|
On the face of it, the Padma Awards list this year has one inclusion from the
IT industry: Deepak Puri, the founder and chairman of Moser Baer, who has been
honored with Padma Shri. But another name that features in the list arguably has
an equally important contribution to the cause of the industrythough in a
comparatively shorter period of time. TN Manoharan, the veteran chartered
accountant and the former head of ICAI, who has also been named as a recipient
of Padma Shri, played a crucial role as the chairman of the audit committee in
the government appointed Board of Satyam. The board has been hailed globally for
its exemplary speed and transparency to restore Satyam to near-normalcy after
the founder and then chairman B Ramalinga Raju admitted to years of fraudulent
accounting. This not only helped thousands of employees, customers, and
stakeholders, it strengthened the credibility of Indias regulatory regime.
Interestingly, there is one more thing that is common to both these Padma
awardees: they both have been winners of the Dataquest IT Person of the Year
award, arguably the only award of its kind that recognizes overall contribution
to Indian IT. While Puri won the award in 2003, Manoharan was part of the
six-member government appointed Satyam Board, that won the award in 2009. Kiran
Karnik, the chairman of the board, had already won both the awards: the
Dataquest award in 2005 and Padma Shri in 2007.
It is not really trivia info. In the absence of any other industry-wide
award, the Dataquest awards serve as a benchmark to measure how much national
recognition has come in the way of the IT industry. Today, the IT industry
accounts for close to 6% of Indias GDP, not counting non-GDP revenue of Indian
IT firms (revenue generated in other countries, on their soil); by the end of FY
09 the IT/BPO industry employed more than 2 mn people directly. According to a
study by CRISIL for Nasscom in 2008, for every job created by the IT industry
directly, four more jobs were created in the Indian economy indirectly, through
suppliers and ancillary service providers. The study also showed that through
their non-wage opex and capex expenditure, the IT industry created an output of
close to Rs 703 bn output in the Indian economy in 2005-06 (the year the study
used to measure the linkage impact).
Yet, the recognition came quite late from the government. Till 2005, the only
two Padma Awards that had come the private industrys way were one for TCS
founder CEO, FC Kohliwho won Padma Bhushan in 2002and Infosys chief mentor, NR
Narayana Murthywho won Padma Shri in 2000.
|
Conspicuous by His Absence |
|
When one compares the Dataquest awards list with the
national honors list, some names are missed out from the latter because of
obvious reasons: Dewang Mehta died young and did not live till the time when
the government started recognizing the IT industry; Pramod Mahajan was a
politician and made his impact in a relatively short period of time. Some
other recent DQ award winners like Ajai Chowdhry of HCL Infosystems and
Lakshmi Narayanan of Cognizant are still active in their roles (they won in
2007 and 2008, respectively) and we can well expect them to be honored in
the future.
|
 |
|
Nagarajan Vittal |
But one person whose name is a glaring miss from the Padma
list in all these years is that of Nagarajan Vittal, one of the most eminent
civil servants that India has seen in the last two decades. Vittal played
stellar roles as the secretary of DoE in getting the electronics industry
out of the governments regulatory clutchesa hallmark of those days. Then,
as the secretary of telecom and chairman, Telecom Commission, he was the
brain behind the liberalization of telecom in India, which is today a global
success story.
Outside the technology industry he played a very effective
role as the Central Vigilance Commissioner (CVC) and was responsible for
effectively bringing transparency to the system.
It is difficult to understand why has that not been
recognized yet? We just hope that at least his efforts as the head of
democratic data standard panel as part of the Unique ID project would
finally make the government take note and his fourth innings would get him
the recognition, he highly deserves.
Better late than never. |
However, as the industry started getting recognition in the mid 2000s, the
government got its act together. Since that year, almost every year has seen at
least one recipient from the Indian IT industry. Wipro chairman, Azim Premji won
Padma Bhushan in 2005. Then Infosys CEO, Nandan Nilekani (and current chairman
of UIDAI) and then TCS CEO, S Ramadorai won Padma Bhushan in 2006. The next year
saw NR Narayana Murthy receiving Padma Vibhushantill date the highest civilian
award that has gone to an IT industry personwhile HCL founder Shiv Nadar won
Padma Bhushan. The story has continued so far.
It is interesting to find that most of the Padma Award winners from Indian IT
have also won the Dataquest award previously. To look at it differently, as many
as nine of the seventeen winners of Dataquest IT Person of the Year award have
also won the Padma Awards.
What, however, proves the point mentioned above is that while the Padma
Awards have come in the way of six out of eight winners of Dataquest IT Person
of the Year award in the period 2002-2009, it has gone only to three out of nine
winners of the Dataquest award in the preceding nine yearsand that too, after
2005. For example, Shiv Nadar who won the Dataquest award in 1995 got the Padma
Bhushan only in 2008. NR Narayana Murthy, who won the Dataquest award in 1996
won the Padma Shri in 2000 and Padma Vibhushan in 2008. Azim Premji, who won the
Dataquest award in 1999, won the Padma Bhushan in 2005.
What is more surprising is that even many of the winners of Dataquest
Lifetime Contribution to IT award have also got the Padma Awards much later.
Someone like Sam Pitroda, who won the Dataquest Lifetime Achievement award in
2002 received the Padma Bhushan only last year, despite revolutionizing telecom
in India way back in the late 80s. The other such winners include TCS CEO, FC
Kohli (Dataquest award in 1995, Padma Bhushan in 2002), Dr N Seshagiri
(Dataquest award in 1996, Padma Bhushan in 2005), Prof V Rajaraman (Dataquest
award in 1997, Padma Bhushan in 1998). Only Dr Vijay P Bhatkar won both the
awards in the same yearDataquest award and Padma Bhushan, both in 2003.
Shyamanuja Das
shyamanujad@cybermedia.co.in Page(s) 1
| 
Print
Comment
Email
Digg
Del.icio.us
Reddit
Twitter
