NEW DELHI, NOVEMBER 2: Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dixit may think she's in the race for the tag of infotech CM, at least of the Congress Party, but all that she achieved at today's meet of Indian infotech professionals from Silicon Valley, was to provide them one big laugh. India's most well-known angel investor in the Silicon Valley, Kanwal Rekhi, in fact, spent much of his day taking off on how Dixit's `new economics' was neither new nor economics.Dixit, it appears was herself a bit upset at Rekhi's self-confessedly strident criticism of India's economic policies of the last 50 years. So, at dinner the night before the conference of The IndUs Entrepreneurs (TiE is the Silicon Valley's best-known association of Indian professionals), she made a patriotic cry about how India had managed to bring IT to its doorstep on its own steam. And then, somewhat charged up by her eloquence, she went on about how India is self-sufficient in foodgrain production without any help from its NRI brethren.Since TiE's President didn't get a chance to take on Dixit at the networking dinner, primarily because he spoke before she did, Rekhi took off today, and felt he would be ``intellectually dishonest'' if he didn't call ``stupid by its name.''When the world is moving towards high productivity models, in India, 70 per cent of the population is stuck in foodgrain production, Rekhi said. ``You know what that means,'' he asked. `That means one Indian is producing food for himself and for half of another of his coutryman. In the US, one person produces for 49 others. Food for half a person does not create profit, it creates poverty.'With Rekhi carrying on with ``you have to know you're an alcoholic to go into rehab'' and ``all-Indira Radio'' cracks, a supporter of Dixit, and India's economic reform efforts over the past decade asked: ``Surely things have changed?'' `Of course they have,' Rekhi shot back, ``if I had spoken like this earlier, I would have been deported!'After this intervention, Rekhi decided to change tack and become more polite. And, of course, sarcastic. He didn't expect Dixit to understand, said the Michigan Technological University graduate who founded Excelan before selling it to Novell (and angel-invested other successes like Exodus Communications). She comes from the party that ``gave us socialism for nearly 50 years.''As for the oft-repeated line that Indians going abroad to produce infotech instead of contributing to the country's growth, Rekhi said: ``After all brain drain is better than brain in the drain.'' ``There are so many of us, how does a million here or there really matter,'' he said.Jairam Ramesh, the Congress' Economic Secretary, who followed later in the day didn't apologise for his party, but had his share of one-liners. While he asked the industry to help create infotech-related development programmes instead of just ``export-oriented Internet Revolution'', he wisecracked to the gathered venture capitalists, ``where I come from, there is only venture and no capital.''Jairam's co-alumnus from IIT Bombay Hemant Kanakia, who made his millions in the Silicon Valley by selling his gigabit router startup for $450 million, said he wanted to disagree with Jairam. ``India won't have an Internet revolution till the infrastructure is improved,'' said Kanakia.Pavan Nigam, who co-founed ealtheon (now WebMD) along with Netscape's Jim Clark, says exports is the only answer. ``India does not have a market right now, but the rest of the world does, so why should Indian companies wait three years to find a market for their solutions at home,'' asks Nigam.Political potshots aside, TiEcon also saw a lot of sound advice for eager entrepreneurs, as well as some positive sentiment for those reeling from the impact of Nasdaq nosedive. After the notcoms have had their revenge, Nigam said, ``the end of the beginning is in sight and the more mature phase of the Internet Economy is set to take over''.
