June 16, 2002

What has endeared Indians to the Western world, especially the United States of America, among other things, is their prowess in everything related to computers. Even a naive journalist, who initially thought that RAM (random access memory) was an Ayodhyan deity, could master an enviable quantum of knowledge within no time, using it to create probably the most wonderful account of the conquest of Silicon Valley by Indians. Chidanand Rajghatta, Washington correspondent for The Times of India, did just that. In his highly readable book, The horse that flew: how Indian silicon gurus spread their wings, Rajghatta profiles some two dozen Indian IT trailblazers.

There is Sabeer Bhatia, who had arrived in Silicon Valley in 1988 with just 250 dollars in his pocket, created the internet-based e-mail service, Hotmail, and sold it to Microsoft for 400 million dollars.

Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystem, who, at the age of 17 wrote a paper on parallel processing that was so ahead of its time that no one published it. He found the business environment in India too hostile, and finally left India to make it big in the United States.

Vinod Dham, “the mind behind the Pentium chip”, who is completely at home in the high-pressure American corporate world, but still speaks in a Punjabi American accent, “switching from desi lingo to American argot with equal ease”.

Along with IT stalwarts like N.R. Narayana Murthy of Infosys Technologies and Wipro’s Azim Premji, one also encounters NRI (non-resident Indian) women entrepreneurs such as Radha Basu of Hewlett-Packard who set up the company’s office in India; and Vani Kola, “who mothered a company and a baby at the same time”. The book reveals the amazing phenomenon of “The Indus Entrepreneurs” (TiE), an Indian networking group in the US, which provides counselling, contacts and investment to Indian “upstarts”. Kanwal Rekhi, president of TiE, helped launch 19 such start-ups. Each one is linked to a web of Indian-owned high-tech firms, mostly based in the US, whose market value last year was estimated to be $235 billion.

While launching the book in the United States, Indian External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh had lauded the Indian American community in these words: “They are now inseparably linked with the US. They are increasingly assertive — a mere one per cent of the population controlling five to six per cent of the economy.” He also remarked that, unlike in the UK where the Indian presence is hardly felt, the US had recognized India’s talent.

This is the informative and interesting story of the Indian journey along the information superhighway, both in the US and in India. The amusing narration fascinates the reader as the author unfolds the drama. The title of the book comes from an anecdote about the Mughal emperor Akbar and Birbal, one of his confidantes. The emperor, it is said, condemned Birbal to death for committing a blunder, he pleaded that if his life were spared “for a year” he would make a flying horse. When a friend scolded Birbal for his foolishness, he said that a lot could happen in one year: “Akbar could die. I could die a natural death. The experimental horse could die. And who knows, the horse could fly!”

The book holds a lesson for those who have taken it upon themselves to help Pakistan gain some respect in the comity of the nations, and that is: a bureaucrat can only throw a spanner in the works; it’s the technocrat who can understand what a nation needs to become self-sufficient and gain self-respect. So let technocrats take all the vital decisions and see them through, without the bureaucrats playing their self-serving tricks and pranks. If we wish to survive as a free nation, we must first do away with the obsolete legacies that bind us to an inglorious past, and let progressive freethinking prevail.

Writer’s email: krahman50@yahoo.com 

The horse that flew: how Indian silicon gurus spread their wings
By Chidanand Rajghatta
Harper Collins Publishers India Pvt Ltd, 7/16 Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi-110 002. Distributed in Pakistan by Paramount Books, 152/O, Block 2, PECH Society, Karachi-75400. Tel: 021-4310030
Email: paramount@cyber.net.pk
ISBN 81-7223-431-7 376pp+xxiipp. Rs910

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