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Time flies! Here we are observing the 50th birth anniversary of Dewang Mehta, who was
the catalyst triggering the explosion of India into a new age of computer software.
I recall my first meeting in 1990 with Dewang
—
glowing in health, charmingly fair and
talking enthusiastically about his life. There was a childlike insouciance and enthusiasm
about him. We hit it off together right from the moment we met. Every occasion I met
him in India or abroad is full of happy memories. Like the occasion when celebrating our
success in software in an annual meeting of NASSCOM , I pointed out that the complete
understanding between the DOE and NASSCOM was because NASSCOM stood for
a bunch of Nuts, Asses, Stupid, Silly, Crackpots, Oddballs and Madcaps. The audience
greeted this comment loudly, the loudest was, of course, Dewang, who repeated this on
many forums. Like the pleasant surprise he sprung on us in August, 2000 when he invited
us for a get-together which was also his birthday, a fact we discovered only later. Alas!
Little did we realise that it was fated to be his last. Rightly have the Greeks said that those
whom the Gods love die young. After all, he was a part of them. He was, after all, Dewang.
I sometimes wonder whether there was an unrecognised element of the Gujarati animal
spirit of enterprise in the dramatic growth of the Indian software industry. I believe that
I imbibed by a process of cultural osmosis, as an IAS officer of the Gujarat cadre, the
enterprising spirit of Gujarat. As everyone knows, Gujarat was number 8 in the list of
industrially advanced states in India when it was separated from Maharashtra on 1st May
1960.
I joined IAS on 16th May 1960 and have been part of the Gujarat story almost
from its inception as a state. We proudly claim that Gujarat, which was number 8 in
industrial growth, within less than a decade, had become number 2 in the whole country
and number 1 in many specific industries. The natural advantage of a long coastline and
availability of salt and limestone has made Gujarat the largest producer of salt in the
country and numero uno so far as soda ash is concerned. The contribution of Gujarat in
the industrial development of the country has been widely recognised.
What is probably not appreciated is that where nature is harsh, people become
entrepreneurial. Gujarat mostly is a dry and barren state. It has always suffered from lack
of adequate supply of water resources.The 40,000 sq km of Kutch is almost a desert.The
western part of the state, Saurashtra, is also mostly dry. It is the eastern part of the state
which is locally known as Gujarat which has major rivers like Narmada and Tapi and
regular agriculture.
It is almost axiomatic that the most enterprising people come from places where nature is
harsh and therefore people can survive only on their own enterprising spirit. That is why
perhaps the Gujaratis, Marwadis and Chettiars down south have emerged as universally
recognised enterprising people. When Gujarat became a separate state and naturally
focused on economic development, the bureaucracy of the State also by a process of cultural
osmosis imbibed the spirit of enterprise. In the states that were under the British or native
rulers, the sense of hierarchy was strong and dominant and many of the bureaucrats posted
there adopted a superiority complex. In Gujarat on the other hand, the ministers, hailing
from the same enterprising class adopted a business and industry friendly attitude.This by
a process of osmosis was imbibed by the bureaucrats also.
I discovered this dramatic difference in the attitude compared with that of officers from
the other cadres when I became Secretary to the Government of India in the Department
of Electronics (DOE). In my very first week of taking over charge as Secretary DOE, I
took the initiative to meet the electronic industry associations and tried to understand
their problems. The attitude of others in those days, especially in the permit license raj
was that a bureaucrat should not be seen to be too friendly with the industry. The longer
an officer made the captains of industry wait at his door, the greater his power and visible
status. My approach was just the opposite.
