By Ananth Nayak
....Sharma is an effective chronicler, attentive to the minutest of details. He points out the efforts to develop computers in India benefited from a fortuitous turn of events. In 1959 Homi Bhabha ran into ibm’s director of research E R Piore on board a flight to Zurich. When Bhabha mentioned plans to acquire a powerful computer for atomic energy work in India, Piore suggested that his company could help. This was the beginning of an almost 20-year association of state-backed Indian computing endeavour with the US computer biggie.
Sharma is not the archetypal business history writer dismissing all state-sponsored efforts. He notes a large industrial infrastructure for electronics manufacturing was created in the public sector. But he does not overplay the role of the pre-liberalized state in India. He is attentive to the fact that Indira Gandhi’s restrictive policies were responsible for India missing the hardware bus.
The Long Revolution is not just about highbrow state research. There are interviews with small software developers in Noida and Hyderabad. There is a delightful description of the computerization of railway reservation.
The book ends on a hopeful note. “There are many more Silicon Valleys waiting to be discovered,” Sharma writes. But will the Silicon Valleys come with more Satyams. There are fault lines in India’s revolution that require examination. The book shows us that.
Read full review at: http://www.downtoearth.org.in/full6.asp?foldername=20090315&filename=news&sec_id=15&sid=35
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