The long-term social and economic impact of the Rajiv Gandhi government has not received the kind of attention it deserves. The founding of the Center of Development of Telematics (C-Dot) and its success over the years gives us an insight into the impact made by the policies initiated by Rajiv Gandhi in the 1980s.

Rather then getting entangled in cold statistics, what one needs to focus on while assessing the legacy of the Gandhi government, is the dramatic re-engineering of the national mindset, enthusiasm, energy, hope, aspirations and mood during his days. One of the most important priorities that Gandhi and his advisors recognised was to use technology as an entry point and not an end in itself to bring about generational changes in our age-old processes and delivery systems that affect the huge mass of people specially in rural areas.

As a result many new programmes were launched in communications, defence, space, agriculture, computerization, planning, etc. The Technology Missions related to water, literacy, immunization, oil-seeds, dairy development and telecommunications were designed to bring new missionary zeal and new management methods to problem solving. There were serious government discussions on launching other Technology Missions related to environment, housing, and managing floods and drought as well.

C-DOT was the foundation to energize young talent in the country for indigenous development. The task was to develop our own digital rural exchange to provide nationwide STD/PCO network to enhance accessibility and connect rural people to India and the world. This was seen as a pipedream. Nearly two decades hence that mandate seems fulfilled.

In the mid-1980's it was hard for most people in India to make a connection between telecommunications and its direct economic impact. That a farmer in a village in one part of the country is able to compare the prices of seeds with his counterpart in another part of the country or a trucking company transporting agricultural produce could track the movements of its vehicles using public call offices was the sort of everyday economic interactions that no government before had paid attention to. For that matter, even computerization of the railway reservation system, which was then viewed by many as destroying jobs, is now a crucial element of Indian Railways.

Perhaps the single biggest accomplishment whose benefits India is reaping today was create "can-do" national mood and mentality in the government through institutions such as C-DOT, C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing), National Informatics Centre (NIC), Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), etc. India's unqualified success as an information technology power has a genesis in precisely that can-do mood that we managed to unleash among the country's youth and new entrepreneurs of the mid 1980's, many of them are in a position of technological and therefore economic leadership in and outside India.

That any process as fundamentally altering as the one set in motion by Rajiv Gandhi takes two decades to make an impact in a large, diverse and democratic country like India is a well known fact. India is now at a stage with emphasis on globalisation, privatisation, deregulation and economic liberalization, where it needs a second equally dramatic revolution in its mind-set. The challenge now is to make the country a true economic power where its one billion people have a reasonable shot at some level of economic parity. We can no longer afford to be content with pockets of excellence in cities such as Bangalore and Hyderabad.

We need to transform the whole country into one big centre of excellence in many different areas. For this we need to once again focus on reforms in governance, administration, judiciary, science and technology to deliver basis needs related to water, sanitation, agriculture, education, energy, environment, health, housing and employment.

The burgeoning foreign exchange reserves of our country give us an enormous opportunity to turn India into a country of its long recognized promise. There is a great need to evolve a grand all-encompassing vision for the country that pays as much attention to its water and sanitation needs, as to its information technology.

Why can't we for instance create a whole set of modern tools for the country's carpenters, masons, janitors and others to bring dignity to labour? Technology is not just about creating glittering glass and steel edifices housing computers. It is equally about equipping our workforce with tools that make them both efficient as well as dignified. Why do we still see thousands of sweepers carrying outdated brooms, breaking their backs to clean streets? Why do we still have janitors that carry human refuse on their head? Why do we still have 400 million illiterates? Why do we still have shortage of water and energy? Why do we still have surplus food supply and millions malnourished? These may seem like trivial questions, but they go to the very heart of technology developments and the kind of modern nation we want to create.

For a country like India thinking outside the box ought to be the guiding principle for everything we do at political, economic, cultural and social levels. India now exudes the energy, enthusiasm, and promise that one saw in the US in the 1960's. Clearly it is the new frontier of opportunity. What the current government or for that matter any government in the future can do is decide that for the next 25 years we want to concentrate on fundamentals of human resource and nation building. To that end it is important that our country's young scientists and entrepreneurs begin to focus on Rajiv Gandhi's dream to use technology for every day problem solving, and leap forward on multiple fronts.

Rajiv Gandhi's legacy is more important now that the country's youth is confident and able to understand and utilize it's vast knowledge base. If the mid-1980's saw India's first modern mind-set revolution, now is as good a time as any to start a second more comprehensive revolution to change our mind-set once again, to focus on technology and modern management methods, to address challenges related to basic needs and infrastructure, to benefit the mass of poor people and make India a true global economic super power.

Remembering her late husband and former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's interest in taking IT to the masses, Soniya Gandhi said, "Such efforts would help in bridging the digital divide and in turn empower people speaking different languages".

She said when the US was not giving India it's Cray Super Computer, Rajiv Gandhi had asked the Indian scientists to make such high-powered computers on their own to enable the country to be self-dependent in technology.