Things Ravi Pratap Is Up To

It is said (by people in my life who know how much time I spend doing various things on the computer) that I spend close to 95% of my time reading mail. I would vehemently deny that but for the fact that the statement does actually have some semblance of truth in it. Please note that 60% is probably closer to the actual figure but then you know how some people are - they love to exaggerate!

I recently joined two interesting mailing lists (bringing the total number of mailing lists I am on to ~30) . One is called india-gii and was setup to discuss “India’s bumpy progress on the information highway.” A simpler answer goes something like this: india-gii discusses issues related to Indian telecom. eg.

• What is the status of telecom in India? How does it compare with that of other countries?
• What is the importance of telecom in India’s development? What are we losing on account of the poor state of telecom in the country?
• Regulatory issues pertaining to pricing, monopolies, privitisation, structuring, etc.
• Changes needed in Indian legislation such as the Indian Telegraph Act of 1885 to cater to today’s needs and those of the immediate future
• Indian legislation vis-a-vis rights to privacy, freedom of expression, etc. in cyberspace

On one of the discussion threads on india-gii, I learnt about the lack of an Internet Exchange in India. An Internet exchange point is a critical part of today’s Internet infrastructure and is a facility that allows Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to meet and exchange traffic. This saves money for the ISPs and improves connectivity for their customers. Essentially, it allows traffic local to India to stay within India instead of travelling all the way to the US and back merely because every ISP in India only has direct links to their bandwidth providers in the US.

Clearly the need for such a facility is imperative. But how do you bring together all the ISPs in India and get them to see the point ? You probably need to write up a detailed proposal, generate funding to setup a pilot facility, talk to ISPs and get them on board, talk to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and get them to see the point hoping that they can do something to help you out.

Exchinnet, a Yahoo! group, started out as a small group of capable, smart individuals who saw that something needed to be done about this. And clearly, it involved some effort in actually making it all happen. The Department of Information Technology in Delhi needed to be convinced. Perhaps some funding could be obtained from them (the govt. essentially) ?

As I read the 394 messages in their archives, I saw how these people went from just an idea in Feb 2002 to a real NIXI (National Internet eXchange of India) and a report in the Economic Times about the first two centers coming up in Delhi and Mumbai in Oct 2003. What amazed me was that a significant amount of the efforts involved not just private ISPs - it involved the governnment and the bureacracy - the Dept of IT, the TRAI and many others. It involved getting them to listen to you, to be convinced of what you want and actually give you some seed money!

In India people are overly critical of the government. “All of them are just corrupt bastards,” is what you hear often. “You can get absolutely nothing done in India - it is a waste of time,” is another common refrain. I never quite believed them - I was always convinced that our sorry state of affairs was our own doing. People didn’t want to do anything to help themselves out and they excelled at blaming the government for all their problems. Reading about NIXI and how that group of people pulled off what they did, with just a little bit of a faith in the system, fills me with an immense sense of pride and fills me with hope that when we put our minds to something, it really can be done. Even in India!

So stop complaining about the government all the time, my friend. If you want to do something about the state of affairs, just do it. And start with a little bit of faith. In the government. In your countrymen. In yourself.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 30th, 2003 at 8:19 pm and is filed under Everything. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.