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"Probably the happiest period in life is one's middle
age. When the eager passions of youth are cooled, and the infirmities of age
have not yet begun. Like the shadows, which at morning and evening are so large,
but almost entirely disappear at midday"
-Thomas Arnold
Nothing better describes the state of the Indian IT industry as
it touches 50: it has never been happier in the half a century of its existence;
middle age blues do not seem to catch up with it; rather, its virility and
execution zeal has become a wonder for the whole world.
However, ultimately, no industry is ever complete without the
people who constitute its soul. It is no different with the Indian IT sector
too: from 1956 when the first digital computer came up at the Indian Statistical
Institute to 2006 when TCS crossed $3 bn in revenues. Ultimately it has been a
story of different people making their marks in their own ways-a fascinating
story of triumphs, achievements, disappointments and sometimes even failures.
But, thanks to the efforts of all these personalities, the industry might have
aged by 50 years, but in terms of maturity it has almost made a leap of 500
years.
 Therefore, the celebration of the IT industry's golden jubilee
actually lies in celebrating the stories of these numerous generals,
lieutenants, colonels and foot soldiers who shaped these years. Since, for
obvious space and time constraints, it was not possible to delineate the
achievements of every one of them, Dataquest selected 50 eminent
personalities whom we felt were the most instrumental in shaping the 50 years of
Indian computing.
As with any selection procedure, there would obviously be names
missed out or some inclusions or exclusions that would cause intense debate.
Since we wanted to restrict the list to 50 only, our sincere apologies are due
to a number of eminent people we might have missed out-the names of Prof
Narsimhan, Prof Phatak, Dr Ramani or PP Gupta immediately come to mind.
Amongst the list of the elite 50, it has not only been industry
pioneers like Narayana Murthy, Premji or FC Kohli who find a place, we have
included a number of politicians, bureaucrats and academicians too. Unless
people like Rajiv Gandhi, Chandrababu Naidu or Pramod Mahajan showed the
political willingness that they did, or bureaucrats like N Vittal and Sam
Pitroda set the ball rolling, the industry would never come this far for lack of
policies. While bureaucrats might have framed the policies, nothing would have
happened without the efforts of lobbyists like Dewang Mehta and Kiran Karnik.
Not to forget a handful of eminent educationists, who especially
nurtured the industry in the first three decades of its growth and who have
found adequate representation here. While the industry has grown, everyone would
agree that this growth has been disproportionate between hardware and software-the
main reason why we've tried to highlight the pioneering efforts of hardware
manufacturers like Raj Saraf, Deepak Puri or Ajai Chowdhry among others.
There are people like Dadan Bhai (sadly no more), Vinay Bharat
Ram or Hemant Sonawala who have now either passed into oblivion or are in
virtual retirement; but that in any way should not detract us from acknowledging
what they achieved and how they helped shape up this industry. One sad
clarification: though women now constitute 30% of the workforce of the IT
industry, we could find only two representations, Neelam Dhawan and Revathy
Kasturi in this list. Hopefully, this anomaly would be redressed when some
future journalist would sit to compile the Dataquest list in the
centenary of Indian computing.
Rajneesh De
rajneeshd@cybermedia.co.in
Profiles compiled by Rajneesh De
& Shashwat Chaturvedi
Click
here to view the profiles of The IT People Page(s) 1
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