The advent of the PC in India in the 1980s

Edited excerpts from an exhaustive video interview with Shyam Malhotra, former Executive Director of CyberMedia...

“Like any other change, there were a few evangelists for the Personal Computer. A few people believed that this would be important. In the government think tanks, there were people who thought that way too, otherwise, the government policies would not have come out. They promoted manufacturing and so there were some companies making computer hardware like DCM, Data Products, ORG Sytems, the HCL of old, Wipro, Usha, etc.

There was also skepticism, cynicism, and opposition. Like one of the earlier users was public sector banks. The unions protested a lot, so they were not called computers, but ALPMs: Automatic Ledger Posting Machines. This was the way of bringing in a “computer device” with the purpose of ledger postings, which was acceptable to the unions. Computers were also called word processors. In some ways even for using the words computer, there was a little bit of resistance.

But then again there were people who believed in it, and they kept pushing the PC and talking about it. As and when the machines started coming in, gradually people got used to the idea and saw the benefits. There was resistance, but I think ultimately the benefits that the machines gave in terms of work convinced people that they were not going to threaten jobs and lead to displacement. It took time.

The need for a PC magazine

Dataquest was a magazine which was for the IT industry, but it was a business magazine. Somewhere along the line, it became obvious that the people who were using computers needed different kinds of content, therefore there was a need for a publication or a place where they could go to where they could learn how to use them. If the whole business of promoting computerization really had to happen, the industry would not grow unless there were more takers. The basic idea came from there. There should be a magazine for the users. But yes, again there was a whole lot of scepticism and question marks. A second IT magazine? Are you guys mad? Those were the expressions on the faces of people. We first had PC World and then PCQuest. The initial usage of PCs was essentially word processing, spreadsheets, powerpoint, and games. In our office, we used to have Pacman contests.

When it really took off in the 1990s

But I think the major catching on happened in the 1990s. The telecom policy pushed for connectivity. The usage went up dramatically when computers got connected. In the latter part of that decade, early software companies had started establishing themselves. The big rush came because of the Y2K scare where a lot of stuff had to be rewritten and a lot of it came to Indian organizations because they could churn out people. The next wave was the call centers. These two really spread the use of computers.”

These are excerpts from a video chat with Editor Sunil Rajguru and part of our PCQuest 35 Years Series on the Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow of Technology.

Check out the complete interview...