By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI, Jun 21 2000 (IPS)

Failure is rare with Craig Barrett, chief of the global computer chip giant Intel. But even Barrett gives up when it comes to linking up to the Internet in India.

The Intel chief discovered this to his embarrassment when he tried to demonstrate the advantages of using the Internet to do business at a gathering of top Indian industry leaders here last month.

“I always find bandwidth a bit of a problem here,” Barrett said sheepishly after failing to connect to the Internet at the meeting organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

Thousands of Internet users in India face the same problem every day. Experts say this is due to the low connectivity provided by the government’s Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (overseas communication corporation), better known by its acronym VSNL, that currently controls access to the Internet.

The main problem is that VSNL channelises a measly 300 megabytes of bandwidth through six gateways that give Indians access to the Internet either directly or through internet service providers (ISPs).

According to Dewang Mehta, president of the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM), India needs at least 1.2 gigabytes of bandwidth. Many India-based web sites are forced to host their data on Internet servers based outside the country.

Under pressure from India’s booming software industry that is now the country’s leading hard currency earner, the government recently approved 35 new gateways to be operated by private ISPs.

But improving access to the Internet in India is not just a question of technology. It also involves politics, ideology and national security as is evident from an ambitious government decision to set up a state-of- the-art communication network.

The ‘Sankhya Vahini’ (data carrier) project will establish a fibre-optic communication backbone through a joint-venture of the government and the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, United States.

It is under fire not only from political rivals, but ideological affiliates of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), who fear it will compromise national security. The government is also accused of unduly favouring its partner in the project.

Despite heavy flak from opponents in parliament and severe criticism from the BJP’s right-wing associates, Vajpayee has refused to order a review of the over 300 U.S. million-dollar project.

The prime minister is, however, holding discussions on the project with BJP affiliates like the Swadeshi Jagran Manch (national awareness front) that espouses a hardline economic nationalism ideology.

According to top Left leader Somnath Chatterjee, who leads the influential Marxist Communist Party of India (CPI-M) in parliament, Carnegie Mellon was chosen for the project without an attempt to scout for other collaborators.

The Indian Army too is believed to have raised questions of national security. The army has so far resisted sharing its large but mainly idle communication network for IT purposes, despite recommendations by the national IT task force led by the prime minister himself.

The army is believed to have told the government that it could not do so unless it was satisfied about the security implications of hooking up its communication systems with the IT network.

Dattopant Thengadi, leader of the BJP-affiliated Bhartiya Mazdoor Sangh (Indian Worker’s Union), accused the government of setting up Sankhya Vahini without consulting the defence establishment.

“This opens up the floodgates to espionage, interception of strategic messages, scientific data, telephone conversations, faxes and e- mail by foreign powers,” Thengadi said.

According to Thengadi, the project is a security risk in the light of revelations of the existence of a global surveillance system called ‘ECHELON’ that is controlled by the United States and can monitor all telephone, fax and e-mail communications relayed by satellites.

Probir Purkayastha of the independent, Delhi Science Forum said the high-speed data communication network would be open to prying by U.S. intelligence and defence agencies.

Purkayastha pointed out that while similar networks set up in the United States and China are under total government control, Sankhya Vahini would be run largely by Carnegie Mellon University that owns 49 percent of the project.

But such fears are exaggerated, according to the main brain behind the project, V.S. Arunachalam, a former scientific adviser to the Indian defence minister and now member of U.S President Bill Clinton’s IT advisory team.

“Even now when you send an e-mail between two points within an Indian city, it gets routed through servers in the United States,” he said. The Sankhya Vahini project would make it possible to avoid routing e- mail messages through the United States, he added.

It would give a dramatic boost to education, healthcare and agricultural development in the country, he asserted. “With bandwidth in the range of 2.5 to 10 gigabytes, it is possible to accelerate the extensive development of Internet to meet India’ growing educational and informational needs,” he explained.

Sankhya Vahini also envisages the setting up of an inter- university communication network called IUnet. But Thengadi questions the value of IUnet.

“Connecting Indian educational institutions with American ones will result in Indian Universities turning into hunting grounds for Indian talent and contribute to the brain drain,” he alleged.

“The entire Indian educational system will be turned tospy turvy and become dominated by the American system with its culture, music, food and other habits,” he complained.

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