The Hindu Business Line : Running at rank 121

It noted that India is now the back office of many banks, a magnet for labour-intensive, often tedious programming, and the customer services voice of everything from British Airways to Microsoft. Not something we didn't know, though it warms the heart to be called a superpower candidate.

A posting dated May 20 on www.nanovip.com is about two companies that have announced "a joint venture designed to turn India into a nanotech superpower."

Again, it feels amazingly good to think so, though N.R. Narayana Murthy would chide us with the remark, "We are just toddling; hence we should stop terming ourselves as an IT superpower."

As if to vindicate the view of the Chief Mentor of Infosys, here is a disheartening report from the UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade And Development) titled, The Digital Divide: ICT Development Indices 2004. It places India at rank 121 among 165 countries.

The US ranks first, "with the other top ten countries all European except for Singapore, which has broken into the top ten, rising from 12 to 9." If you come to three digit ranks, you'd find Indonesia at 100th place, followed by Sub-Saharan countries: "Swaziland at 107, Gabon at 108, Guinea at 109, Kenya at 115 and Ghana at 116". China has rocketed up the rankings 16 places to rank at 118, informs the report.

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) offers many benefits, but developing countries face significant obstacles to ICT connectivity and access, observes the report.

"The underlying causes of low levels of ICT penetration in developing countries includes a lack of awareness of what these technologies can offer; insufficient telecommunications infrastructure and Internet connectivity; expensive ICT access; absence of adequate legal and regulatory frameworks; shortage of requisite human capacity; failure to develop local language content; and a lack of entrepreneurship and business culture open to change, transparency, and social equality."

To explain our low ranking, at least partially, there's this reasoning in the report: "Adoption of nations and territories as our unit of analysis gives added pre-eminence to Singapore, as both a nation state and a `large city', compared with, for example, a lower ranking for India, comprising Bangalore as a technological hub."

If only they had separated New York or Bangalore `from their hinterlands', very different results would emerge, one is promised. "New York has more Internet hosts available to it than the whole of sub-Saharan Africa, which means that a city ranking, or ranking of nations by cities, would yield different results."

Jean De La Bruyere, a French philosopher said, "Marriage confines every man to his proper rank." One may say that of the UNCTAD's report too for it sobers us when toying with the `superpower' theory.

Database mobility and security

A recent report at http://banktech.com, the site of Bank Systems & Technology Online, predicts that 50 years from now, you would carry a translucent plastic bankcard displaying a talking head with artificial intelligence.

Cash and cheques would have been eliminated, to reduce the `friction of money movement' in favour of the new electronic currency of `credits' that you'd be able to transfer at will, it adds, citing Catherine Palmieri, managing director at Citibank.com.

Her prescription to avoid obsolescence is to invest in infrastructure, especially "databases, mobility and security".

Database technology is important because "it forms the core of the critical infrastructure requirement in financial services for many reasons, not the least of which is the need to gain a competitive advantage in marketing financial services", reasons the report.

On mobility, you are probably aware of the Bluetooth technology. It has a `proximity-based data transmission' standard to work alongside comprehensive customer data by making it possible for touch points to react intelligently when a customer approaches, as Ivan Schneider's story on Banktech educates.

"For example, when a customer carrying a Bluetooth-enabled mobile device approaches a service desk, the bank employee should be able to have the customer information ready at hand and suggest financial services. Another example would be a Bluetooth-enabled billboard on the street that switches messages as customers walk past." The challenge is to get the technology scale up to meet a whole city's requirements.

For any financial institution, security is a major concern, more so with the increase in online frauds. "Citibank was the most phished site in the world," is a comment of Palmieri to highlight the newer type of attacks that banks have to cope with. Citi is betting on biometrics, such as retinal scans, fingerprints or voice recognition, to handle security at `a new level of technological innovation'.

One learns that `as a proof of concept', the bank is already experimenting with the technology at a few of its branches. For example, "instead of multiple passwords that had to be switched every 30 days, employees could use a biometric identifier for authentication."

Security, however, can be a mixed blessing. "The more you seek security, the less of it you have," cautions Brian Tracy. "The more you seek opportunity, the more likely it is that you will achieve the security that you desire."

Not something that banks would like to risk as a suggestion to implement.

ITworks@TheHindu.co.in

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