Tanmoy Chakrabarty

Tanmoy Chakrabarty is the Group Government Affairs Officer for Tata Sons Limited. Prior to this he served as the Vice-President and Head: Global Government Industry Solutions Unit at TCS for more than 14 years. He lives in Noida.

It was late January in 2004 and I recall that on the grounds of Indian Institute of Management ( IIM ) Ahmedabad , we had all assembled together to attend the opening ceremony of the Global Business Event that Shri Narendra Damodardas Modi , the then Chief Minister of Gujarat, had organised as a very humble beginning of what has evolved to be the massive and globally significant bi-annual Vibrant Gujarat event in its present avatar . That was my first meeting this man whom we have seen grow from the CM of Gujarat to now being amongst one of the tallest global leaders that any Country has produced in the world.  

He made a commitment during the event at IIM – A in 2004 that he was announcing that Gujarat as a State would focus on becoming a highly digital State in terms of Governance and he committed that this year 2004 – 2005 would be “ Years of eGovernance” and his vision was that would be that the  leverage of Information Technology would help catapult Gujarat to become amongst the better ruled States in India . A leap of faith was what he was taking then and all can see the tremendously positive results, most pertinently the people of Gujarat.  

I had the privilege in my work tenure at TCS, where from 2004 to 2018, I led the Government Business globally, to work very closely with the Government of Gujarat since that Global Business Meet and in the course of the several years that followed, Modiji seriously followed up and initiated eGov in almost every aspect of Governance in Gujarat. I led the initiatives that firstly developed a digital workflow to create digital files of all of the Government of Gujarat work – is was called IWDMS under which he developed a “ One Day One District “ initiative which was documented and then onto their Govt. Health Management System , the Integrated Financial Management System , the single window system for all investors – Investor Facilitation Portal – IFP ) to make it very easy for them to get approvals and which became the bedrock of the Vibrant Gujarat Digital Platform , the Integrated Police Management System called eGujCops, the digitizing of the VAT Revenue Collection System – VATIS  , Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation – a single sign on digital platform for greater efficiency and transparency of operations , eNagar – a single platform for all the 164 Municipal Corporations all over Gujarat, Gujarat Disaster Management Agency , the first Chief Minister’s Office to be ISO 9001 Certified where the use of the digital application played a key role . His voracious hunger to keep doing more with technology was the common take away every time I met him during these years – 2004 – 2014 and he would always ask me what more could be done!  

It is during these many meetings that I heard his famous coining of the phrase : – IT + IT = IT which he elaborated as Indian Talent + Information Technology = India Tomorrow and his vision was prophetic indeed as the IT Industry has brought so much of global respect for India and tremendous sustainability to millions of jobs and support for families all over India and Indians abroad.  

Recently he spoke at a signature event in the United States called “Howdy Modi “and he was addressing thousands of people who were there as the audience including the President of the United States. He was describing the progress India was making and he referred four examples of Digital Transformation that have totally improved the way in which Governance is delivered in India. The initiatives that he mentioned were:- MCA 21 , Passport Seva Program , Madad and eMigrate and I felt extremely proud of the fact that I had led all the four from TCS, and worked closely to deliver transformative initiatives together with the Government of India and TCS . It was a matter of extreme pride for all the men and women of the Government of India and TCS and all our partners that he was citing these as examples of the positive change that India was delivering to the Citizens and to oversees Indians all over the World.   

On the joyous occasion of the 70^th birthday of Shri Narendra Damodardas Modi coming up on September 17,2020 , all our collective best wishes and pranam is being conveyed to our beloved Prime Minister and hope he has a long life to lead India towards the India 2.0 and the New India which he has outlines as the task for every true Indian who has to undertake our respective tasks in making this a realty for the people of India and the generations to follow. The future of India is in very strong hands under his Leadership and together with him we renew our pledge to work towards the development of a strong, vibrant, prosperous, peaceful, self-reliant and inclusive India which will be a role model for Nations to emulate in the future. The Better India is ahead of us and as he says that every Indian has an aspirational agenda to contribute and make the Nation a place of pride where the future generations of Indians stay and progress with joy and pride.