He is considered the father of India’s telecom revolution. From the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT) and Telecom Commission to various technology missions, the knowledge commission and, more recently, the National Advisory Council,has been deeply involved with many of India’s path-breaking telecom and digital policy initiatives. A close friend of Rajiv Gandhi , he stepped out of his comfort zone of his domain expertise and entered the rough and tumble of Congress electoral politics to provide a helping hand to Sonia Gandhi and her children. On the eve of the release of his autobiography Dreaming Big, Pitroda spoke to ET Magazine about his long journey in India. Edited excerpts from the interview:Growing up in a Gujarati family in the 1940s, Mahatma Gandhi was our hero. The Gandhian values that I imbibed early in life were simplicity, trust, sacrifice and family values. Often complex situations in life have very simple solutions — that is at the core of Gandhiji’s teaching. I have learnt not to expect personal profits or returns out of all the work that I have done. For me, nation-building has been much more important. While yours is the typical story of an Indian engineering graduate student who realises his American dream, yet in many ways your path has been quite different from others... My journey to the US was at least 20 years before many of the Indians who went to the US and carved out their fortunes. Theirs is a different generation and my generation grew up in a different culture with different values. India’s freedom movement shaped us in a big way. In those days we were not too focused on making money, while now everyone wants to be a millionaire very fast. I’m not making a judgement, but our goals in life were different and the journey was different. I made a decision very early in life to make a contribution towards a larger cause of nation-building in India.Net neutrality is very important. Like roads and highways the information highway should also be free and financed by public money. Privatisation makes sense up to a point, but private players will always look for profits. An example is providing rural services in India, where the government has to step in.The challenges have been very different, considering that with Wescom (a digital switching company) I was in my 30s, while when I set up C-SAM (a mobile wallet firm) I was almost 60. For my first company, we were developing new technologies and I wasn’t worried about payroll and my partners had deep pockets.But C-SAM was set up with my own money and I was back to an entrepreneurial role after a long haul in India. Besides, at that time (C-SAM was founded in 1998), the mobile wallet technology was ahead of its time.Through my career in India, I only wanted to be a change agent. I was not interested in promotions, TA/DA, retirement benefits and things like that, which bureaucrats are so concerned about.As principal advisor to C-DOT, I accepted only a token salary of Rs 1 per year. Besides, I was also interested in getting on with the task at hand and then moving on — I didn’t want to get stuck to any government job for ever. But most of the people I worked with didn’t understand my mindset. They were themselves stuck in a 30-year-old time warp; besides they were insecure and often in a fragile situation. So they felt insulted by small things like who you said hello to first or who you shook hands with.To achieve that goal, a local focus on capacity building is very important. If there’s no focus on agriculture, the rural-urban divide cannot be bridged. For instance, India imports pulses from Canada — instead, we should be producing pulses, which is a staple food in India, for the rest of the world.Rural outreach programmes have always been there — right from Garibi Hatao many decades back. But it is important to rope in people with domain expertise to take such national initiatives forward. In the areas of space, agriculture, dairy farming and telecom there have been champions with huge domain expertise such as Vikram Sarabhai, MS Swaminathan, Verghese Kurien and me — likewise, change agents are now needed in spheres such as energy policy to make a difference.Politicians cannot drive national policy without the support of change agents. The Clean India campaign is an example — for success, it needs to rope in people with domain knowledge.Clean India would have to cover different sectors such as air, soil, rivers, garbage disposal and various others and should not be over-simplified. To achieve real success, investment to the tune of Rs 3,00,000 crore will be required.I feel there’s too much focus on IT by the entrepreneurs. Hi-tech enterprises should also be built in sectors such as food, education, health, environment and most important agriculture. These are the sectors that will generate jobs — IT, of course, will have to be the enabler everywhere.The friendship helped in the work that I had set out to do for Indian telecom. He supported my work and that’s why I was successful.But, you must remember that I came to India and decided to work here first — I didn’t know Rajiv before that, we were not school or college buddies. Our friendship developed through my work in India.It was a very difficult time. After Congress lost the elections, the party in power were attacking my wife, children and me in many dubious ways. We were receiving threatening calls and letters. And after Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, I realised that I had no money and then suffered a heart attack.Rajiv and then Sonia had told me to consider entering the Rajya Sabha. But I never wanted to do that and would only like to work as a change agent. Had Rajiv been alive, I wouldn’t have stepped into politics and would have continued to work on policies. But with him gone, I felt morally responsible and so played a more active role in Congress electoral politics.I know him as a person and like him. But his public face is very different. He has to become a change agent because the Congress party now needs a new direction, innovation and a rejig of the existing architecture, all of which has to come from him as the leader. I think his style of leadership is different from the older generation and he finds it difficult because people within the party are resistant to change.My work has been all about communication and I believe life is also about being connected and communicating with one’s family, friends and future generations. For me, my granddaughter’s birth became the appropriate time to start writing the story of my life to remain connected with the future.Is there a message that you would like to give to young Indians growing up in small towns such as Titilagarh (in Odisha)? I think young people in India should dream big regardless of their background and whether they are born in rich or poor families. Also, it’s important to work hard to achieve one’s dreams. At 73, after suffering from heart attacks and cancer , I still have work at hand.I am willing to do anything for the sake of India and would continue to work, if that helps India. However, at this stage, I can’t work for a boss or take up a job — I could do that 25 years ago, but now it’s for younger people to do that. But I’m still there to help and there’s a lot that I could offer even when I’m working independently.