Friday, August 18, 2023

The Reformer who changed Indian Software, Telecom and Banking, Mr N Vittal

 

                                        Photo Credit:  https://aic-empi.org/team/Mr-N-Vittal/#

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:

https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/former-telecom-minister-sukhram-gets-five-years-in-jail-assaulted-outside-court-566368

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

 

No comments: