The Big B and the 2001 mantra

If New Delhi's December was relatively warm and fog-free, new year's day made up for it with a vengeance. Here was teamwork: nature and man working in synergy to a common goal. There were clouds, rain, fog, and then the biggest failure of the northern grid in recent history, plunging North India into darkness for over 12 hours. Our publishing headquarters, in infrastructure-challenged Gurgaon, went without power for two days from December 31. (We didn't notice, because we do not have unreasonable expectations of basic services like electricity, telecom, water and transport from the government.)

A dark new year's day, bringing a dark new year? Probably not. After everything, there's still bandwidth to look forward to. This will be a make-or-break year for India Inc, the year when we consolidate our gains and the position of India in the services space, leveraging the small beginnings for the brand, and backing it up with infrastructure. The biggest of these will be bandwidth. 

Everything from PC sales in small towns to e-biz infotech deployment in enterprises is dependent on the available bandwidth in India. But the gains will not be merely for infotech: they will be for the whole economy. 

And businesses will be forced to undergo a basic shift, as they struggle to compete with the world--and not just China--as borders and trade barriers open up. If the network is the computer, the information is the enterprise, and managing this information rapidly and efficiently is the big challenge for the 2001 enterprise. This will mean the elevation of infotech from support to key strategic role in the many businesses where it does not already occupy this position; the elevation of the CIO to very senior decision maker even in SMEs; the overhaul of business processes and applications to bring them online; and the critical dependence of the enterprise on bandwidth.

And the difference to the citizen? Access to information will be the big change. It's always a pleasant surprise to discover places this is already happening. This month I found that our admin assistant tracked the progress of my passport renewal application at

www.passport.nic.in, discovered that it was held up for an attestation on a photo, got it done, and then checked next day online to make sure that it had moved on from there. He's not much of a PC user, but if going online saves him a half day of standing in queues, he'll happily go online.

So here's to a 2001 where India will finally see the real power of the Big B: Bandwidth, across its intercity backbone, on the Internet gateway, and in the last mile. This will be the mantra for India 2001.