The Hindu Business Line : In sync with standards

In an age where globalisation is just a fact of life and each of us has a voice that can reach a person across the world (blogs), will creating our own standards make us a deliberate outcast?

Industry experts meeting at a seminar on Information Technology Standardisation recently in Bangalore discussed the need to collaborate to form new ones.

Thirty organisations in the country, belonging to IT, academia and user groups such as NGOs, railways, etc, will get together under the aegis of industry body Bureau of Indian Standards soon.

They will identify international standards that are currently being documented and make the decision on adoption.

They will also have the task of identifying a few areas where India will make its own standards.

There are 18,000 national standards spanning various sectors such as agriculture, food, and IT services. Of these, 1,471 are national standards that have been formulated in domains such as consumer electronics, information security, data storage and safety of electronic products.

However, only 75 per cent of these are harmonised with international ones, according to Sukh Bir Singh, Deputy Director General, Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS). "Localisation and opening of the Indian economy has led to greater emphasis on standards," he says.

"India should closely follow and cater to international standards. We should ensure standards don't become obstacles to trade."

Blu-ray vs DVD,

Examples of issues created by opposing standards are aplenty. The railway revolution in Europe in the late nineteenth century suffered a major setback as different tracks were set up in enthusiasm, which were not able to leverage on the others' investment once the industry became stable.

More recently, the video distribution industry was torn in the fight between Blu-ray users and DVD ones. Digital music formats, operating system incompatibilities and the large range of wireless technologies are calling for attention.

Jaijit Bhattacharya, Adjunct Faculty, IIT-D and Country Director, Government Strategy, Sun Microsystems, gives an example of how setting a standard helped bring down prices.

In the 60s, W-LAN (wireless local area network) routers cost $5 million. Once W-LAN was standardised, the price dropped and a WLAN router now costs Rs 2,000.

Such benefits will help the economy at large. The time is ripe for action. And India is game for it.

Venkatesh Hariharan, Head-Open Source Affairs, Red Hat India, says "Policymakers should see what is important for citizens and create standards around them."

He advocates setting the pace with standards of our own that will cater to the 1.2 billion population. "Why adopt toxic waste of the West? Let's make our own standards," he says.

However, Harish Grama, Vice-President,IBM Software Lab India, warns, "The IT industry suffers from the NIH syndrome — not invented here. This will be our undoing. We need to make a collaborative effort to adopt common standards."

preethij@thehindu.co.in

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