http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/19991107/tc/yk_india_1.html

-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), November 08, 1999

Answers

From awareness to confidence building...

[Fair Use: For Educational/Research Purposes Only]

Sunday November 7 7:18 AM ET

PM To Join Designer, Cricketer In India Y2K Ads

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - A fashion designer and a cricket star will soon be joined by the prime minister in a celebrity campaign to alert India's unsuspecting computer users to the Y2K bug threat, a software industry official said Sunday.

For the past few weeks, India's newspapers, magazines and prime-time television have carried advertisements featuring a slew of celebrities in the ``Let's make India Y2K OK'' campaign launched by the government.

``It was just to show that Y2K will impact all walks of life,'' Dewang Mehta, president of the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM), told Reuters.

Mehta said Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee was scheduled to appear in the series in an advertisement expected to be released later this week.

``It is a 100-million-rupee ($2.3 million) campaign which will last up to December,'' he said. ``We are getting good feedback from the people.''

The Year 2000 (Y2K) bug is a problem that can occur in computers that use only the last two digits to denote a year in their date fields. Unless rectified, the bug could cause losses of valuable data when the new millennium dawns.

Mehta said fashion designer Ritu Beri was used to draw the attention of small businesses, while cricket star Ajay Jadeja spoke of how the Y2K bug could even lurk in telephones.

The stars are in the company of less glamorous, but more powerful individuals such as central bank Governor Bimal Jalan, Ratan Tata, head of the Tata industrial group, and K.B Dadiseth, chairman of consumer goods giant Hindustan Lever Ltd

A pivotal figure in the campaign is former Finance Secretary Montek Singh Ahluwalia, who is currently chairman of the Y2K Task Force set up to ensure that Indian firms, homes and government departments are well-prepared to face the Y2K bug.

``The campaign will now change to confidence-building,'' Mehta said, noting that advertisements will shift focus in the coming weeks to assert that India is prepared to face the bug.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), November 08, 1999.