Padma Bhushan for Vittal, finally

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Nagarajan Vittal, distinguished civil servant, former Chief Vigilance Commissioner (CVC) of India and the man who opened up the electronics/IT industry, which helped India grab the global IT opportunity, has been conferred the Padma Bhushan award, ten years after getting out of public life. He won the first ever Dataquest IT Person of the Year award in 1993.

Although a lot of Dataquest awardees have won the Padma award, the recognition for Vittal came a little late. In a story published in 2010, Padma Awards: Better Late than Never,  Dataquest pointed this out, calling it “Conspicuous by His Absence”.

“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 government's regulatory clutches a 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 that has 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,” wrote Dataquest.

This year's Padma list does not have any names from the IT industry.