We live in the era of dotcoms and dotcons! Each day sees the birth of a new idea, a new dotcom. In such an environment, can two progressive administrations stay out of the race? On March 24, 2000, the two cyber-savvy governments - of the US and Andhra Pradesh - came together in Hyderabad to institutionalise US-AP.com.
President Clintons visit to Cyberabad and his exhilarating speech at Hitec City to the czars of Indian infotech industry marks a turning point in Indo-US IT ties. People-to-people contact between the US and Andhra goes back several decades. A significant percentage of H1B visas are issued from the US Chennai consulate and its estimated that most of these go to people from Hyderabad. The lingua franca in most Silicon Valley units is no longer C++ or Java but Telugu!
Clinton experienced the power of IT in Cyberabad for himself when he got a driving licence using the Web. The ease with which immovable property transactions could now be registered on a sleek cd-rom fascinated him. While Clinton was fulsome in his praise for the advances made in IT by the state and the vision provided by chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, he also stressed the need for spreading equity and broadbasing democracy through e-governance.
US-AP.com serves several purposes: first, the US is the worlds most powerful knowledge economy but wages in the IT industry there are going through the roof. Andhras IT strategy is to make the state a global hub for e-enabled services and logistics. While Andhra has been conceptualising a broadband digital network, recently Reliance following a government order decided to lay fibre cables across the state. This would also connect either Nellore or Vishakhapatnam to Singapore via undersea cable. Such initiatives make AP the ideal location for the US to farm out services expensive there, like secretarial, insurance, medical/legal transcriptions and back-office operations. This calls for a favourable time zone, a proactive government, working knowledge of English and bandwidth. Andhra has the first three and is acquiring the fourth. The success of this project means new jobs in the hinterland and prosperity in the districts. hsbc, GE and Innodata have chosen Hyderabad as their Asia-Pacific hub for such services. nasscom-McKinseys prediction of $1 trillion in such services alone isnt too distant a target if more such companies set up shop here.
Second, progressive economists argue that the success of the US economy is largely due to the institutionalised linkages between industry and military industrial complexes, with industry pumping billions of dollars into R&D. Indias knowledge workers need similar ties with US industry and labs.
Clintons visit has confirmed that Hyderabad is one of the global IT hotspots and this would go a long way in strengthening bilateral ties between the two knowledge societies. The US-AP.com ipo is all set to be launched and it seems this dotcom would attract dizzy valuations. The only question: when will US-AP.com list on the nasdaq?
(The author is an IAS officer. These are his personal views. Also, he doesnt hold esops in US-AP.com.)
