N Vittal: Bureaucrat who made the software horse fly

Former President Pratibha Patil (left) presenting the Padma Bhushan Award to Nagarajan Vittal. The IAS officer of the Gujarat cadre, 1960 batch, passed away in Chennai last week. (Source: PTI/File)

With the passing away of Nagarajan Vittal in Chennai last week, India has lost an illustrious former bureaucrat who would be remembered for his unconventional and dynamic ways of working in the government.

Though Vittal occupied many positions in his home cadre state, Gujarat, and the centre, his brief tenures as the Secretary of the Department of Electronics (DoE) and then as Secretary of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) in the early 1990s came at a critical juncture in India’s economic history. The two stints of Vittal catalysed the growth of the nascent software and information technology sector – which turned out to be the poster boy of the liberalisation era.

1990: Enter N Vittal

Vittal’s coming to DoE in 1990 marked a shift in the functioning and outlook of DoE, which since its founding in 1971 was categorised as a scientific department. A policy to promote software exports was announced in 1986 but firms faced bureaucratic hurdles.

They were allowed to export software using satellite data links but tariffs imposed by DoT were more than the annual turnover of some of them. Vittal decided to address the issue head-on.

He met industry associations and asked them what they needed to boost software exports. He was given a list of demands including duty concession and tax holiday. Vittal promptly placed the demands before the Committee of Secretaries in June 1990.

India then was facing a foreign exchange crisis and the government was keen to promote exports. Finance Secretary Bimal Jalan asked Vittal if he could promise software exports worth US$500 million by 1991 if the government acceded to the demand for a tax holiday. At that time, the software exports of all companies put together was below $100 million.

Software Exports Unshackled

Still, Vittal said the industry could try to reach $250 million to $300 million within a year. Ultimately, a compromise was arrived. A target of $400 million was fixed. The industry got the tax holiday but in return had to commit to an unrealistic export target.

But Vittal looked at it differently. At a Nasscom meeting, he recalled an Akbar-Birbal tale. Once Akbar was so unhappy with Birbal that he wanted to behead him. Birbal pleaded for a year, and in return, he promised Akbar that he would make the king’s favourite horse fly.

When Birbal’s friends quizzed him about this strange promise, he said “Who knows what will happen in one year. I may die, the horse may die or the king may be no more. Or, maybe the horse will fly.” Vittal compared the promise of $400 million in software exports with Birbal’s promise.

The tax holiday worked like magic for the software industry, and the horse did fly, if not in 1991, as targeted, but subsequently. Alongside, Vittal aggressively rolled out the Software Technology Parks (STP) scheme which offered single-window clearance and access to satellite data links – all of which led to exponential growth in software exports.

Liberalising Telecom  

As DoE secretary, he was an ex-officio member of the Telecom Commission and was also made a member of the Athreya Committee which looked into telecom reforms. In both these fora, Vittal fiercely advocated the opening of the telecom sector and slashing high tariffs for data transmission.

Eventually, he was made DoT Secretary and given a free hand to introduce the changes he was advocating. He was the main architect of the National Telecom Policy 1994 which opened the doors to the private sector into basic and valued-added telecom services.

The speed of governance may be a catchphrase today, but Vittal practised it in the 1990s. He believed that between perfection and speed, one should prefer speed.

More CEO Than Secretary

He would always carry a dictaphone with him. He would promptly record minutes of the meeting or decisions taken right in the presence of other participants. This reduced the time taken to finalise the minutes later and cut delays in decision-making.

He ran the departments like a Chief Executive – meeting division heads and officers regularly, taking their feedback and suggestions, and creating a clean working environment.

As today’s policymakers grapple with new challenges in technology and startup sectors, they could take a leaf out of Vittal’s management doctrine. He redefined the role of bureaucracy post-1991 this way: “Secretaries of government departments must act as champions of their sector to improve India’s competitiveness in that sector. The secretary as a champion of an idea has to argue his case, persuade his colleagues, and make compromises (if necessary) so that the basic objective of the proposal is finally approved with consensus.”

Dinesh C Sharma is a New Delhi-based journalist and author of The Outsourcer: The Story of India’s IT Revolution (MIT Press, 2015). Views expressed are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.