As long as the Swadeshi Jagran Manch, Vidya Bharati and the rest of them are not whispering in its ear, there's a good chance the Vajpayee government will get some things right. Some of the measures announced by the Prime Minister last week to augment growth in information technology and services suggest the BJP's resistance to the modern world is not as profound as has been supposed. Appropriately, the plans were unveiled at a gathering of IT professionals in Bangalore and the specifics involved the Internet. If anyone and anything is going to drive Indian commerce into the future it is those professionals and the Net. The demand for Internet services is insatiable all over the globe. Worldwide, traffic is said to double every 100 days. Demand in India which has been reined in for years because of technical and policy snags, could prove to be of a similar order once India's raring-to-go professionals are let loose and competition ensures that the promise of high-quality, low-cost services is met. It isabout time licensing regulations were liberalised. A even better step is to issue licences free of cost to private sector Internet service providers (ISPs). That decision as also issuing licences without limit on the number and commencement of the process as soon as November 7 will be widely welcomed. The only thing that remains to be seen is the fine print on the licences the government proposes to hand out so generously.An essential parallel decision is opening the door wide to imported technology by permitting up to 49 per cent foreign equity in ISPs. Without that opening up the best Indian service providers would be restricted to small-time traffic controlling. They need foreign participation and easy access to the Internet technology not only to meet demand from domestic and international customers but to develop new applications and stake out territory for the future. On the Internet, whether it is e-commerce, corporate contracts, data networking, intranets, fast access for PC users, it pays to thinkthe impossible. The mind-boggling, unstoppable growth of subscriptions to America Online, to cite just one, albeit the leading service provider, prove that.As good as it sounds, there's a fly in the ointment or rather many of them thrashing about endlessly. On a national telecom policy, the Prime Minister fell into his usual habit of sounding visionary to make up for the lack of positive movement forward. Work has apparently begun on a policy which "addresses the challenges of and opportunities in the convergence of telecom, IT, media and consumer electronics". If and when India is hooked onto the Iridium satellite communications network, one might come to believe some of the opportunities, at least, are being recognised. Until the shambles in telecom policy are sorted out, India's IT industry may be able to find specific solutions to specific local problems but will be planning in the dark. That is no way to compete with its peers in the rest of the world.
