The Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT), located near Pune, India, is today a major international facility for work in Radio Astronomy in the frequency range of 150 MHz to 1500 MHz. Consisting of 30 fully steerable antennas of 45 metre diameter each, it can be used as an aperture-synthesis array to produce maps of the radio brightness of extended sources, as well as a phased array with a highly directive beam to study compact radio sources. Each antenna is equipped with multi-frequency feeds and a low noise, high gain heterodyne receiver system, the signal from which is transmitted to a central station using optical fibres. At the central station, multi-purpose back end receivers to process and combine the signals from the 30 antenna stations include (i) a 256 spectral channel correlator, and (ii) a phased array combiner followed by a high time resolution pulsar receiver. The sophisticated electronics is backed up with state of the art computing facilities, control and analysis software, to exploit the full capability and versatility of the GMRT. Several new results and interesting results have already come in these early years of the GMRT. To further increase the scientific potential of the instrument, there are plans for a major upgrade in its capabilities.