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The wave writer

?I?m a great fan of Ernest Hemingway. His writing has influenced me a lot. I admire some other American writers like Tom Wolfe,? he says.

Ajit Balakrishnan, the founder of Rediff.com, while giving an account of his professional journey in his book, also gives an insider?s analysis of the information age

The Wave Rider

Ajit Balakrishnan

Macmillan

Rs. 599

Pg 213

?I?m a great fan of Ernest Hemingway. His writing has influenced me a lot. I admire some other American writers like Tom Wolfe,? he says. He also calls his tepid, realist yet evocative non-fiction-writing style ?inspired by the likes of The New Yorker and Granta?, And no, he?s not a writer (well, professionally) and neither a scribe earning his paycheck putting ink on paper. He?s written a book alright, and done a good enough job of it too. But Ajit Balakrishnan was and still is one of the pioneers who opened India?s windows to the World Wide Web. His book, The Wave Rider?A Chronicle of the Information Age is a mix of an autobiographical account of his professional journey over the past couple of decades that saw him establishing Rediff.com. It is also a piece of business literature giving an insider?s analysis of the information age and how the world has been undergoing a transition from the industrial age to the information age in the past one decade.

It?s the story of how from a tiny Internet venture, that too after a failed computer hardware business, Balakrishnan took off on a journey that was topsy-turvy, bumpy, fraught with danger and adversaries and ultimately was about vision, dreams and the entrepreneurial spirit in him. A journey that saw Rediff going from a tiny office space in Mumbai to getting listed at NASDAQ. That?s not all though. It also serves as a good enough dummies guide to the information age, served with copious doses of business and industrial history. This also lends to the book,?which is already just 213 pages?around 50 pages worth of notes, references and indexes.

?I?ve tried to ensure that anything I say is backed by references and notes. So if a reader wants to dive deep into any of the issues or topics talked about in the book, there?s enough material and sources mentioned to guide him or her,? says Balakrishnan. But with just about 160 pages, doesn?t he feel that the book is drastically short as compared to most works on business history? ?It was a conscious decision to make it short and simple for it to be of as much use to a general reader as it might be to an Internet practitioner, a business school student, and the like. And you need to have some mercy on the readers. In today?s time and age when attention spans are constantly shrinking, I don?t want to burden my readers with 700 pages of business and technology jargon,? he responds.

The idea of this book was hatched in mid-2011 when Macmillan?s India publisher Saugata Mukherjee got in touch with Balakrishnan over a paper the latter had presented at the New School for Social Research in New York. ?Macmillan approached me, wanted me to convert that paper into a book, but I wanted to go further and explore the present dynamics of the industry. To analyse and give a perspective on this transition that the world is going through?from the industrial age to the information age,? says Balakrishnan. But like most things creative, Balakrishnan feels that the idea of a book about his professional journey started with curiosity. ?When you set out to write, it provides you a great opportunity to think things through in detail. It helps you to look back and analyse the time gone by and all that had happened. It was this curiosity about understanding that time and what I did back then which motivated me to write this book,? he says. But the curiosity wasn?t just limited to this. He adds that the research that went into the book also was a source of great curiosity. Balakrishnan took about nine months to complete The Wave Rider, after stealing a few hours every day from his extremely hectic schedule.

He tells us that two major debates around Internet and society that have gripped and will continue to grip the world in the time to come are about the existence of nation states vis-?-vis the web, and the debate around privacy. ?Nation states emerged in the 19th centuries and that has been seriously challenged by the Internet, which goes beyond political and even cultural borders. No one really has the answer to how the future society will develop, but it?s a raging debate as of now, across the globe as well as in India. The other debate, which has not yet reached India in full measure is about privacy of user data. This debate is big in Europe, and is beginning to take centrestage in the US too. There?s no one solution for it and is a matter of deliberation within each country and society,? he says.

One book down, and he sure seems to have enjoyed it, so is there any other book in the offing? ?I have this unfinished book in my head on the higher education sector in India. I plan to analyse it through the prism of the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs). Maybe I?ll call it The Confessions of an IIM Chairperson (he is also the chairman, IIM Calcutta). But it?s too early to say anything really,? he says.

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First published on: 18-11-2012 at 01:18 IST
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