It was their energy, self-confidence, hard work and can-do mentality which were the key to delivering various products.

The first product was a small rural exchange to connect villages. Thereafter a small PBX was delivered for the business community. Then came a medium-sized 2,000-line digital exchange, a 16,000-line exchange and eventually a 40,000-line large exchange to meet urban needs. All of this was achieved with young talent whose average age was 23 years without any experience or background in digital communications technologies. Most of them were right out of colleges like IITs with no experience but a dream to help build the nation. Today over 20 million lines of C-DOT exchanges are in service. The rural exchanges were used to provide STD/PCO to improve access to telephones nationwide. Because of the perceived benefit of STD/PCO to masses, the privatization of telecom had little resistance in India.

C-DOT was essentially a bypass to the legacy system which was full of bureaucracy, vested interests, large unions, confused priorities and political interference. It was clear then that to plant any new ideas and initiatives in the Indian system, bypass was essential with catalysts to engender out-of-the-box thinking. If the same new experiment had been initiated within the Department of Telecom as one of the projects it would have been killed instantly. Rajiv Gandhi understood and appreciated the bypass mechanism to expedite the process of development. In fact, the Technology Missions that he launched related to rural drinking water, immunization, literacy, edible oils, dairy development and telecom were essentially a bypass mechanism with measurable milestones, deliverables, clarity and mission directors to help accomplish specific objectives with the support of the central and state governments.

Twenty five years ago the system was very resistant to new ideas from outside. The C-DOT experiment was seen with a great deal of suspicion and there were many multinational lobbying groups constantly trying to kill the initiative. C-DOT was seen by multinational companies as a direct threat to their business interests in India. It survived due to the political will of the prime minister and it got accomplished simply due to the energy of the young.

It is gratifying that despite many ups and downs, C-DOT stuck to its mandate steadfastly and created telecom infrastructure in areas of the country which suffered from woeful neglect until then. In many ways C-DOT became the signature project of India's quest for modernization and infused in a technologically diffident nation new vigour. C-Dot was also an experiment in problem solving to make generational change with scalable and sustainable systems to improve lives of the masses in India. It is for technology historians to make a definite judgement but in my limited, and admittedly subjective, view C-DOT stands at the vanguard of India's rise as an information and communications powerhouse. The C-DOT journey is a tribute to Rajiv Gandhi and the energy of the young engineers. It is also a tribute to the system that allowed the bypass to give new life and new meaning to connecting India. However, we have a long way to go. The next big challenge is to benefit from the ICT revolution to improve education, health, agriculture, financial services and governance to bring growth and prosperity to the doorsteps of the people at the bottom of the pyramid.

(Sam Pitroda is chairman of India's Knowledge Commission. He was head of C-Dot and chaired the various technology missions set up by late prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. He can be contacted at sam.pitroda@c-sam.com)