CARNEGIE DUMPS SANKHYA VAHINI

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CARNEGIE DUMPS SANKHYA VAHINI

 

FROM K.P. NAYAR AND M. RAJENDRAN

 

Washington/New Delhi, Oct. 18:

Close on the heels of the Air-India privatisation fiasco and the

Enron controversy, another ambitious project which was to showcase

India's economic reforms has collapsed.

V.S. Arunachalam and Raj Reddy, professors at Carnegie Mellon

University in Pennsylvania, who initiated the Rs 1,000-crore Sankhya

Vahini project at the invitation of India's information technology

task force, yesterday conveyed to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee

their decision to abandon the project.

 

The huge, next-generation data network, which had the potential to

revolutionise Internet use in India and transform everything from

healthcare and education to financial services and research, was

cleared by the Cabinet in January last year, but was subsequently

mired in red tape.

 

Arunachalam and Reddy, who were given the Republic Day Padma honours

by President K.R. Narayanan for their pioneering effort to create a

nationwide data network through Sankhya Vahini, told Vajpayee that

IUNet, the company set up by their university, and potential

investors were now "reluctant to invest any more of their resources

for this project".

 

An official in the ministry of information technology said in

Delhi: "In June, we were made aware that they (Carnegie Mellon

University) were planning to pull out of the project if the

government did not respond. Since it involved various other

ministries, there was bound to be some delay. We did write to them

that the issue is under consideration."

 

The US promoters were also frustrated by a public interest litigation

(PIL). "The continuing arguments in the court for more than a year,

often because of the absence of the government lawyer, have not

encouraged us either," the two professors wrote to Vajpayee.

 

In another letter to Shyamal Ghosh, chairman of the Telecom

Commission, Arunachalam, former scientific adviser to the defence

ministry, regretted that even almost two years after the Cabinet

approval, the authorities have sat on the project.

 

Sources in the communications ministry said: "The problem was not

about the project. The problem was who would implement the project.

The department of telecom services (DTS), an arm of the

communications ministry, or the ministry of IT?"

 

Under the shareholding pattern, the communications ministry through

DTS would have to fund a large part of the project, which was to be

managed by IUNet. Neither DTS nor the ministry of IT was prepared to

undertake the project.

 

Arunachalam's letter is a scathing indictment of the cavalier

attitude of the Indian bureaucracy towards projects which involve

foreign participation.

 

"Two years in information technology is considered a lifetime.

Similar projects in other parts of the world that were not even on

the drawing board when we made our original proposal are now in

commercial operation and are being upgraded to higher performance

levels," Arunachalam wrote to Ghosh.

 

Copies of both the letters are now in the possession of The Telegraph.

 

The promoters pointed out that in the course of arguments in the PIL,

the judges had observed that the court had not stayed the project and

that there was nothing preventing the government from going

ahead. "Yet the department of telecommunications has not moved

forward in its collaboration with IUNet," Arunachalam wrote.

 

Under the proposal approved by the Cabinet 22 months ago, DTS was to

have 45 per cent of Sankhya Vahini's equity while two per cent was to

vest with the ministry of information technology. Educational

institutions were to own four per cent.

 

IUNet was to have the remaining 49 per cent, part of it in equipment.

 

If Sankhya Vahini had taken off as soon as it was initiated, it would

have provided the entire country with Internet connectivity by now.

 

At present, there is no nationwide broadband data network for

multimedia and Internet activities in India. Sankhya Vahini would,

thus, have been a pioneer.

 

Reliance is building a similar broadband network.

 

Sankhya Vahini ran into trouble as soon as it was recommended by

Jaswant Singh, who was then chairman of the information technology

task force, and Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu.

 

Opposition to it came not only from the Congress party but also from

the RSS, though the project had pointedly chosen the swadeshi name of

Sankhya Vahini (data transmission).

 

Information technology minister Pramod Mahajan told the Rajya Sabha

at one stage that IUNet had not been rated for lack of sufficient

credit history about the company. Mahajan said this information had

been obtained by the Indian embassy in Washington from rating agency

Dun and Bradstreet.

 

A parliamentary standing committee had expressed the view that the

project would risk national security and criticised the government

for signing a deal even before IUNet was set up.

 

The government had also cleared the project without undertaking any

study about the technology available with the company, the committee

said.