IT czar Sam Pitroda appointed adviser to PM
NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has roped in the person behind India’s telecom revolution -- IT czar and technocrat Satyanarayan Gangaram Pitroda popularly known as Sam Pitroda -- to advise him on infrastructure, innovation and information. Pitroda, 67, will hold the rank of a Cabinet Minister.
Sam Pitroda, who is also the Chairman of the National Knowledge Commission, will advise the PM on integrating information and communication technology (ICT) in the sectors of infrastructure, health, justice and information.
“I was appointed yesterday (Tuesday). We look at organising integration of national knowledge network and broadband connectivity for better service delivery to the citizens,” he told reporters. He said he would work for the promotion of ICT in all social sectors and in infrastructure.
“We will develop an action plan for the next decade which will be a decade for innovation and infrastructure,” he added.
Recently, Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee got Pitroda appointed to head a high level expert committee to manage 30,000 km of optical fibre network spread across the country and help it to take ICT to rural areas.
The network is currently under Railtel. This network provides services to Airtel, Vodafone, Aircel, IDEA and Reliance. This is the second high profile appointment made by Singh after he appointed former Infosys co-chairman Nandan Nileknani to head the Unique Identification Authority of India.
Unlike Nilekeni, this is the second stint for Pitroda who is the chairman and CEO of World-Tel Limited, an international telecom union.
In 1984, Pitroda was invited by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. He started the Center for Development of Telematics (C-DOT), an autonomous telecom R&D organization.
In 1987, he became adviser to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and shaped India’s foreign and domestic telecommunications policies.
He is largely considered responsible for the telecommunications revolution in India and specifically, the ubiquitous, yellow-signed Public Call Offices (PCO) that quickly brought cheap and easy domestic and international public telephones all over the country.
However, Pitroda returned to Chicago after an unpleasant and public disagreement over the degree of autonomy he would be granted with K P Unnikrishnan, the Minister for Telecommunication in the V P Singh Government. For the subsequent decade, he continued his business interests in computer manufacturing and software.
When the 2004 elections were declared, Rahul Gandhi asked for his help for a small committee that he was forming to advise him on policy issues.
When the UPA Government came to power following the 2004 General Elections, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh invited him to head the National Knowledge Commission. As recommended by the Commission, the government has also started an innovative project, a National Knowledge Network, for giving broadband connectivity to about 100 science laboratories and research institutions.
Pitroda is also the founder and CEO of C-SAM, Inc, which has developed a suite of patented mobile transaction technology called OneWallet.