(Above): Cover of M.A. Arun's new book, "Blast Off - The rise of India in Outsourcing."

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The ’80s was a bad time to be in tech business in India. Despite Texas Instruments coming in on an ox cart, GE driving in on Ambassadors, despite TCS’ heroic trips around the world, despite small computer manufacturing companies set up by Urban Legends, and despite many more things, the industry was heading in no particular direction.

In 1989, Infosys co-founders came together for what looked like a funeral meeting. There was an offer from someone to buy the company for a million dollars.

They had flogged themselves mercilessly for nearly a decade, but the business was still languishing. They called a secret ballot and the majority voted to sell and walk out. The founder-in-chief Narayana Murthy sat through the emotional affair, with one co-founder reportedly sobbing throughout and others sniffing occasionally, without opening his mouth.

After the vote, he offered to buy the stakes of his fellow founders. Some say it was his conviction, some blame it on loyalty, some say a few founders thought Murthy knew something they didn’t know. Whatever the reason, Joe, the co-founders decided to stay put, though one of them still opted out.

The new decade, ’90s, made it worse for the industry.

The Pyongyang-returned Indian officials finally ran out of ideas and the socialist economy ran itself aground. India exhausted its foreign currency reserves and had to pledge gold to finance imports. It couldn’t get scarier than this in a yellow-metal crazy country; to borrow more from the IMF, the government had to agree to carry out sweeping economic reforms.

As Premji may tell you, the crisis almost wiped out large chunks of the IT industry. The forex shortage put a squeeze on imports; local computer manufacturers like Wipro could not buy the components they wanted and faced shut down. The liberalizing economy made MNC computer manufacturers return. An all-out war with them was a shortcut to Armageddon.

The alternative Wipro was trying to explore, selling software services to Americans, looked like a non-starter. Wipro officials, including Premji, found themselves waiting for hours to meet the minor flunkies who guarded the CIO’s gates.

With the existing business eviscerating and the new ones failing to take off, Wipro started burning cash and had to scramble for funds to pay salaries. Many jealous competitors gleefully noted that the slippery journey from vegetable oil to computers was coming to a logical conclusion. These were times, which made Premji forget that he carried a steel tumbler in his briefcase.

The Infosys IPO in 1993 went unnoticed. It would have remained under-subscribed if Morgan Stanley had not stepped in to rescue it.

Starting in 1981, Infy had slogged for 12 years, to offer a damp IPO. If the Infy founders had worked as hard to set up a chain of South Indian restaurants that sold vegetarian snacks in Bangalore, they could have been more successful. By the time Infy made its IPO, another founder had quit the company, though temporarily it turned out.

The morale of the industry synced with the mood of the nation that felt like a pupa entrapped in a slushy embryo sac. It took a PM’s visit to the U.S. to show how far things had slipped.

Indian Prime Minister Narasimha Rao visited the U.S. in 1994 and spoke to media at the White House along with President Bill Clinton.

This wasn’t any routine press meet. For the first time in history, a U.S. president was sharing the stage with an Indian PM at the White House. It was an honor the world’s most powerful democracy was bestowing upon the world’s largest cacophony. It was also a soft recognition of the rising eminence of India on the world stage. (That was the gist of what PM Rao’s PR people had told Indians.)

Not impressed, Joe, with the joint press conference business? Ask your uncle if it is a big deal or not.

The first question came from an Associated Press correspondent and was addressed to Clinton. She wanted to know what North Korea proposed to do with its spent fuel rods.

That question was a trend setter, it instantly expanded the agenda of the meet; for some reason, American journalists took a sudden fancy to foreign policy. They started firing questions on what Clinton Admin was doing across the globe - Bosnia, Haiti, Rwanda, China, Nafta, Gatt, and the UN.

This was 1994. The White House was stocked with interns to keep the President in good humor. He was game for the wide terrain, the questions were traversing. Well-informed and energetic, he took the press head on.

From foreign policy, the focus eventually shifted to the U.S. internal affairs. One journalist wondered why Clinton was not delaying the welfare reform to have a go at the health care policy first. This was the question Clinton had been eagerly waiting for.

The Indian PM patiently waited for someone to take note of him. To kill time, he mentally worked on the plot of a sex novel he was writing secretly. Then he murmured a Sanskrit prayer, which when chanted with eyes fully closed, makes your skin glow, giving you more visibility.

The elderly Rao, nearly twice as old as Clinton, was known for his scholarly accomplishments than stunning looks. Enclosing his slender frame in a closed-neck Indian suit, plastering what was left of his hair to his skull, which had a bulge in the back, with Wipro oil, he stood a few inches below Clinton’s shoulder, nervously leaning on the pulpit.

A couple of journalists did ask a few questions about India; but they ignored PM Rao who could speak in six languages, and addressed them to President Clinton, who could speak in only one.

In the hour-long Q and A session, Rao managed to speak two sentences of 22 words in total.

Statement 1 by Prime Minister Rao: No. They’re not true.

(Question – widespread human rights violations in Kashmir.)

Statement 2 by Prime Minister Rao: I think I owe you an answer. My arm is absolutely intact. The President didn’t even touch it.

(Question – if President Clinton had twisted twist his arm on certain issues.)

Indians, who lived time zones away, had stayed up till midnight to see the joint tango with press; they squirmed along with their wise PM, who quietly stood gaping at the President, who was spiritedly explaining his disagreement on the version of the welfare bill introduced by Mr. McCurdy.

Though not a very popular PM, that night Indians suffered in silence with Rao, letting out a collective sigh at 12.40 am, which is still the Guinness record in the category of singular synchronised sigh. They went to bed, sad that 900 million of them inhabited the world’s largest no man’s land.

Not one of them would have believed if you had told them that night that the country was exactly 10 years away from becoming a political dynamite in the U.S. presidential elections.

Excerpts from “Blast Off: The rise of India in Outsourcing” by M.A. Arun.
The book is available at Amazon.com.