I chanced on Thomas Friedman’s “The World is Flat”. It made a lot of news early this year with “thoughtful commentators” voicing in their opinion. At the outset, I must admit that I could read a couple of pages. It appears to be a critique on globalisation and how the boundaries are shrinking.

It starts off with Infosys “lionising” it in the process. Outsourcing has it’s proponents and ready takers. New age cyber coolism at it’s worst. “Low prestige, low paying” jobs elsewhere while reverse being true here.

This isn’t the debate about the outsourcing (and globalisation).Much blood has flowed; the views are sharply polarised. Yet, this post is about the changing face of India; the way we integrate ourselves in the world order; the way the education, entertainment, information stands to be accessed and assimilated. Yet, trust the Government of India to play the usual spoilsport to deny us those sweeping changes.

Then there is a story about Google. Google’s plan to light up huge amount of dark fibre in US set me thinking. Why not someone in India take on the established structure and offer something as what Google is doing. Sample this. Wifi is being offered for free in US. Faster speeds than what we call as “broadband” here, courtesy the idiots in BSNL and TRAI. Whole communities are springing up to support and defy the established telecom companies to offer free Internet. The historic judgement of the Hon’ble Supreme Court (the only structure of Government that commands my respect for the uprightness and clearity of thought) in 1995 which declared that the airwaves are a public property. What stops anyone to demand that access to internet ought to be governed by fair use and pay unencumbered by the restrictions imposed on us?

In that case, imagine then hosts of enterpreneurs would set up their networks, take in fibre and set up last mile access. For the end users, we pay only for the value added services. The plain vanilla internet surfing (high speed access in order of Mbps speeds) would see a drastic reduction in the prices. The current model works- see for the voice calls. The bulk of the earnings come from the value added services like messaging or the portals that the companies have set up. Voice calls, even though being charged per minute, are seeing a drop in the prices. We are slowly moving in towards a volume driven market.

Coming back to the flat world analogy, globalisation is inevitable. Friedman sounds like a raving ranting idiot- but he did make sense that “world is flat”, even though I don’t agree that outsourcing is any good for this nation. Infact, globalisation has lead to distortion in incomes, made the differences between the “developed” and “less developed” more stark. A discussion on the same is out of scope here.

Let the Internet and broadband be declared as an essential commodity (in effect public property) and not the pricey manner at which telcos dictate us the prices. We might then see a different India and not the pathetic state of affairs we find ourselves in. Remember the sweeping changes in the late 90′s in the FM sector? For once, we had a respite from All India Radio. Well, the FM caters mostly to the lowest common denominator; point is that consumers have more choice. Why not the same in telephony?

China is mixed bag; it is being promoted at the cost of internal dissensions. It is hailed as the model of communism mixing up with capitalism and therefore, the “most happening country in Asia”. Sarcasm apart, China is groaning and creaking under the weight of it’s own lopsided policies.

The Hindu(newspaper) makes a pertinent point to project China, come what may. It’s panel of “intelligent people” are willing to ignore the ground realities and instead focus on the huge shopping malls and buildings coming in. As globalisation spreads its tentacles in there, traditional Chinese way of life is being destroyed. Of course, keeping a tight lid “behind the iron curtain” is the state media.

A recent report insists that Chinese have taken to Short Message Service(SMS for short) in a big way.

Further insists,” China’s telephone subscriber base has touched 674 million, including 325 million fixed line phones and 349 million cellular phones, both occupying first place in the world”.

Even if half the numbers are true, India is way behind the numbers. There has been enough controversy about the numbers, rather than actual usage. This is one area where we clearly fall behind China. Given the current juvenile fascination with comparing India and China on the world stage and crop of “analysts” springing up to offer their “insights”, there is an enormous room for skepticism here.

The details for their Telecom Regulation are sketchy. One could really take comfort in numbers for us. It is a classic story of missed oppurtunities. 50+ years and we are grappling for decent infrastructure.