“I am an ordinary guy with an extraordinary story. I will tell you my story and what education and learning meant to me, but there may or may not be a lesson there,” said Dr. Sam Pitroda, adviser to the Prime Minister on Public Information, Infrastructure and Innovations, before addressing Delhi University's 89 Annual Convocation here on Saturday.
More than 300 Ph.D. scholars dressed in red robes with matching mortarboard caps and yellow cravats received their degrees from the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Dinesh Singh, who after awarding the degrees declared, “I, with the powers vested in me as the Vice-Chancellor…confer these degrees to those present and in absenteeism,” before reverentially introducing Dr. Pitroda in Hindi: “I can only think of Dr. Pitroda as a young man of 20 years with all the many things that he does.”
Thereafter it was the turn of the young ladies and men in black robes with matching mortarboard caps and yellow cravats to come on to the stage to receive the 150 medals and 50 prizes for academic excellence from Dr. Pitroda.
Some of the students walked away clutching three or four medals each and several prizes. “I have two gold medals and one silver medal and I intend to get an M.Phil. followed by a Ph.D,” said a gleeful mathematics student Nikita Garg. Her friend Archana Chandrashekaran also got two gold medals for sociology and says she will one day ace the Civil Services exams, whereas Mansi Bhargava, also armed with two gold medals for corporational research, wants to top the NET exams.
Dr. Pitroda had a very special message for these very ambitious young ladies and their peers. “The most important thing for you is to build up a strong self. Many in India have fragile self-esteems and everybody is ready to be hurt. You should build a strong, able self that cannot be shaken…Get out of your self, don't think about things like ‘how would I look if I do it? Who would insult me? How do I show off?' Education does not teach you about the self, it just gives you a strong foundation to build the self,” he said after relating his life story which began in the April of 1962 when he had just graduated in physics.
“I was young, energetic and stupid,” he said, and, after the laughter had died down, began to explain his extraordinary journey from an obscure village in India to his current position as the Prime Minister's adviser. He is also credited with heralding the telecom revolution in India in the 1980s as technology adviser to the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.
“In the 1980s I came back to India, tried to unsuccessfully make a telephone call to my wife in Chicago. So with a little arrogance and lots of ignorance, I decided to fix telephones in this country over the next decade,” he said, adding that if he had foreseen the labyrinth of bureaucracy that he would have to contend with to achieve his goals he would never have attempted anything. A heart attack and bad finances forced him to leave the country for another decade.
“Do not discuss, just do your job and do it against all odds. Bureaucracy and rules are there as barriers, never be afraid of a big dream that looks wild…this is my final message for all those who start their journey today,” he concluded.
