‘If all of us put our hearts we can make a difference. Not for you and me, for the children’

• But much has changed since you first came in with Rajiv. Twenty years later, India is a different world, if not almost a different planet.

Absolutely. Twenty years down, things had to happen. A lot of technology has changed, the world itself has changed. Twenty years ago, it was still a bipolar world. Now, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, globalisation, privatisation, the free market economy, the mobile phone revolution, the Internet revolution—everything has changed, and to some extent in favour of countries like India.

• Are you are drawn to India whenever there is this mood for optimism? 1985, with Rajiv Gandhi, was a time like that.

Not necessarily. I felt, in ’85, that I was ready—I really started making visits to India in ’81. I was ready at a personal level: I’d just finished selling my company, my children were young, and I felt that I had a window of opportunity.

• In ’81, you must have been 38 or 39.

Yes. I started coming here in Mrs Gandhi’s time. Then she died and Rajiv took over, and that was a unique opportunity to see the role that information software could play. It was a very wild idea then. No one believed that India needed software, computers, telecom.

• In fact, you were all dismissed as Rajiv Gandhi’s tech junkies.

Well, people are entitled to what and how they judge. But my conviction was that information and telecom access were key to building modern India. I got an opportunity, we had the right ecosystem—a lot of young talent—and we launched it. We could have done a lot more, but at least we got something going. Today, it’s that which has given us so much confidence as a nation. We have $150 million worth of balance of payment, we have lots of success stories in the IT companies, and there is some amount of confidence in the industry.

• In fact, the Indian passport is now seen with a very different kind of respect around the world.

Absolutely. In fact, someone was telling me just recently that Indians are seen as knowledge workers. But, in reality, they are seen as IT workers. Everywhere you go, in the IT deparment, there is always an Indian in a very key position. Now we need to take the next step. In my life—well, I’m 63 years old, my children are grown up, and I have all kinds of health issues which—get resolved, sort of, as I go along. And I see another window of opportunity. I think we really could revisit the strategy we had in the eighties, and see if knowledge could be a driver now.

• How do you do that?

The starting point is to recognise that knowledge will play an important role in nation building, in going forward. In the 21st century, knowledge is definitely going to be the key. How do we re-examine our existing knowledge institutions, from our primary and secondary schools to vocational training and higher education, our teaching methods, teachers, processes, technology, tools. What are we teaching, is it relevant today, why are we teaching, how are people learning—all of these issues need a re-examination in the light of today’s technology.

• How did the chairmanship of the Knowledge Commission come through? Was it just to be logically expected when the Congress came back to power? Who called you, or who did you call—how did this happen?

Basically, at the National Adisory Council, headed by Sonia Gandhi, we had some discussions on science and technology and education. The informal consensus was that I should look into these areas and give a report. Unfortunately, because of my health problems, I couldn’t be here at the time. But I made a brief report, which I had the opportunity to present to the Prime Minister. He, on his own, has been thinking over ideas like this, and I am sure he had spoken to many other people. But he felt this was a good way forward.

• Many people in India would say that a Knowledge Commission is all very well, but we have enough gyan; what we need is action, an Action Commission.

In India, for anything you could say, I could come up with the exact opposite and get away with it. There’s every contradiction in this country.

• But there is scepticism about the word ‘commission’, not knowledge, not gyan.

Forget about commissions, forget about scepticism. Whatever it is, we still have to do something, in spite of commissions, in spite of scepticism, in spite of cynicism. We have to look at how technology can transform education. The duster-chalk-blackboard-classroom model of education has to change.

• But if you look at India’s villages, two-thirds don’t have blackboards.

We always come up with ‘Why?’ as opposed to saying, ‘Why not?’ You don’t need talent to tell me that there are problems. You need talent to move on.

• Is that a uniquely Indian trait, people talking more about problems than providing solutions?

I don’t know. Normal life here is very demanding—I don’t blame them. When I was working on telecom in the early days, everybody would give me advice on why it wouldn’t work. Once in a while, I’d turn and ask them, What’s your experience in telecom. Just because you have a telephone and you’ve heard a dialtone, it doesn’t give you the right to give me advice when I’ve spent 25 years with this and, at that time, was holding 50 patents. I respect you, but we don’t have to have an opinion about every thing under the sun. I think a lot can be done in this country. But we’ve got to have a different attitude. Sometimes I believe that when people oppose you, you know you’re on the right track. The more people oppose me, the more I become convinced that this is the thing to do.

• Why?

If it were that simple to do, it would be being done anyway. If someone were to ask me to be the chairman of some company, I wouldn’t be interested—that’s something anybody can do. I could have retired at 35 without any problem. But you really want to do interesting, challenging, romantic work, work that has far-reaching implications.

• It so happens that we are passing by a municipal school in the heart of Delhi’s diplomatic enclave.

I don’t think that’s an irony—that is India. India lives with its rich and poor side by side.

• But do you think there’s a future for these kids? Look at the standard of teaching in these schools,look at what they’ll have to face when they go to class XII—if you don’t get 95 per cent in class XII in Delhi, you’ve had it.

Not too long ago, I was one of these kids.

• So was I.

There may be one of them who turns out to be a great scientist.

• But against very heavy odds.

Of course. That’s what we have to change. We have to make it easier for them. If this school today had the technology to access the world, they could visit the Guggenheim Museum on the Internet—that’s what we have to look at for education.

• If you went inside, you might find a midday meal, but no sign of a computer that’s working.

Well, that’s what we have to do. And it will happen.

• Are you worried that the discourse in education has now shifted away from knowledge to midday meal schemes and other such subsistence ideas?

People do what they are comfortable with. The people focusing on the midday meal have a right to do so. The people who are concerned about the Internet and technology and telecom have a right to that as well. It’s a democracy. My job is to push the Internet into the schools, their job is to push midday meals—and that’s okay.

• So long as one doesn’t exclude the other. But that is the difference between a knowledge revolution and a telecom revolution. A computer requires electricity, for instance—infrastructure which just isn’t there in rural schools. It requires literacy—one’s fingers have to know the keyboard.

I agree. But we are not going to solve everybody’s problems.

• So how do you see the Knowledge Commission making sure that government schools around the country are brought to that level?

The Knowledge Commission has just started. We’ve only just had our first meetings as a group. It’s too early to say anything. All I can tell you is that we’ve had some very interesting meetings; as a group, we click, we see eye to eye. We have more consensus than I thought. It’s a very good group.

• And a very diverse one.

But a group of very good people—they are great human beings individually, they’re wonderful people. They all mean well, they all want to do something—I think that’s a good starting point.

• Will you have reports or will you have action?

Action. No reports. The Knowledge Commission will not write a report. We will not write a report saying education is important, science and technology is critical and knowledge is indispensable. Everybody knows that—I’m not interested in that. I would like to see whether we can come up with 20, 30, 40, 80 things to do over a period of time, and take the responsibility to drive these things through with the help of the existing government institutions and infrastructure. And start quickly.

• Would you tell me about some ideas?

Take the major areas of knowledge. The first is access—how do you access knowledge. It begins with the right to information, and it takes in many other issues. It also implies the Internet, broadband connectivity, networks of all kinds. Then the second aspect—knowledge concepts. What do you learn in school, in vocational training, in the university? Are our universities producing enough PhD’s? Do we have enough liberal arts schools?

• Or are our universities producing enough PhDs that are relevant?

Absolutely. Are we teaching what’s relevant in the first place?

• And we keep confusing our success in IT with advances in science and technology.

First of all, IT is not knowledge. Success in IT does not necessarily mean that we will be successful in the knowledge society of tomorrow. Software earnings are not going to create wealth for a large number of people in the country at the bottom of the pyramid. To go back to what I was saying earlier—you have access, concepts, and then the creation of knowledge. Are our laboratories creating the right knowledge for the right products and the right services? What about intellectual property, patents, copyrights, trademarks? Then you go into the application of knowledge—in agriculture, in health, in industry—how are we using knowledge. I’ve always said that we have been busy solving the problems of the West.

• Exactly. Look at the whole IIT/IIM success story. The IITs are wonderful institutions, but they produce 2,000 graduates a year. Between those 2,000 who qualify and the 10,000 who don’t, there may be only a five or ten mark difference. We should be having three times the number of IITs.

We should have ten times more IITs for a country of 1.2 billion people.

• If Sam Pitroda wants to move in that direction, he will make the government move in that direction.

We will all try. It’s not just Sam Pitroda, it’s the whole group. You’ve got to develop an ecosystem. We are trying to do that, develop a consensus, have a debate at a larger level.

• I’m convinced, but you have to convince the larger body of Indian politicians. You and I both went to schools more modest than the one we just saw. But the excessive focus now on midday meals, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan—what happens when all these kids become literate? They have no colleges they can go to, or if they do, they’ll get bland BAs and MAs…

So, we’ve got to build more colleges; we’ve got to have more vocational and professional training. Everybody doesn’t have to go to college.

• What do you see wrong with our college system now?

There are lots of issues. You can’t take any one in isolation. I think our universities are highly politicised. Our university systems are based on outdated processes. I want to see a system where there is course-wise credit. If I study for a year in Kerala, I should be able to transfer to Gujarat for the next two semesters. We need better standards, more teachers—there’s so much that needs to be done, you wonder where to start. There is one issue I forgot to mention—e-governance. That’s part of knowledge. In government, today, they see knowledge as their personal property, not public property. We have to open up these systems. I have said time and again that all our processes are obsolete. We are computerising the left-overs of the British Raj.

• The greatest Indian absurdity is attestation by a gazetted officer on a photocopied document.

It has to go—somebody has to say this is obsolete, it doesn’t make sense any more. I should be able to file my application on the Internet. In e-governance, the biggest challenge is to redo all our processes. But that is the biggest challenge for India today, because it means you have to rethink our entire governance—relationships, roles, processes.

• And when you talk to Dr. Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi and others, do you see sufficient support in the political system for this?

I think so. I think there is a lot of enthusiasm. But we all get so busy with day-to-day stuff, it’s very difficult to focus.

• Is there as much enthusiasm as Rajiv had for technology?

I wouldn’t compare because I’m probably biased. My relationship with Rajiv just happened…

• You were also about the same age.

We were just about the same age, we saw eye to eye, and we didn’t have to talk too much. We just understood. It’s hard to get that chemistry on a routine basis.

• Did you deal with Sonia very much then at a personal level?

Not very much. But the family was Rajiv’s family. He really gave me a great opportunity. It was because of him that I could do all the things I did. If I didn’t have a prime minister like that…

• You would have been answering CBI summons many times over—CBI, CAG, many other dreaded three letter words.

(smiles) Well. All I can say is that I am committed and I want to get something done in the knowledge area. I think there is an ecosystem for that with our members, with the government, with the Prime Minister in whom I have seen a great deal of enthusiasm for education.

• And certainly in the media.

And the media. If all of us put our hearts in it, we can make a difference. Not for you and me. We are done with. But for the children.

• Tell me, now that you deal with Sonia Gandhi professionally—give me a sense of her mind and how she’s different from Rajiv. I’m not saying for better or worse, but they are different individuals.

I’m probably not the right person to ask. You need to ask someone who works closely with her on a day-to-day basis.

• Your interactions with Rajiv were more intense?

Yes.

• But still give me a sense of her—some interaction, some exchange.

I found her to be very positive, very intelligent in grasping an issue. She thinks a lot. I have a little more interaction with Rahul and I find him very, very promising. I think he is very analytical.

• Politicians have to have a good heart and a hard head. Not a bleeding heart and a wavering head.

Politicians also grow. You’ve got to give them time to grow.

• You see him growing?

I’ve seen him grow, I think he will grow better every day.

• So, in your third coming—not in 20, but maybe 10 years from now—will we see you working with Rahul?

I’ve just gone through my second quadruple bypass, so if I have ten years of my life, I’ll be very happy.

• Of course. The way you’ve handled your health problem has been inspirational.

I have always had confidence in technology. Whenever I had a health problem, I saw myself as an object; I’d turn it over to a hospital, go to my doctor friends, get it on a production line, and they’d fix it. I come out of it and I can forget about it.

• And you’ve done this six times now.

I’ve had cancer surgery and two bypasses, I’ve had a neck surgery—all kinds of problems. But I get it fixed. I’ve been very unlucky. I take care of myself, I eat well, I never smoke, I hardly drink…

• And you work very hard—as they say, work never harmed anybody.

That’s my life. My life is work centric.

• Well, God bless you. We need you around for a very, very long time. It’s inspirational for people like me who are scared of the sight of a doctor.

Have faith in technology.