Computerized Railway Reservation
With over 8,520 trains carring 11 mn passengers each day with about 550,000 having reserved accommodation, computerized railway reservation is one technological implementation by the Indian Railways that has helped revolutionize the reservation and ticketing process in India.

Officially called PRS (Passenger Reservation System), the system has not only given the freedom to railway travelers to book seats/berths from any computerized railway reservation counter located anywhere in the country, but also speeded up the entire process of ticketing, thereby saving precious time of commuters, and making the entire process transparent. The genesis of the system goes back to 1982, when the government conceived a project for analyzing a Freight Operations Information Systems with Railways. Since then, there has been no looking back.

Employment Through Software Exports
The Indian IT success story would not have been possible without the help of lakhs of IT professionals who toiled day in and day out. According to the Nasscom statistics for 2007, there are around 1.6 mn IT professionals. There are another 5 lakh ITeS/BPO professionals working in the industry. But, employability is still a major concern.

According to Dataquest estimates, out of every hundred people who apply for a software job, only one is found suitable. But, there are several initiatives that are being planned by the government to avoid a shortage of employable IT professionals. Agencies like Nasscom are also finding ways to set up finishing schools and keeping the syllabus of engineering colleges updated in tandem with the rapidly growing technologies.

E-tickets: No More Queues Please
As the penetration of the PC grew, organizations realized the importance of providing customers with the convenience of booking tickets from any place that had an Internet connection, be it home, office, or cyber cafes. The Indian Railways, together with the airlines, led this revolution. Now travelers can book tickets online, without the need to stand in queues and waste precious time. The success of e-ticketing has also shattered the myth that government agencies cannot successfully implement and run an IT initiative. Apart from travel-related ticketing, people are buying other tickets on the Internetmovies, cricket matches, rock shows, etc. e-ticketing is expected to multiply in the coming years as the Internet reaches far flung areas of the country.

Mobile Phones: What is Your Mobile Number?

The only way to remain unconnected these days is by switching off your mobile phone or if you are in a no connectivity area. Cellular telephony made a late entry into India but it got the latest in terms of technology. The number of fixed line phones has come down significantly. In fact, there are reports of BSNL and MTNL facing a problem of surrendering of landline connections. Everybody is going mobile and this growth is driven by three thingsease of use, affordable pricing of services, and availability of cheap handsets. No wonder that the total mobile subscriber base has swelled to 213 mn and the worlds largest cellular operator, Vodafone, bought out Hutch to enter the Indian market. Now, services along with phones are available for as low as Rs 900. With vegetable sellers to carpenter to the CEOs using a mobile and its services, India is well on its way to surpass China and the US in terms of total number of mobile subscribers.

Email: The Mail Mania
Email has become one of the most preferred modes of business and personal communication in India. It is no longer an urban phenomenon. Email is also no more the domain of English-language speakers. Most email providers, eying a big vernacular language opportunity, have started offering email in several languages. What is your email ID, Send me a mail on this, I had sent you a mail Did you check my mail has become a normal way of conversation these days, thanks to email. Even India Post has started a service, called ePost. This service enables people to send and receive messages or scanned images through email from post offices across the country. No doubt then, email has become a part and parcel of our lives.

The Web: Taking Giant Steps Ahead
The advent of the World Wide Web in India has revolutionized the way people work, learn, and communicate, touching the lives of millions of Indians. Businesses showcasing their expertise, students applying for jobs, declaration of examination results, downloading of ration card or passport formsall this and much more is happening through the Web.

The Internet revolution that was started by VSNL has come a long way and companies like RPG, Global Telecom Services, Wipro, Datapro Information Technology, Crompton Greaves, and Satyam Infoway who lobbied hard and forced the government of India to come up with the Internet Policy of 1997 need to be credited with it. The total number of Internet subscribers (dial up and broadband) till April 2007 according to Voice&Data was 11.6 mn. The next big step was the launch of DataOne services by the state telco BSNL, activating its largely unexploited copper infrastructure laid throughout the country.

Barcodes: Next Customer Please!

Remember standing in a long queue to take manual receipt of the purchase of medicine from a pharmacy? The plight of the Indian consumer was ended with the coming of the Barcodethe technology that allowed reading the barcode on the goods with a reader, capture the information like price of product, and generate a printed receipt, thereby saving precious time. This also meant speedy disposal of customers, meaning more business in less time. So simple and affordable is the technology that even the small shopkeepers are slowly putting into place the mechanism to become more productive. This technology gave a major impetus to the Indian retail boom story.

ATMs: Rupees@Speed of Seconds

Gone are the days when one had to stand in a queue of a banks branch to withdraw money. Today, ATMs (Automated Teller Machines, popularly referred to as Any Time Money) have become the norm, making withdrawal of money an extremely convenient, happy, and 24x7 activity. ATMs are all over the place, even in small towns. To make things even more convenient, many banks share each others ATMs. Unbelievingly, banks promote people to use ATMs as far as possible. Transactions made by visiting the banks branches, at times, leads to imposition of transaction fees. Besides providing the facility of providing cash dispensing facilities, ATMs are also being used for recharging prepaid phones, depositing cash/cheques, checking balance, etc. India is celebrating twenty years of setting up of its first ATM (HSBC Bank set up the first ATM in India in 1987), and the road ahead seems to be even more exciting for the consumer.

EVMs: For Instant Results
The archaic system of voting, which involved manually stamping the election symbol on a sheet of paper, has given way to an Indian innovationElectronic Voting Machines (EVMs). EVMs have revolutionized the election process by making it more transparent, efficient and tamper proof. Though initially opposed, during its launch in 2004, EVMs soon won over millions of voters.

Thanks to the initiative of the Election Commission of India, together with the Electronics Corporation of India and Bharat Electronics Limited, the success of EVMs is still being talked about, serving as a model for most of advanced nations in the world.

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