My team of MBA students had a great opportunity to listen to the Vice Chairman of Cognizant, Lakshimi Narayanan, today. Lakshmi gave us an excellent overview of NASSCOM. One story stood out and captured the essence of NASSCOM. In the 70s, Tata Steel wanted to import an IBM mainframe and was seeking approval from the government. NASSCOM, with help from the Tata consulting group, presented the case for importing IBM's mainframes. The government wanted Tata to use smaller computers made by a local manufacturer. As the story goes, a task force assembled compared the situation to the problem of moving hundreds of people from a one city to another. One could use a small plane (Vayadoot) to transport people from one airport to the other or a large Boeing to move them all at once. While the immediate response from the government was to reject the request, they relented in a couple of years and allowed it. The big message was that these institutions had a good objective very early on and showed great patience to influence policy.