The Future Is Finally Here

CYNICS and pessimists not allowed," screams the atmosphere. I feel like Camus’ Outsider. I mean, for spider’s sake, how the hell can you look at the future of the Internet in India as something that turns you on, that lights up your eyes, that sets your blood racing?

The self-assured Bina Thomas, 18, a first-year student of political science answers: "It’s all so exciting and simple." Thomas is among the dozen teenagers teaching the grey-sideburned CEOs, CIOs and other fancy designations how to send e-mail, surf, browse. The venue: Hotel Taj Palace, New Delhi, where the National Association of Software & Service Companies (NASS-COM) is hosting perhaps the year’s most important Indian event on the Internet. Cybercity: The Internet and Intranet Conference, is an exhibition- cum-rendezvous of most major players in the Net bazaar. Think of any big name and it’s there.

Think small as well. For, the most exciting corner of the venue is the Cybercafe, where you can munch yahoo. biryani, sip a java. coffee and learn from the kids. A seven-year-old sits at the adjoining terminal, screaming with delight while slaughtering aliens on the screen. Says Subhash Bal, CEO India Operations, 3Com Asia Ltd: "These children are the future. The values they see in games today, they’ll see in business tomorrow." As the representative of the world’s largest networking company, he’s waiting for the market to mature, a market which eventually will run on the switches and adapter cards he makes.

I observe two kinds of people in the lobby. Before me are youth— not necessarily in age: thrills, laughter. Behind me is the conference room for serious business. Here Net czars advise you on matters such as electronic commerce, technologies, intranets, creating web sites, marketing strategies, publishing, law.

"Isn’t all this hype?"I ask R.K. Gupta, director (development), VSNL. "Yes," he says, "but it’s needed." What about the poor quality of infrastructure? Can the telephone lines sustain the growth that these people are seeing? "They have improved." But I tried last night and didn’t get a line for more than 10 minutes. "Check your modem or lines. It is exchanges that are posing this problem, not VSNL," he grins.

"Isn’t all this hype?" I ask Vipen Mahajan, general manager (information technology), JCT Electronics. "If democracy is hype, then all this is hype," he answers, his eyes sparkling. "Internet is the most transparent medium today, and isn’t democracy all about transparency?"

"Isn’t all this hype?" I ask Anmol Taneja, director, DSF Internet Services, a small company that develops and hosts web sites. "Yes, and business will be generated later. This is to make contacts." The market is nascent, consumers have to be educated. "But most companies want a presence on the Net as they don’t want to be left behind."

But the conference is not free of glitches. Speakers representing vendors are using the conference as a platform for hard-sell. And the biggest war on the Net— between Microsoft and Netscape— is raging. Grumbles an MIS manager: "I can call for the same presentation at my office." Adds Bharat Suneja, 26, a self-taught college dropout running Metaphor, a Surat-based start-up that develops web sites: "Most speakers were doing blatant advertising."

Call it hype, but the show goes on. And at the hub is Dewang Mehta, executive director, NASSCOM and primordial PR man of the Indian software industry: "Yes, there have been complaints of speakers speaking less on technology and doing more hardsell." How much business has been transacted? He brushes me aside: "The idea is not to sell, but to educate." So what are those stalls doing in there?

Between the cellular phones announcing the arrival of the rich and famous, and cigarette smoke swirling its way around them— the recently-imposed ban on smoking in Delhi’s public places notwithstanding— are these little kids adding colour to the venue. Says S. Subramanian, senior associate, Dun & Bradstreet: "We were expecting a totally different audience— not children." Just outside his stall, Bal stares at the children with a gleam in his eye. In the lobby, Mahajan is chatting up a colleague on ways to check various scams through computerisation and Internet. Near the Cybercafe, Suneja lobbies to put  Surat on the Internet map to avoid surfing on STD. Taneja is gearing up to e-mail his company profile. The Microsoft PR team is tugging at the press’ elbows. Behind them, the children, oblivious of the web that fastens them to their terminals, squeal with glee.

I go back and visit some of the websites that I heard about. I go to the All India Radio site, and become the 409,802nd person to have checked it out. It’s good looking, but I can’t hear the music in peace— the lines are fuzzy. Trapped in the web, I move on to the next site...quite like a child. But this time, a diehard optimist.

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