The Importance Of Being Internet

The Gartner Group says that this year the total volume of

business transacted over the Net will be more than 77 billion. One is not even quite sure

about the methodology that they have used to arrive at that figure. One probably does not

need to know, as that may cause a variation of about 10 percent. By any standards, the

volume of business is huge, so huge that a whole new segment will spring up to service

this need. New Microsofts will arise (however, not if this Microsoft can help it!), new

power equations will be struck, and the world will get a spanking new mall.

The world, except India of course. For, we are still trying

to figure out whose writ will run over the Internet, whose say will be final, and of

course, creative minds will be working overtime to encode new laws which will be designed

to create more obstructions in the way of the entrepreneur. Meanwhile, a saffron tinged

government will be debating the extent of loss of sovereignty that the email will cause

and saber rattle about its intentions, real or not. Indian entrepreneur will be trying to

figure out how to beat his biggest competition, the Indian System and Politics.

The world will be chugging along, mind you, for, there are

few who will stop and wait for what is grandiosely referred to as ''the world''s largest

market''. So they will tap the world''s second largest market, or the third or the

fourth....The Bright Indian Mind will again get frustrated and once again the Brain Drain

will start.

Of course, all this may not happen. Perhaps, we are just

Cassandras out to spoil a really good party. Possibly, great revolutions are going to take

place in the near future, and which may foist India into the center-stage of global

realpolitik. May be, they are just keeping all this a secret from you and me.

Call me an incurable romantic, I, somehow, am not able to

see the tunnel between the light and me.

L Subramanyan