MY WORD!
It was singer Bob Dylan who cheerfully announced that the times, they are a changin back in the 60s. Since then the times have moved on an awful lot. Clattering telex machines have made way for quietly efficient fax machines. Liners that sailed majestically from ports like Genoa and Southampton have ended up in the breakers yard.
As we sail into the new millennium, these changes are turning life upside down. And the only way to survive is to search for business opportunities that are thrown up amidst the chaos.
Just look at some of the oldest professions. Lawyers are discarding dusty tomes for giant databases for legal precedents; doctors hold long distance consultations on the net. This article will be written on a laptop, attached to a modem and sent zipping down the line to an office at the other end of town.
The poet Laurie Lee wrote that he belonged to a generation, that lived as had been done for the last thousand years. By the time Lee reached his teens motorcycles were roaring through the village and the first autobus had shattered the isolation of the Cotswolds.
India isnt exactly immune to these changes. Back in the 80s , an evening in front of the box meant Doordarshan, Doordarshan and more Doordarshan. Who would have dreamt, then, of the wonders of CNN, STAR and satellite television.
Thats startling enough, but look at modern telephony. It still takes years to get an MTNL connection. But you can pop out, by a mobile phone and keep in touch with the world. Just ten years ago it would have been hard to imagine such a giant leap forward in communications.
It is easy to forget how recent these changes are. Back in the 60s international trunk calls were rare even abroad. During a five-year stay in London in the 60s we made one trunk call back to India. Today, it is common to pick up the phone in London and call Kerala (whats even better is that abroad the cost of such calls are coming down dramatically).
Whats the lesson to be drawn from all this? Well, dont forget that technology is changing the way business is being done. For a start, the shrinking globe is sending the giant banks around the world in search of investment opportunities. Perhaps this could have happened in another era. But it was unlikely before the advent of cheap international telephony and quick air travel.
There are more mundane tasks that are being farmed out across the globe. Already some South East Asian newspapers are edited in Perth, Australia. And the internet has recently started carrying advertisements for secretarial services in low-cost Third World countries. Customers in Europe and the US will fax or e-mail voluminous documents to secretaries in distant countries. These will be typed out and sent back. Because of time differences the work could even be ready by the next morning.
Other possibilities are only just opening up. Designers are already sending blueprints complete with detailed instructions to fabricators in countries like India. Now, the internet and e-mail is making this even easier.
At a less technical level, people are discovering that nostalgia is a big seller. Hollywood is churning out period pieces Jane Austens Pride and Prejudice and Emma are going down big with audiences. One reason is that they hark back to an era that has vanished as completely as the dodo. An era when the pace of life was dictated by horse-traps and not low-slung Jaguars. So, maybe the best bet would be to invest in the latest hand-held camera and make a movie about the old times.
