Quick Facts
Biography
Ram Sewak Sharma (born 1955) is an Indian bureaucrat. He has been the Chairman of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) since 10th of August 2015.Prior to this assignment, he swore as the Secretary of Department of Electronics and Information Technology (under Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India). He belongs to the 1978 batch of the Indian Administrative Service.
Early life
Born in a small village of Uttar Pradesh, he completed his early education from schools near his village. He joined University of Allahabad from where he earned his Bachelor of Science (BSc). He completed his masters in Mathematics from IIT, Kanpur, in 1978.
While on leave from the Government of India, he earned a Masters in Computer Science from University of California, Riverside in 2002 and subsequently a PhD from IIT, Delhi.
Career
Ram Sewak Sharma joined the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) in 1978.
In 1986, he wrote a program in DBASE, a programming language that would keep a record of all stolen firearms in the crime-prone district. As soon as a firearm would be found, the programme would run a search query among thousands of age-old records. Together, they impressed the state government, by solving 22 cases in just 30 days. This was an early indicator of his preference for using computer in governance.
As Chairman of TRAI, he steered the adoption of net neutrality regulations in India. He has taken measures to enable consumer choice in determining market outcomes, e.g. a new framework for broadcasting and cable services, regulations for mobile number portability, and the use of crowd-sourced information or field measurements to inform customers
He has been alive to the emerging issues and opportunities. For example, he supported the adoption of Distributed Ledger Technology in fighting spam and TRAI gave recommendations to the Government of India on Privacy, Security and Ownership of the Data in the Telecom Sector and Spectrum, Roaming and QoS related requirements in Machine-to-Machine (M2M) Communications
As the TRAI chairman, his goal to gradually reduce Interconnect Usage Charges has earned him much acclaim from some and criticism from others. Critics allege that the decision is biased towards Jio while those defending TRAI claim that reducing these charges was necessary for the continuous growth of the sector.
Awards
- Prime Minister’s Award for Excellence in Public Administration - 2008
Positions
- Chairman, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.
- Secretary, D/o Electronics and Information Technology,M/o Communications & Info Tech, Govt of India.
- Chief Secretary, Government of Jharkhand
- Director General, UIDAI (2009–2013)
- Jharkhand’s Principal Secretary (Public Health and Engineering)
- Secretary IT, Human Resource Development, Panchayati Raj, Personnel and Drinking Water & Sanitation.
- Principal Secretary to the Governor from 1 January 2003 to 11 June 2003.
- Deputy Development Commissioner in Saharsa
- District Collector in Begusarai, Purnea and Dhanbad
- Joint Secretary in the Department of Economic Affairs of the Ministry of Finance
- Nodal Officer for the IMF, MIGA and GEF.