The Rearview Podcast | India’s First Computers | Part 3: How software won

India’s computing story unfolds in two distinct phases. In the decades after Independence, the country set out to build its own computer hardware. But from the 1970s onwards, that ambition quietly gave way to something else: software.

In this concluding episode of the series, we trace how and why that pivot happened. During the 1960s, American universities began partnering with the Indian Institutes of Technology and other academic institutions, drawn by India’s deep pool of technical talent. Instead of manufacturing machines locally, these collaborations imported IBM computers and focused entirely on software and programming.

This shift marked the beginning of India’s transformation into the world’s back office for software engineering. We examine how India came to dominate global software labour—and ask the big, unresolved question: why did the country give up on building computer hardware altogether?

Hosts: Sobhana K Nair & Jacob Koshy

Producer and editor: Jude Weston

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