The Hindu Business Line : <I>IT's mahajan </I>

Pramod Mahajan, India's first Information Technology Minister, used to say that the IT sector had grown because there was no bureaucratic interference in the form of an IT Ministry. But on his death, Nasscom, the industry body, paid tribute to Mahajan by acknowledging that it was he who had played a vigorous, dynamic and proactive role in developing the IT industry and making it the poster-child of a vibrant economic India.

Mahajan, who was the IT Minister in 1999, was known to have been corporate savvy, and used this skill to develop a government-industry partnership model that could go beyond bureaucracy and control to facilitation and promotion.

The media too has its own reasons to remember Mahajan. Unlike most of his colleagues, he would on most occasions take calls and share information without compromising the government's or his party's position. A colleague remembers that on one occasion when a Cabinet reshuffle was imminent, Mahajan came out of the Prime Minister's residence and when asked about the new Ministers, folded the sheet of paper in his hand and said: "Here are the names. Note them down. On the other side are the ministries they will be getting. That I can't share with you right now.'' Possibly Mahajan's stint as a sub-editor early on in his career had something to do with his candidness with the media.

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