. In short order Wescom Inc produced its revolutionary 580 non-blocking electronic digital switch, incorporating a microprocessor chip for the first time.

To cut a long story short, like many contemporary Silicon Valley entrepreneurs of Indian origin who put their education to good use in a society where government officials facilitate rather than frustrate business initiatives, Sam Pitroda metamorphosed into a successful entrepreneur and more pertinently, a dollar multi-millionaire with "50 worldwide telecommunications related patents" registered under his name. Nevertheless at that time he experienced a compelling need to lend his technical know-how and business development acumen to the country he had left behind, which in his opinion needed all the help it could get. After almost a year of persistent effort, in November 1981, Pitroda was granted an appointment with prime minister Indira Gandhi and her technology buff son Rajiv in Delhi. On the occasion Pitroda made a 60-minute audio-visual presentation entitled ‘Telecommu-nication in India: Issues and Alternatives’ to Mrs. Gandhi, who had just been voted back into office after the Morarji Desai-led Janata government had collapsed the previous year.

Out-of-school children: compelling need

Although the technology missions including C-Dot were — in spite of carping critics — activated in record time with great enthusiasm, fate intervened once again when following the Bofors scandal the Congress party was voted out of office in 1987, and Rajiv’s finance minister V.P. Singh assumed the office of prime minister of a Janata Dal coalition government. Typically, notwithstanding his huge contribution to the national telecom development effort, Pitroda was accused of corruption by the new telecom minister K.P. Unnikrishnan, who following this negative contribution, disappeared into the footnotes of history.

Shortly thereafter, perhaps felled by ingratitude, Pitroda suffered a heart attack which necessitated a quadruple bypass surgery and removed him from immediate captaincy of the technology missions. Nevertheless during the brief period he had been in charge they had acquired a momentum of their own.

But unfortunately just when Rajiv was all set to make a comeback as prime minister following the fall of the Janata Dal government in 1989, he too was assassinated. Following further health problems and loss of influence in Delhi during the Narasimha Rao regime (1990-95) and during the rule of the BJP-led NDA government (1999-2004), for almost a decade Pitroda retreated to the US to devote time to his family and recharge his American businesses which had run into trouble while he had been in India. But since then following the spectacular resurrection of the Sonia Gandhi-led Congress as the single largest party in Parliament, Pitroda has been summoned by the Congress high command (i.e Sonia) to reactivate the technology missions, rechristened the National Knowledge Commission.

Looking back, it is tempting to assess and evaluate Pitroda’s success as the driver of the technology missions. Pitroda has no illusions that he personally deserves much credit for project implementation and/ or completion. "I would say I achieved 55 percent of what I wanted to do. The rest was entirely upto whoever succeeded me. My job as I saw it was to stir things up at every level in such a manner that people would constantly talk about the need to change afterwards," he told Chhaya. In short, Pitroda regarded — and still regards — himself as a leader and motivator who unlocks the minds and potential of competent, carefully selected professionals, rather than a hands-on project manager.

Viewed in this light, Pitroda is perhaps too modest about his achievements as head of the technology missions in the 1980s. Some two decades later, thanks to the brilliant technology and management skills of Dr. Verghese Kurien (who received unqualified support from Pitroda and Rajiv Gandhi) India, which used to be a major importer of edible oil is currently a net exporter, and this once milk deficient country has transformed into the second largest producer globally of dairy products.

Similarly full literacy has become a top national priority, with Parliament amending the Constitution to make state provision of elementary education a fundamental right of all children between the ages of six-14. And most spectacularly telephone connectivity within India has leapfrogged from 2.5 million in 1980 to over 100 million currently. The only technology missions which haven’t recorded similar success are the immunisation and drinking water provision, both of which are implicitly included in the terms of reference of the Knowledge Commission.

Box 2

"We plan to work with existing ministries and administrations..."

Dilip Thakore interviewed Sam Pitroda by telephone and e-mail. Excerpts:

Sam Pitroda

The commission has been given a broad canvas to transform India into a knowledge society. What are your initial focus areas?

To transform India into a knowledge society we have agreed to focus on five aspects of knowledge.

Access. This relates to right to information, reservation, affirmative action programmes, libraries, networks, portals and a variety of issues related to connectivity and networking.

Concepts. Relating to literacy, primary, secondary and university education, vocational training, distance learning etc.

Creation. Most new knowledge is created in science and technology laboratories, universities and industry. We need to focus on improving linkages and productivity. There are also issues related to patents, innovations, entrepreneurship which deserve immediate attention in this era of globalisation, privatisation and free market economies.

Applications. The knowledge we create has to have relevant applications to create wealth for the nation in agriculture, industry and health sectors.

E-governance.There is a great opportunity to use knowledge to improve governance. Effective e-governance can replace our age-old practices with newly designed, more efficient systems to deliver services to citizens with transparency, account-ability and simplicity. But in the commission we appreciate these things take time and we don’t want to raise expectations too high.

You have often said that the commission won’t produce voluminous reports. What will be your modus operandi?

Yes, we will not write voluminous reports. We plan to work with existing ministries and administrations at the Centre and in the states to change processes and policies to meet the real needs of a knowledge society of the future.

Quite obviously education reform will be a major focus area of the commission. What in your opinion are the glaring deficiencies of India’s education system?

India’s education system requires serious attention to access, quality and relevance. For example only 7 percent of our youth go to college. The dropout rate is also very high at the secondary school level, and even mere literacy is still a major national concern. In a country where 500 million people are below 25 years of age, we must increase higher education capacity substantially so that at least 25 percent of our youth can go to college. This will require huge investment. At the same time we need to improve standards. I am told that less than 25 percent of graduating students are employable. Moreover there are too many colleges where students and even teachers don’t attend classes. This is not at all acceptable.

We must develop systems to monitor the performance of education instit-utions at all levels, increase the number of national universities which allow for swift transfer of courses and credits, and which provide more multi-disciplinary study programme options, the demand of business and industry. This is an opportunity to move away from a traditional education system where exams are conducted once or twice a year, papers leak and students depend on coaching classes. We need to develop a more balanced system where examinations are more frequent.

For all of this to happen, we must improve the quality and quantity of teachers by utilising new technology and tools. The key is to spend more on improving content, processes, software and systems rather than on buildings and other brick and mortar infrastructure. We have some great success stories in our IITs, IIMs and a few universities. Graduates from these institutions have made significant contributions to industry and technology the world over. However, this is the contribution of peak performers in a society where the average is very low. Our challenge is to raise averages at all levels of education.

Implementation of reform proposals has been the bugbear of India’s economic development effort. How will the Knowledge Commission ensure implementation of its proposals in various ministries?

At the highest level, the UPA government is very keen to reform institutions to create a sound base to build a knowledge economy. The prime minister is personally committed to this objective and is taking deep interest on a regular basis, devoting consi-derable time and energy to making sure that we use this window of opportunity effectively.

Our job at the Knowledge Commission is to work with various ministers, secretaries and others in the administration to implement new ideas which in the long run would change mindsets and create the pool of talent we need to keep our economy growing at a faster pace. Each member of the Commission will have to work closely with people in the ministries to adopt our vision, values and ideas for speedy implementation.

Our experience has been that there’s a wide chasm between Indian academia and industry which the latter is uninterested in bridging . What’s your comment?

I agree that there’s a big gap between Indian academia, industry and the science and technology community in particular. There is very little cross- breeding and interdisciplinary dialogue.

Nilekani: “visionary leader”

"There’s no doubt that Sam

Against this backdrop, it’s hardly surprising that Pitroda’s once-more-unto-the-breach effort to restart the technology missions under the aegis of the Knowledge Commission is generating great enthusiasm. But while welcoming this high-potential initiative, organisation management pundits offer some useful caveats. "The terms of reference of the commission are very wide. Therefore to be an effective leader, Pitroda will have to cast his net across party lines and affiliations to find competent people and motivate them to perform. Secondly, the success of the Knowledge Commission is dependent upon implementation of the commis-sion’s recommendations by the various ministries. Therefore he must ensure that the ministries are given the resources to do so. And thirdly a leader has an evaluative role. He needs to keep close track of the commission’s recommendations and refer back to its members for corrective advice if things are not going according to plan," advises Dr. Samuel Paul, a former director of IIM-Ahmedabad and visiting professor at Harvard University.

Likewise Dr. A.S. Seetharamu, professor of education at ISEC (Institute of Social and Economic Change), Bangalore, offers valuable advice. "The commission should ensure that proper institutional structures are built at the grassroots level by the implementing ministries and that people in them are adequately compensated. Excessive reliance on voluntarism adversely affected the literacy mission of the 1980s. This should not happen again. Secondly it would be advisable for the commission to interpret the word ‘knowledge’ liberally. For instance in medicine, the world is beginning to accept that apart from allopathy, there is considerable knowledge and substance in alternative systems such as homeopathy, ayurveda, naturopathy and unani medicine. The commission should encourage national debates on what constitutes knowledge and allow a margin for new knowledge systems. In this connection it should also encourage the production of knowledge literature for the masses. Simple, intelligible books and pamphlets will percolate knowledge to laymen and possibly activate mass participation in science and technology and the social sciences at the grassroots level," says Seetharamu.

Given his open-minded acceptance of ideas, Pitroda is certain to welcome such well-meant advice. Meanwhile having learned from his experience while engineering the technology missions in tumultuous environments, Pitroda is all set to give his all to what he describes as his last great initiative for India. "When I started C-Dot, I was 43 years old. Now I am 63. Naturally I see things differently. I have learned and changed a lot at the same time. However I still remain very optimistic because of the country’s successes in ICT (information and communication technologies) during the past two decades. As a result India has over $150 billion in foreign exchange reserves and boasts several large companies with global outlook and reach. I am confident that on the solid base we have built during the past two decades, we can take the next bold initiative to improve our knowledge institutions and infrastructure to meet the real challenges of the 21st century," says Pitroda.

Especially for the nation’s 415 million children below 18 years of age, doomed to bleak lives in India’s crumbling education institutions dispensing obsolete knowledge, it’s a consummation devoutly to be wished.