Nagarajan Vittal (31 January 1938 – 4 August 2023) was an
IAS officer of the 1960 batch, Gujarat Cadre. His reputation earned him very important
postings in the Central Government.
His strength was
based on a disciplined, principled life. When junior officers and politicians
ask “autonomous” bodies and companies they oversee to book them five-star hotel
rooms, Mr Vittal would stay in modest guest houses. Seshan had articulated the
view explicitly, saying something like “I and my wife need only curd rice and
pickles for our existence. My pension would take care of that. Why do we need
anything else?”
Mr Vittal’s life
was one of achievements during a critical phase of India’s development. The
example he has left us of a principled, disciplined life, and the willingness
to stand up for justice and fairness, are equally important. If it inspires a
few IAS officers in every batch, it will continue to contribute to make India
better in future.
As Director of
the National Centre for Software technology in those years, I reported to a
Governing Council headed by the Secretary Dept of Electronics, which had been headed
by a scientist like MGK Menon and an engineer like PP Gupta. So, when we saw an
IAS officer being posted to be Secretary, Electronics, many of us wondered what
type of leadership he would give us. What was in common to Gujarat Narmada
Valley Fertilisers & Chemicals that Mr Vittal had managed and the Dept of
Electronics? Then I started hearing and reading Mr Vittal’s speeches, and saw
him at work, and I found the answer to my question. The common thing was
managing people! Two thirds of a company’s expense, or more, is the payment to
employees. They produce the bulk of the wealth of the company. The leader does
not have to do their work but has to ensure that they succeed in their work.
The next issue
is of vision and policy. No one has a monopoly of vision and the ability of
implementing visions. Good IAS officers have an edge in this dimension because
of their broader education and training. The selection process picks out able
candidates. The good ones the system picks up more than makes up for the bad
eggs who become toadies of bad politicians.
We have to take
a broad view of the state of the world and India to understand the tremendous
changes that took place in the eighties and nineties; the decades during which Mr
Vittal made very important contributions to India’s development. Gorbachev’s
taking over the Soviet Union in 1985 speeded up the economic and political
changes taking place in the world. The assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984
and the prime ministership of Rajiv Gandhi during 1984 and 1989 had major
impacts. Sam Pitroda provided a bold vision for the telecommunications sector
and economy, in addition to several other ideas. India’s foreign exchange
reserves were running down rapidly, coming to almost nil in 1990-91. Negotiations
with the World Bank and IMF were necessary to acquire a loan of 7 billion US
dollars. In return, India agreed to an economic reform to ensure that the
Indian economy would surely get out of its crisis.
The team that
handled the momentous changes in the economy included political leaders like
Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh, along with IAS officers like Naresh Chandra,
Venkitaramanan, and Rengarajan. Younger IAS officers, handpicked for their
ability and integrity were assigned critical departments to be transformed. Mr
Vittal took over as Secretary to Govt., Dept of Electronics, in 1990. Much of
the freedom the Software Sector was given was obviously due to the mandate given
to Mr Vittal. I quote from the book Netchakra [Netchakra] to which I had
contributed a chapter in 2011:
Quote
The rise of the Internet in India was more or
less in the same period during which the Indian software industry pioneers were
making their mark. The government saw the potential of the software industry.
N. Vittal, then Secretary to Govt at the DOE, and a few other administrators
were very highly supportive of both developments. A piquant situation arose
when the fledgling software industry badly needed email and there were no
Internet Service Providers (ISPs), public or private! The Education and
Research Network (ERNET) of the DOE informally started giving email facilities
to the software companies. A wrong person above us could have put a stop to
this very quickly saying we had no right to do so as we were only an academic
network. Instead, Vittal was supportive. DOE was funding the ERNET, and was at
the same time carrying the responsibility of making the software industry grow.
So, when we briefed him with some timidity about ERNET giving support to
software companies, he made it clear that it was the right thing to do. We were
afraid of trouble with telecom department. These were very tough days; if
multiple landlines were to be terminated at an institution, that institution
could not create a network out of them! They were to be used only as point to
point lines! At the beginning, when the hub served only as an email hub, we had
a fig leaf – there was no level 2 or level 3 connectivity between the connected
institutions! Instead, there was only a store-forward message system named an
email relay computer connecting them! This was dangerous – the whim and fancy
of one officer could have pulled the carpet from under us. Vittal re-assured
us; the government had decided to give priority to the growth of the software
industry, and this industry was vociferously in need of the Internet. He told
us something like “Don’t worry; I will raise this with the Cabinet Secretary
when necessary!”
Unquote
The remarkable success Mr Vittal had in DOE prepared
the ground for the Government to give him the plum responsibility of the
Economic Reform period: to reform the Telecommunications Sector, enabling the
flow of private investment, adoption of new technologies, and a vast reduction
of Govt. Control. This reform in telecom was central to the success of economic
reform.
Everyone in Govt. in those days was not a hero.
There were cases that showed rapid economic developments were opportunities for
some elements to make a fast buck:
Mr Vittal had enough ideas and energy to play yet
another very important role to build modern India. He was appointed CVC in 1998.
How he rose to this task is best described by himself in a record of his talk
[CVC’s talk]. I will mention one example. In those days, Bank Accounts
Reconciliation used to take six months. Many bank employees committed insider
fraud, knowing that they had time to do their looting and scooting before they
were discovered. With his knowledge of technology, Mr Vittal came to an unusual
solution. If lack of computerization permits fraud, hit at the root!
Computerize Bank Accounts! This decision has had an amazing effect: Indian
software now takes care of banking not only in India but in many places in the
world. A branch manager told me that his branch now handles 400 times more
business than it did 20 years ago! I hardly go to that branch. I can access my
account there using my cell phone, irrespective of where I am.
A few personal memories:
Mr Vittal would get up at 5 AM and prepare for his work of the day. If he had a
talk to give, he would have a handwritten version ready before breakfast. If a
journalist talked to him after the meeting, he would be ready to give away his
handwritten version of the talk. He kept copies of some talks which were very
important, such as [CVC’s talk]. These selected talks helped him create books
which are valuable for us. Wikipedia provides a list of his books and mentions
his 400 articles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N._Vittal
His knowledge of Sanskrit was impressive,
giving him quotations appropriate to any occasion. His jokes made his talks
memorable. I should quote one of his jokes. A journalist had asked him if he
was an electronics engineer when he had taken over the Dept of Electronics as
Secretary. His dead-pan answer was something like, “Mein electronics engineer
nahi hoon! Balki electronics engineer ka baap hoon!”. His son is an electronics
engineer!
References
[Netchakra] Srinivasan Ramani, "Bringing the Internet to India,"
in the book “Netch@kra: Fifteen Years of the Internet in India:
Retrospective and Roadmap”,
Eds: Madanmohan Rao and Osama Manzoor,
Digital Empowerment Foundation, New
Delhi. Nov. 2011.
http://netchakra.net/ ISBN: 9788191013962
[CVC’s talk] Applying zero tolerance to corruption
https://www.cvc.gov.in/sites/default/files/CVC_99_.pdf
[Work as CVC] Anand Parthasarathy:
https://swarajyamag.com/tech/n-vittals-work-as-central-vigilance-commissioner-overshadowed-his-real-legacy-unshackling-the-nascent-electronics-industry-in-the-1990s
Srinivasan Ramani
17-Aug-2023
