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Dot-Coms and the Making of an Overseas Territory >> 121

previous correlation between science and the state and replace[d] it with a
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seemingly radical new turn to science and the market.” Historicizing the
role of cultural and political elites in shaping state policy toward science and
technology, she traces the influence of Non-Resident Indians in the high-
tech sector to the mid-1980s when figures like Sam Pitroda arrived in India
to serve in the Rajiv Gandhi administration.
A Chicago-based telecom engineer, Pitroda was responsible for estab-
lishing the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT) and, as Pitroda
himself writes, giving young Indians “the sense that they were contributing
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to nation-building.” In a column published in September 2000 during the
frenzy of the dot-com boom, Pitroda reminded the readership of Silicon
India, a magazine published in the United States, that “the current multi-
billion dollar Indian high-tech industry began with some early moderniz-
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ing experiments that set the pace for growth.” In another column written
in April 2000, Pitroda explained how the program of liberalization and the
gradual legitimization of an antistate, market-led model of development
during the 1990s in India helped the high-tech sector to grow in ways that
had not been possible during the 1980s. Echoing ideas expressed by industry
leaders in India and abroad, Pitroda went on to argue:

The level of success achieved by Indians in Silicon Valley is inspiring the
nation. The success of these Indians sends out the message that we are not
losers; it has restored self-confidence in the nation. One may not accept a
lot of the ideologies of the Bharatiya Janata Party but I personally love one:
they want to restore the nation’s pride and self-confidence. The second
most important thing achieved by the Indians’ success here is their new-
found ability to guide development of the country—and, in many cases,
also fund it. 20

Furthermore, NRIs’ desire to “guide development of the country” had tre-
mendous support not only from leaders in the Information Technology
(IT) industry in India such as Infosys CEO N. R. Narayanamurthy, but
also from political leaders in IT-friendly states like Chandrababu Naidu in
Andhra Pradesh and S. M. Krishna in Karnataka, and at the national level,
the IT minister Pramod Mahajan and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
Addressing delegates at “Bangalore IT.Com ’98,” Vajpayee, for instance,
pledged his government’s support to the IT industry and remarked, “I would
like all my countrymen to know that IT is India’s Tomorrow (my empha-
sis).” As further evidence of the government’s willingness to understand and
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respond to the IT sector’s needs, the IT minister Pramod Mahajan led a task