Lessons from India’s C-DOT saga for technology development

Former Congress and socialist leader K.P. Unnikrishnan, who passed away at Kozhikode on March 3, was an elected Member of Parliament for six terms between 1971 and 1995. He will be remembered for his long political and parliamentary career spanning several decades and for his public life. Few, however, might recall the impact of his tenure as the Minister for Communications for about three months — from December 1989 to April 1990 — in the short-lived government of Prime Minister V.P. Singh. 
Unnikrishnan’s brief stay in Sanchar Bhawan was marked by controversies that derailed one of the most successful technology development programmes of independent India — the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT) — and ended the career of Sam Pitroda as a technology policymaker. Unnikrishnan’s crackdown on the telecom R&D organisation, which heralded the communication revolution with its indigenously developed rural telephone exchange technology, was so severe that it could barely recover in later decades.

The communication scenario in India of the 1970s and 1980s was pathetic. Telephone connectivity was very poor. The national waiting list for getting a landline connection stood at 8.42 lakh in 1987, translating into a waiting period of three to four years. The connectivity in rural areas was worse, with just 3% of 6 lakh villages having a telephone connection. The quality of service was also poor, with high downtime. 

The main reason was the dependence on imports for telecom equipment such as switches, transmission lines, and instruments. Multinational telecom companies determined the level and type of technology India needed. The imported analogue exchanges were not suitable for Indian climatic conditions and would often break down due to high temperatures and dust. They also could not handle high call volume in India.

In 1980, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi formed a committee to review the telecom infrastructure. An Indian technologist from the U.S. made a radical suggestion before this panel: that India should develop and manufacture a digital switch instead of importing, as favoured by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT). Over the next few years, this idea crystalised and C-DOT was born in 1986, with Sam Pitroda as its chairman.

C-DOT was a break from the past. Pitroda did not want it to be another government R&D outfit on the lines of existing laboratories and national institutions administered by different ministries. It was formed as an autonomous society, funded by the government but with functional freedom, on the lines of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR). The agency was given an assured budget and a tight deadline — Rs 36 crore and 36 months — to develop an indigenous switch. The idea was to introduce the next level of technology and do so indigenously. The proposed digital switch was heavily software-based, unlike the prevailing crossbar exchanges. 

Young engineers and technologists were recruited. They worked as project teams in Bangalore and Delhi. A new work culture was promoted. People worked long hours. They were not paid ‘overtime’ as per government rules but were given incentives such as paid holidays.

The unconventional R&D unit attracted national and international media attention. One American industry analyst wrote, “Young blue-jeaned computer programmers pulling all-nighters, walls peppered with PERT diagrams, weekend retreats, employee counselling programs, and performance-linked awards. But it is not Silicon Valley, it is India. It is not Apple Computer, it is C-DOT run by the government.”

But at home, C-DOT and Pitroda faced a hostile bureaucracy and an uncooperative DoT. Questions were raised in Parliament and the press about the working of C-DOT. In response to allegations of financial irregularities and flouting of government rules, inter-governmental committees were quickly formed to review the working of C-DOT, but they did not report any financial wrongdoing. Pitroda, perhaps in anticipation of such questions, had decided to not take a salary from the government.

As promised, C-DOT not only developed the digital rural exchange but also developed several other projects in the given timeframe, as well as novel ways of technology transfer and a base of Indian vendors. All this helped it break the stronghold of American and European telecom suppliers in India. Combined with another innovation — subscriber trunk dialling, or STD — the C-DOT digital switch dramatically improved telecom connectivity across the country, heralding the communications revolution.

When Unnikrishnan took over as the Minister for Communications in December 1989, Pitroda and, because of his association, C-DOT were being targeted by top bureaucracy as well as the political opponents of Rajiv Gandhi. ForGandhi’s political adversaries, including those from the Congress party, Pitroda had become an easy target as he was seen influencing key decisions as an important member of the informal group of “Computer Boys” who had direct access to the prime minister. Pitroda helmed Gandhi’s pet programme, ‘Technology Missions’. In addition, telecom MNCs had been perturbed by the success of C-DOT. All this placed Pitroda and C-DOT in a tight spot as Rajiv Gandhi and the Congress were voted out.

On the very first day of taking over as the minister, Unnikrishnan publicly humiliated Pitroda, purportedly for being late in receiving him when he arrived at Sanchar Bhawan. Within a week, he formed a high level expert committee headed by K.P.P. Nambiar, former chairman of Indian Telephone Industries, to investigate C-DOT. It included all eight members of the inter-departmental committee that had gone into the performance of C-DOT twice in 1986 and 1988 and cleared it. G.B. Meemansi, executive director of C-DOT, was also made a member. Nambiar then formed a one-man subcommittee specifically to review C-DOT’s purchases.

“The deliberations, during the Expert Committee meetings, while reviewing the findings of the sub-committee, showed a planned witch-hunt instead of an honest review of the work put in by C-DOT. An air of gloom and uncertainty started hanging over 600 young C-DOTians,” Meemansi later recalled in his memoirs. He and three other members of the committee gave a dissent note. Nambiar did not include the note in his final report and submitted it quickly to Unnikrishnan before the decided date. When the dissent note was submitted to Unnikrishnan, he called it a “parallel report” and refused to make it a part of the report submitted by Nambiar. The Nambiar report was also submitted during the weekend. On the next working day, Unnikrishnan issued orders sacking from C-DOT two of the four members — Meemansi and D.R. Mahajan — who had written the dissenting note. Two weeks later, Unnikrishnan was divested of the communications portfolio and replaced by Janeshwar Mishra.

The three-month tenure of Unnikrishnan as the Communications Minister at a critical point in technology development and dissemination derailed the whole indigenisation project. Though C-DOT eventually delivered 10,000-line and 40,000-line exchanges as promised, the momentum it generated for innovation and product development was lost. Rattled by the shabby treatment of the founders and mentors like Pitroda and Meemansi, several young engineers marched to the Prime Minister’s residence in Delhi, and staged a walkout when Unnikrishnan went to address them in Bangalore.

Within a few months C-DOT reported a mass exodus of scientists and engineers, making it a classic case of brain drain. Many were readily recruited by multinational telecom firms, which made a comeback in the post-1991 liberalisation years, while others became entrepreneurs.

The episode has many lessons that are still relevant four decades later. Indigenous technology development needs unstinted support from the political as well as administrative apparatus, irrespective of a change in political dispensation. The development teams and organisations involved need functional autonomy and freedom from mundane bureaucratic restrictions.
Technology development is risky business and cannot be tied down by traditional yardsticks of time and cost-overruns as well as failures. Young talent is an essential raw material and it needs to be retained and nurtured in every way possible. Product development remains the holy grail of technology business in India, and there is a lot to learn from the history of technology development here.

Dinesh C. Sharma is a New Delhi-based journalist and author, and has written books on India’s post-1947 science and technology journey.

Published – March 11, 2026 08:30 am IST