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But where are the crowds…?

NetScribes/Sangeeta Menon

And there were more stalls and participants than visitors. Maybe, the crowds would start streaming in after office hours. Maybe not. Deflated balloons on signboards screaming the event of 2001 almost summed up the mood in the pre-lunch session on Day Two of the 'most happening IT event' in the country; the Nasscom fair at Bombay's World Trade Centre.

Meanwhile, young representatives at various stalls continued to be more than eager to display their wares to anybody who showed the faintest interest.

Enthusiastic public relations persons scurried across the venue, 'informing' journalists about the parallel conferences happening at the Oberoi and 'different' stalls put up by clients.

Unsuspecting visitors found pamphlets thrust into unwilling hands, only politeness keeping them from refusing. Curiosity made others stop and observe the proceedings at some of the more interesting stalls.

There are a few eye-catchers, however. Take the plush Aptech stall, or the impressive TCS one, where a sprawling world map provides a nice setting for the company's representatives to sit down and answer visitors' queries.

The world at their feet, did anybody say?

Stealing the thunder from the biggies, however, are some of the smaller players. One such had people lining up to take a closer look at the money plants running up the sides of the stall.

Fake currency notes stuck to the leaves only heightened their curiosity. "A payment gateway," smiles the Transecute India official. "We provide online payment solutions," he explains, before turning to more curious onlookers.

All around you, there are hundreds of other people selling thousands of 'solutions' to your woes - accounting, payment, banking, GIS, statistical -- you name it, they have it all. Even jobs. Jobs? Thousands of them, in fact. The Irish camp, for example, has 40,000 jobs to offer willing Indians, 15, 000 of these in IT.

"We have a massive shortage of skilled staff back home; we need more talent. And talent's here," said Alan Buckley of the Irish embassy.

There are more promises and dreams. "Roti, kapda, makaan, bijli and bandwidth,' says a Nasscom poster. ``Buy Internet time, share a pizza with us," is another marketing recipe in cyber space. There's plenty of real real space to sell too -- IT parks promising everything from yet-to-come-up infrastructure to work-and-leisure packages.

Even the entertainment theme failed to click. Look at the 'cinema theatre' put up by Wipro, where The Organisation That Saw Tomorrow (no prizes for guessing this one), 'starring Wipro Services and Solutions, scripted by Wipro and You, and directed by Wipro' is running to far from a full house.

The bottomline: the crowds are just not there. "We are going out and meeting companies and people. That makes more sense than waiting here, wondering which of those passing by will be the right one, the one that will step in," says Buckley.

It's an eclectic mix of the state-of-the-art, the bizarre, the creative, the philanthropic (check out the `Wall of Hope' put up to raise funds for Gujarat) and the wacky (a Smart Alec has a message scribbled on the wall -- give, but make sure the money doesn't disappear).

And the astral - the last stall this writer stepped into belonged to www.astrogyan.com, which promises solutions for all the fears and anxieties of the dot-com industry.

Wonder what the stars foretell for Nasscom 2002?

SEE ALSO:

Nasscom 2001: The complete coverage

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