Anurag Jain – Chairman, Laurus Edutech, on the growing influence of Internet in our lives and how it is helping to strengthen the bonds between families and friends
B&E: How is Internet changing the dynamics of our relationships and how is it impacting technology, businesses et al? Anurag Jain (AJ): Internet has become an integral part of our lives today. Everybody learns a lot of facts and figures through the Internet. But Internet has still not become a place where the average transactions are done online. It is just starting. Once this trend picks up it will lead to the next phase of the Internet. The third phase will come when people are able to target you over the Internet by doing a very sophisticated analysis of who you are. In this phase Internet will be able to touch your life at multiple points.
As Internet becomes an integral part of our lives, we are becoming over-dependent on Internet. In this kind of scenario where there is so much of inteface with the Internet, it’s not uncommon to see things go wrong sometimes, as there are many grey areas left untouched by policy. Today, in a virtual world, there are many kinds of sharp practices, which can hurt you financially. It’s a reality that we have to live with. B&E: The growth and expansion of the Internet are affecting the ways in which we interact with each other. Do you think that its spread and reach is responsible for the weakening of inter-personal ties?
AJ: I will not say that Internet is responsible for the weakening of human ties. Person-to-person communication, which was very strong in the past, is now less so with or without the Internet. But on the other hand, this type of interaction is now augmented by some other forms of communication. Today, I am in touch with all my school and college classmates thanks to Facebook. So it would be wrong to say that Internet is the reason for the weakening of inter-personal communication. Actually, it is helping to deepen this type of communication. Internet has a very funny way of connecting people with very unique desires and wants with other people who think exactly alike. So I think Internet is helping bonds become stronger but the dynamics are different. It’s not face-to-face interaction but virtual ties. B&E: What can India learn from countries like the US, which are far ahead in terms of Internet penetration and and cyber security?
AJ: I would like to point out that nobody has, as of yet, been able to perfect the Internet. Everybody is learning every day. I think what we should do is that instead of following the US we should learn from their mistakes and avoid the pitfalls that they made. For instance, most of the Internet is connected through old technology devices, which are vulnerable. But if today we are going to build that, why base it on that same technology? Why not to base it on the next generation techniques? Keeping those mistakes in mind, we can get ahead like we did in the mobile phones sector. B&E: Several websites in Russia enable users to monitor government functioning. How useful they are should India have similar websites?
AJ: What Internet brings is equality and transparency. So what information was earlier restricted and had limited public access has now become more democratic and accessible. Internet has made information accessible to one and all. Whether the websites you mention are useful or not depends on whether they are able to satisfy the genuine needs of the people.
