While in the US, Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Thursday went down memory lane to recount how he first met Sam Pitroda, or 'Sam' as he calls him, recalling that the technocrat had displayed to his father, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, “a little box with a TV screen on it”, which he later found out was a computer.
Addressing a reception organised by the Indian Overseas Congress in New York, Rahul remembered how Pitroda had come to make a presentation to Rajiv on how computers could transform the way work was done. It was 1982, and a 12-year-old Rahul and younger sister Priyanka were made to sit down to watch the presentation.
“In the morning, my father told me that there is a presentation and you have to come. I didn't know what presentation meant. I thought I was going to get a present,” said Rahul. He and Priyanka were made to sit down at the back of the room quietly. “We sat there for six hours. And Sam and my father discussed computers. I didn't quite understand what a computer was; nobody actually in 1982 really understood what a computer was. To me it looked like a little box with a TV screen on it.”
He said he did not like the presentation as he could not stand the fact that he had to sit for six hours.
Four to five years later, Rahul said, he started to see the result of the presentation. “There were typewriters in the Prime Minister's Office. Everybody wanted to use a typewriter. And Sam and my father said to everyone in the PMO’s office that they have to move to computers. And everybody said, 'No, we like our typewriters, we don’t want computers'.”
So Pitroda and Rajiv said to the people in the PMO that they would replace typewriters with computers for one month, and then they could have their typewriters back.
“They gave them the computers for one month, and after one month they said, 'Ok, we are bringing your typewriters back' and everyone started to fight. 'No, we don't want our typewriters back, we want the computer'.”
Rahul said the anecdote showed that ideas take time to travel into India, but when an idea is good, India understands it very quickly, and uses it and shows the world how it can be used.
He said Pitroda, like other NRIs, had brought back home ideas that transformed India. “You are all Non Resident Indians. The original Congress movement was an NRI movement. Mahatma Gandhi was an NRI, Jawaharlal Nehru came back from England, Ambedkar, Maulana Azad, Sardar Patel—these were all NRIs. Every single one of them went to the outside world, saw the outside world, returned back to India and used some of the ideas they got and transformed India,” he said.
Pitroda, who is chairman of the Overseas Congress Department, is the main architect of Rahul's fortnight-long trip to the US. He is a close family friend of the Gandhis, and was adviser to Rajiv. He is credited with introducing India to computers and ushering in the telecom revolution.
