By ET Bureau | 27 Jul, 2015, 08.16PM IST
Nandan Nilekani, one of the most respected names in the Indian information technology space, once famously described Ram Sewak Sharma, the country's information technology secretary, as "a bureaucrat who can also write code as well as the best software folks I know".
When the Infosys cofounder was heading the Unique Identification Authority of India ( UIDAI), which is implementing the world's largest biometric database project Aadhaar, Sharma was his chief lieutenant for four years and was largely instrumental in bringing it to life in record time. He even wrote the first version of a client software that was used to enrol people into the Aadhaar database.
A 1978 batch Jharkhand cadre IAS officer, Sharma is often credited with qualities that one seldom expects in bureaucrats — he's punctual and known to report to work at 9 in the morning, and also he's known to be a quick decision maker and is not averse to risks.
Among Delhi's top bureaucrats, Sharma is seen as a maverick of sorts and an exception.
Born into a family of well-to-do farmers in a backward village close to Faridabad in Haryana in 1955, Sharma had to cycle 10 km every day to school as his village had no primary school until a few years ago.
Incidentally, Sharma did not grow up wanting to be a government official; he wanted to be a scientist, inspired by renowned physicist Meghnad Saha.
He went on to study at the Allahabad University where Professor Saha once taught.
He wanted to go overseas for higher studies, but his family wouldn't allow. Sharma did his masters in mathematics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 1976. He joined the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) in 1978.
But his love for science stayed with him and he fulfilled his dream of doing higher studies overseas more than two decades later — when he took a mid-career break in 2000 to do masters in computer science at the University of California, Riverside, with classmates half his age.
In recent times, Sharma has been on the vanguard of some key policy initiatives of the Narendra Modi government such as Digital India drive and local electronics manufacturing initiatives.
The ambitious Digital India project aims to make all government services available to citizen electronically, ensure high-speed internet connectivity in rural areas across country, and make India a preferred destination for electronics manufacturing and ICT solutions, among others.
The department of information technology is the coordinating agency for the project that is expected to garner Rs 4.5 lakh crore in investments from corporates and create 18 lakh jobs.
Describing Digital India as a transformative programme, Sharma had recently said it would ensure high-speed internet connectivity reaches every gram panchayat by December 2016. Furthermore, cities with a population of over 10 lakh and tourist centres, he said, would be provided with public Wi-Fi hot spots, making them 'digital cities'. He has also proposed to connect all schools with broadband and deliver Wi-Fi to all secondary and higher secondary schools.
Incidentally, Sharma is among the candidates shortlisted for the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India chairman's post, which fell vacant in May. Some telecom industry observers believe he has the best shot of becoming Trai chairman
