Sharing the details of the survey, Nasscom president Dewang Mehta said that based on these findings international agencies should upgrade India on Y2K preparedness as there was very little possibility of a dramatic breakdown in the Indian economy and society due to Y2K.

"We have noticed that many international agencies have not properly evaluated India for Y2K preparedness, mainly because of lack of information. Indian government has also not done enough to educate the world on its Y2K preparedness," he said. Nasscom has written to governments of several countries and the international rating agencies requesting them to upgrade India.

"India is not an online country. Wehave only 3.2 million PCs and not more than 1,500 mainframes and superminis. Therefore, India has less problems to tackle than the rest of the world," he added.

He said a move was being contemplated to isolate and shut down those power plants from the national grid which were unlikely to meet the compliance deadline. "A lot of concern has been expressed over state of preparedness of the power sector. We realise that it is a mixed bag," he admitted.

As per the information received by the National Informatics Centre, out of 315 power generation stations, about 220 are based on analogue systems in India, according to the survey. Thus, only 95 stations have varying levels of computerisation. Out of this, only about 50 are reported to be online.It is also reported that 18 out of these 50 are already Y2K compliant and the remaining 32 are at varying degrees of compliance. It has also been reported that 45 of the non-online power stations are also reaching good levels of Y2K compliance. Thus, now theconcentration is to make about 32-45 of the total of 315 power generating stations Y2K compliant, said Mehta.

As many as 97 per cent of the banks will achieve Y2K compliance by September 30. Even the central banks in other countries have approached Indian banks and software companies to assist their constituents with achieving Y2K compliance, Mehta pointed out.

Similarly, the telecom services are reaching a fairly good state of Y2K compliance which has been particularly facilitated by devolving authority to respective telecom circles. "It has been reported that DoT will achieve good level of Y2K compliance by September 30," the survey has claimed.

Nasscom urged Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd, DoT, Software Technology Parks of India and Mahanagar Telephones Nigam which offer high speed datacom links to software companies for delivering software to their overseas customers to proceed faster in ensuring compliance.