Right to Information, Right to Knowledge: Remarks of Dr. Sam Pitroda
HasGeek Geekup (Public Lectures By Visiting Geeks), NUMA Bengaluru, October 15, 2017
Friends, good afternoon. It is indeed a special privilege for me to be with you all.
I didn’t realize what I was getting into. When I came here, Carl told me that we have a meeting this afternoon and he gave me a little background on what we are going to do yesterday, so I come in here at NUMA, and I said, “Are you sure we are in the right place?”
But I am so happy to see you all. I am amazed at what you young people are doing in India today. I am so proud of you. I met someone who is working on tribal people. I met another one working on kanoon. Meet a lot of you who are really very interested in building new India.
When I see some of you, I feel so excited about the future of India. My journey has been a long one. I was born in 1942. I am 75 years old, and those were the early days of India’s independence.
Growing up to us, Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Kalam Azad, Subhas Chandra Bose were the real ideals in our mind. We grew up with Gandhi and taught inclusion, truth, trust, self reliance, simplicity, sacrifice, courage.
All of these words meant so much to us as little kids. My father had no education. But in our house we had five big photographs, that big, of these five leaders, and their idea of India was the key in our mind while we were going through schools and colleges.
I went to US in 1964, and as I learned a little bit there in 60’s, I realized that there are three fundamental issues in India: disparity, demography, and development. And I also realized that to really overcome these, first we need connectivity.
In 1979, I came to Delhi and couldn’t make a phone call to my wife in Chicago. This was from five star hotel.
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