File:Rajaraman, V. History of Computing in India, 1955-2010.pdf

The distinguished Professor Vaidyeswaran Rajaraman, one of India's pioneers in establishing computer science as a field of study, wrote this history of computers and computing in India in 2014 at the behest of the IEEE Computer Society. Drawing on his his personal experiences and documentary sources for the events that he describes, Professor Rajaraman understands the history of Indian computing as a process intertwined with two interacting forces. These are the political climate as determined by the ruling political party, and the government policies driven by the technocrats and bureaucrats who acted within the boundaries drawn by the ruling party. He perceives four break points--in 1970, 1978, 1991, and 1998--that changed the direction of the development of computers and their applications in the country, and explains why these breaks occurred and how they affected the history of computing in India.