Indian IT in Congestion?                  by Ramesh Kallidai
Everyone has been talking about Ken Livingstone’s  pet elephant – the world’s largest congestion charge project.  Amidst all the doubts, fears, loathing and sneering, there have been dire predictions that Dame Technology might pull the carpet under Mayor Ken’s daring feet. The Mayor however can sleep tight this week – he seems to have won round one of the tussle. The big question on everyone’s mind is: will good old Ken finally rise in triumph or will he fall flat on his feet?

Whatever happens to Ken (or does not happen to him), an Indian IT company is laughing all the way to the bank. Not many people know that it is Mumbai-based Mastek’s incredible horsepower that will help run the back end of the world’s largest and most ambitious traffic control measure.
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Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London
Sources from Mastek revealed that the Mumbai-created code that helps run the software-brain appeared to be working "smoothly".

Rowland Baroan, Press Officer for Mastek UK said, “Transport for London turned to Capita, an outsourcing Company for delivering the project. And Capita appointed Mastek UK as a subcontractor to the project.”
Mastek has designed and developed the contact centre, internet and image management applications based on system requirements agreed with Capita. Mastek has also contributed to the technical design and architecture of these applications.
'The deal is worth $10m (£6.3m) to us. It's a very big project,' said chairman and chief executive Ashank Desai.
Mastek which is one of India's top 20 IT developers will continue to maintain the scheme for at least the next seven years.
Speaking about their relationship with Mastek, Jonathan Hawker from Capita explained, “Mastek is one of fifteen partners who worked with us on our solution to congestion charging. But their role was purely restricted to coding for some of the core software. Capita owns the intellectual proprietary rights.”
Hawker explained that Capita had worked before with Mastek on government and public sector projects. “They are a known quantity and a good partner,” he concluded.
So far so good - at the time of writing this, Central London seemed to have had a smooth initiation into its congestion free days. The traffic on the British capital’s streets were free-flowing, smooth and largely hassle-free.
But anyone who has travelled in the auto-rickshaws in Mumbai would know that the petrol fumes, the tailbacks and the potholes in that city make Friday afternoon on Euston Road look like a drive through the backside of Antarctica.  Someone in Mastek should look at Mumbai’s own traffic problems before solving the angst of the rest of the world. Physician, heal thyself!



Digital Heritage

Dr. Narayanan Kannan is an Environmental Chemist with a difference. While he is not teaching as an Associate Professor at the University of Keel in Germany, he spends his time as the Director of the Tamil Heritage Foundation, travelling round the world preserving ancient Indian manuscripts
He presented a paper at the Tamil Internet 2001 Conference organised by International Forum for IT in Malaysia, which explained that old manuscripts in palm leaves could be digitally preserved through modern technology. The President of the Malyasian Indian Congress, Dato Seri Sami Vellu was so impressed that he immediately offered $10,000 to Kannan to start the Tamil Heritage Foundation.
“We have two different activities. First, we travel extensively over India to digitalise old collections that are withering away so we can preserve them for posterity. We leave the manuscript with the owner, but just take away a digital copy” he explained. “The other aspect is to bring back those elements of India’s heritage that have been taken away during our colonial past. This same technology offers us a method to take books back from countries like Britain or Germany by digital imaging.”
Kannan, who is visiting London, has met officials of the British Library to discuss how they could digitalise their catalogued Tamil collection.  “No one had ever asked the British library before us for access to digitalise books from an Indian language. Initially, they were surprised, but after meeting our team of scholars, they became convinced we were genuine,” he laughed.
During his travels in India, Kannan discovered clay tablets written in an ancient brahmi script that has not yet been deciphered. “This was a startling discovery since clay tablets are more peculiar to the Mesopotian civilisations, and relatively unknown in India. The tablets were discovered accidentally while digging for a fertiliser factory and are estimated to be from the time of the Buddha. Unfortunately, none of the scholars we met could decipher the script,” he said.
Kannan has now approached IT experts in Silicon Valley who have promised to create an algorithm that could finally unravel the mystery.
Indian IT seems to have become all pervading nowadays.
Visit
www.tamil-heritage.org for more information on Dr Kannan.