The problem with the “revised” computer policy of 1984

Edited excerpts from the video interview with Sunil Agarwal is Founder, 20:20 Media & Former Editor, Dataquest…

“From what I recall, in 1983, the total turnover of the Top 10 of the Indian computer industry was Rs 100 crores. I believe companies would buy computers somewhere in the US or UK, disassemble them, send the parts over here and assemble them again. Many of them used to write their software for these machines. What the 1984 National Computer Policy did was that it said you can import these computers directly.

The biggest obstacle to this policy was that many of the Indian manufacturers, the large ones, went to the bigwigs in the government and said that this would kill the initiatives and investments that they had already made in the industry. The government asked the policymakers to do something about the policy, maybe tweak it a little to stop these imports. They added a clause saying that the computers being imported must have a minimum hard disk size (300MB). Amazingly there were very few such computers in the world in 1984 so effectively the imports were blocked.”

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...