ABSTRACT
In line with the objectives of the ruling elites seeking to establish a 'mixed' economy regime, the first Industrial Policy Resolution identified six industrial sectors deemed to be of national importance. The objective of setting up ITI had been to fabricate the equipment the Department of Post and Telegraph (P&T) needed to equip the national telecommunications network with. Finally, backward integration by P&T facilitated, to some extent, the circulation of information. Systems engineering for strowger automatic exchanges, for instance, a task vested in the hands of ITI until P&T's own research cell, the Technical Research Centre, took it over in the early 1970s, called for the smooth exchange of information in both directions. In November 1981, the Committee on Telecommunications, which had been set up by the government with the objective of improving the performance of the telecommunications system in the country, had drawn up a plan to bifurcate ITI into two geographically distinct and independent companies.
