Indian IT industry loses a friend

BANGALORE: Union Power Minister PR Kumaramangalam, who died on Wednesday at a

young age of 48 years, was a firm believer in the potential of Information

Technology in the development of India. During his tenure as the Union Minister

for Science and Technology in the early 1990s, some of the biggest steps in

liberalizing the Indian IT industry were taken, which were to become the

foundations for the current popularity of the industry, globally.

Mr Kumaramanglam was handpicked by Rajiv Gandhi as part of his team of young

politicians. Their mission: to make India self reliant through the use of

technology. Mr Kumaramangalam started his career as an entrepreneur, when in his

late 20s, he floated a computer manufacturing firm, which developed one of the

first commercial computers of India — the Colour Genie. He later went on to

become the Union Minster for Science and Technology in the Narasimha Rao

Cabinet, when IT was still a part this ministry.

In an interview to Dataquest in 1992, Mr Kumaramangalam argued that there was

still a lot of good software available indigenously. "I do believe that we

are still not getting over our colonial hang-ups...There is some very good

software in India. Papers and magazines should promote Indian products because

there is lack of consciousness in the Indian computing industry that very good

software are available. The whole problem is that they are not ready to buy it.

Unfortunately, most of us quite happily use pirated software without any qualms

whatsoever," he had said.

The minister was a proponent of the theory that close coordination between

the government, the industry and various IT industry organizations is required

for building an IT Nation. He believed that the industry should take time out to

promote the usage of IT in the country.

Mr Kumaramangalam was a firm believer in the development of the local market.

Software exports will have no meaning unless the domestic markets are developed,

he used to say. "What is export? It is basically trying to sell outside

your country what you have in your country," he quipped.

He was ahead of his time in looking at parallel processing as the technology

of the future. Because of his initiatives, CDAC developed supercomputers.

For Mr Kumaramangalam, whose political career was founded as a flamboyant

labor leader, was always opposed to the typical labor union attitude that

modernization resulted in unemployment. "I do not think labor and computers

are at all conflicting...On the contrary, over a period of time, it

(computerization) will give greater employment opportunities. There are a

million things...which you cannot do because you do not have the tools...The

moment you create tools, you create jobs," Mr Kumaramangalam had said.