Its absolutely right to highlight Professor Vaidyeswaran Rajaraman. While Sudha Murty’s notebook provided the financial seed, Professor V. Rajaraman provided the intellectual seed.

He is widely revered as the “Father of Computer Science Education in India.”

If you are referring to a “notebook” in his context, you are likely talking about the cyclostyled lecture notes he created at IIT Kanpur in the 1960s. Because there were no computer science textbooks available in India at the time, he wrote the notes himself, which were distributed to students. These notes eventually became the seminal textbook Principles of Computer Programming—the “bible” that educated the entire first generation of Indian IT professionals.

Here is how Prof. V. Rajaraman built the foundation of the industry:

1. The First “Computer Science” Classroom (1965)

Before the IT boom, there was no formal computer science education in India.

• IIT Kanpur Revolution: In 1965, at IIT Kanpur, Prof. Rajaraman helped establish the first M.Tech program in Computer Science in India.

• He taught the very first batch of students how to program using the IBM 1620 (India’s first computer in an educational institute), often struggling with punch cards and primitive interfaces.

2. The Teacher of Titans

Prof. Rajaraman didn’t just teach code; he taught the people who built the industry.

• Mentoring Narayana Murthy: One of his early students at IIT Kanpur was N.R. Narayana Murthy (Founder of Infosys). Murthy has often credited Rajaraman for shaping his thinking and famously said, “Nobody understood computers in India better than Prof. Rajaraman.”

• He trained the workforce that companies like TCS, Wipro, and Infosys would later hire to service the world.

3. The “Notebook” that became a Bible

Since importing foreign textbooks was incredibly expensive and difficult, Rajaraman wrote his own.

• “Fundamentals of Computers”: His books were written in simple, accessible English specifically for Indian students who might not have had prior exposure to technology.

• For decades, his books were the standard text in almost every engineering college in India. It is said that nearly every IT professional in India over the age of 40 learned their basics from a V. Rajaraman book.

4. Shaping Government Policy

He didn’t stop at teaching. He was instrumental in the government committees that allowed the IT industry to flourish.

• He guided the government on allowing the import of computers (which was restricted initially).

• He helped set up C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing) to build India’s first supercomputer (PARAM) when the US denied India the technology.

In many ways, while entrepreneurs built the companies, Prof. V. Rajaraman built the engineers.

Would you like to know more about the “Supercomputer” saga where Rajaraman helped India bounce back after the US sanctions? (Here it is)

This is one of the most exciting “technological independence” stories in modern Indian history. It is the moment India decided to stop asking for technology and started building it.

While Dr. Vijay Bhatkar is often the public face of the C-DAC mission, Prof. V. Rajaraman was the strategic architect who convinced the government that the mission was even technically possible.

Here is the saga of how India turned a humiliating denial into a global victory.

1. The Humiliation (1987)

In the mid-80s, India desperately needed a supercomputer for one crucial reason: Monsoon Forecasting. Indian agriculture relied heavily on rain, and predicting the monsoon was a matter of life and death for the economy.  

• India approached the USA to buy the Cray X-MP, the world’s fastest supercomputer at the time.  

• The Reagan administration dragged its feet and eventually denied the sale, fearing India would use the technology to develop nuclear weapons or ballistic missiles.  

• It was a technological embargo. The message was clear: You are a developing nation; you can’t be trusted with this power.  

2. The Challenge

Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, stung by the denial, turned to his top scientific advisors. He asked a simple but heavy question:  

Can we build a supercomputer ourselves?”

This was a massive ask. India didn’t have the chip fabrication plants or the infrastructure of the US. Most scientists were hesitant.

3. Rajaraman’s Crucial Pivot: “Don’t Copy, Reinvent”

This is where Prof. V. Rajaraman stepped in. He chaired the crucial committee set up by the Science Advisory Council to the PM. His report was the blueprint for India’s response.  

He realized India could never beat the US by trying to build a “Cray clone” (which used expensive, specialized “Vector Processing” hardware). We didn’t have the factories for it.

Instead, Rajaraman proposed a radical, emerging idea: Parallel Processing.  

• The Idea: Instead of building one giant, super-fast processor (like the Cray), why not take hundreds of cheap, standard microprocessors and make them talk to each other to solve a problem together?  

• The Analogy: It’s like hiring 1,000 smart high schoolers to solve a math problem instead of waiting for one Einstein.

• The Verdict: He told the PM: Yes, we can do this. It will be cheaper, and we won’t need American permission.  

4. The Birth of C-DAC and PARAM

Based on Rajaraman’s recommendation, the government created C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing) in 1988.  

• They were given a deadline: 3 years.  

• They were given a budget: ₹30 Crores (roughly the same price as buying one Cray supercomputer).  

• Dr. Vijay Bhatkar was appointed to lead the execution, while Rajaraman guided the technical strategy.  

5. The Victory (1991)

In 1991, exactly within the 3-year deadline, C-DAC unveiled PARAM 8000.  

• Performance: It was the second-fastest computer in the world at that time.  

• Cost: It was built at a fraction of the cost of a Cray.  

• The Sweetest Revenge: In a twist of irony, the US realized that “Parallel Processing” (Rajaraman’s bet) was actually the future of computing. PARAM was so successful that nations like Germany, the UK, and Russia chose to buy the Indian PARAM over the American Cray.  

6. The Legacy

When the Washington Post wrote about this, they called it “India’s angry answer to tech denial.”  

Prof. Rajaraman’s foresight to bet on Parallel Computing didn’t just give India a supercomputer; it democratized high-performance computing for the country. Today, the National Supercomputing Mission (which builds the Param Siddhi and Param Pravega systems) still stands on the foundation he laid.  

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