Chips already down, India yawns at Y2K By Marion Lloyd, Globe Correspondent, 12/19/1999 NEW DELHI - In the closeted comfort of middle-class Delhi, the houses darken as diesel-fueled generators devour their last reserves. At the airport, with its banks of computers and emergency power supplies, planes litter the runways while pilots, unaided by radar, circle hopelessly in the sky. A scene from a city where the millennium bug has run amok? No, it's a typical December night in the Indian capital. For this country of 1 billion people, the havoc that could be wrought by a widespread computer meltdown - including extended blackouts, water and food shortages, plane delays, and telephone failures - doesn't sound much different from what Indians endure in daily life. ''Indian people are always facing shortages of every kind, and what has happened to them? Nothing,'' said Seh Dev, a 90-year-old homeopathic doctor in Delhi's teeming old city. ''Nature always takes care of things.'' India's government insists it has done everything possible to guard against massive system failures on New Year's Day 2000. The so-called year 2000 problem, also known as Y2K or the millennium bug, stems from a shortcut employed by early computer programmers, who designed software to recognize dates by their last two digits. Experts fear that when the date changes from 1999 to 2000, some computers that have not been upgraded may interpret the date as 1900, causing them to malfunction or crash. No country is immune. But most experts say India will be better off than even the most advanced Western nations. For starters, it is far less reliant on computers. India has a modest number of personal computers, about 3.4 million, compared with tens of millions in the United States. India also has fewer mainframe machines, which often contain older programming. Of about 10,000 railway stations in India, only 12 use computerized systems to control the arrival and dispatch of trains, said Peter Theobald, the chairman of a company that specializes in computer security. And while 54 percent of power stations are computerized, all have manual backup systems, he said. ''I think the safest place on the night of the 31st of December is India, because of the [low] level of computerization,'' said Dewang Mehta, president of the country's largest association of software companies and a member of the government's Y2K action force. That, he said, has more to do with the lack of computers than with government efforts to prevent problems. ''The government is operating on the premise that by high-level bureaucratic intervention, [the Y2K fix] will actually get done. But if you talk to the people who have actually done the job, the picture becomes extremely hazy,'' he said. ''Luckily for us, there's not that much automation here.'' Industry experts have criticized the government for dragging its feet in fixing systems that could be affected by the software bug. Some sectors, like defense and nuclear power, began checking their systems for Y2K glitches as early as 1996, but the government waited until spring 1999 to tackle the bulk of the potential problem areas - namely power stations, public hospitals, railways, and ports. Of the $163 million the government originally said it was setting aside to pay for testing and reprogramming, it eventually spent $8 million, or nearly 5 percent, Mehta said. Nor has it conducted much testing to verify the systems will really work. As a result, there is no way to know whether even vital areas such as health care will be able to function New Year's Day. Still, he and other experts said enough work has been done to prevent widespread failures. ''Most of the sectors that affect people are Y2K-ready,'' said Vineet Dewan, a Y2K expert at Tata Infotech Ltd., one of India's largest software services companies. ''As far as India is concerned, the problem is insignificant,'' he said. His optimism is not surprising. Tata is one of dozens of India-based firms for whom Y2K was more of a boon than a bug, helping to catapult the country's information technology industry into the big leagues. While India accounts for a fraction of the $50 billion estimated to have been spent worldwide on fixing the Y2K problem, its relatively small information technology sector captured an estimated $2.3 billion of Y2K-related business. The figure represents a 5 percent share of total Y2K revenue, compared with the less than 1 percent that Indian companies command in the global information technology industry. More important, Y2K work has been primarily responsible for fueling an industry growth rate of 50 percent per year since 1996. ''Y2K-related business has put India on the map,'' said Dewan. His company earned three-fourths of its $100 million yearly revenue from reprogramming work related to the millennium bug. And while demand has fallen this year as companies in the developed world complete their readiness programs, the boom allowed Indian companies to expand into even more lucrative areas, such as product development. ''We got a window into the American market ... and there's no turning back,'' Dewan said. He and other industry officials dismiss suggestions that Indian companies have been busy cashing in on the West's problems while abandoning their own nation's needs. ''The fact of the matter is, until about nine months ago, nobody in India was really interested in Y2K,'' said Theobald. ''They didn't even know what it was.'' His company, IT Secure, wildly overestimated the amount of Y2K-related business it would find in India. ''If they hadn't done work abroad, they would have been sitting idle,'' he said. Others point to the extensive backup systems already in place to cope with chronic infrastructure failures. Everything from airports to coal mines have secondary power supplies. The houses of most middle-class Indians have generators, and poorer communities have learned to cope with chronic power shortages that last for days or have never had electricity. Hoarding water is common, in cities and villages. And most banks still keep track of accounts on handwritten ledgers. Nor will Indians be surprised if flights are canceled en masse beginning Jan. 1. Already, the lack of a fully operational high-tech radar system at the New Delhi airport delays flights by the hundreds in winter, when smog and fog often reduce visibility to an arm's length. ''One has to live here to appreciate why [Y2K] is never going to create a panic here, unlike in Europe, where they are arming themselves and going to the hills,'' said Pankaj Vaish, head of Y2K projects for Perot Systems Ltd., a Dallas-based computer services firm. Indeed, despite a government awareness campaign, knowledge about the Y2K bug is limited to the urban middle and upper classes. ''Every day, I read about this 2YK [sic], but I don't know what it is,'' complained Bishan Swarup, who sells copper vessels in Old Delhi. ''It must be something for English-speaking people.'' Asked how he'd react if New Year's brings chaos, he smiled. ''Whether we are forced to suffer is for the gods to decide. We think only for the present, not for the future or the past.'' This story ran on page F01 of the Boston Globe on 12/19/1999. © Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.