Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross - the famous five were exposed after painstaking investigation against stout denials by them. When Moscow conducted its first atomic test in 1951 it was because of the leak of results of atomic research in the U.S. by Maclean.

Philby kept defending them and himself and finally followed their flight path to Moscow in 1963.

All this is old hat and yet MI5's suspicions were well-grounded and finally came true. Faced with enormous and documented evidence, the four had no option but to admit their complicity, whatever the motive.

Extending the parallel to India and Jaswant's evasive insinuation about the 'mole' in Narasimha Rao regime who leaked info about the intended nuclear test it will be against great odds to fix the person. Jaswant has said he is a senior civil servant "living abroad" and in intelligence circles there should be a fair guess as to who he is. As it is the issue has been muddied further by Thomas Graham's disclaimer of ever writing the letter to Barnes, the U.S.ambassador to India between 1981-85. And CIA has gone a step further by calling the document 'forged.' It appears that the 'mole' can remain safely behind the cloud of dust kicked up by all of them. One does not know whether it is fact or fiction.

In the shadowy world of espionage attempts at disinformation are normal and aimed at putting the investigators off the trail. 'Forgery' or claims to that effect are also part of it and the 'mole' remains ensconsed in safe area like the Deep Throat of Watergate. Of course nearly 30 years later the Deep Throat came out into the open when it was clear that he could not be prosecuted. His great advantage was that his role was seen in positive light as having nailed Richard Nixon's move to subvert the law.

But moles who trade information for money or other reasons attract the tag of "traitors' and the long arm of law. Jaswant's claim of a 'mole', if true, could have operated in channels where he was sure of the protective cover. He could never be found unless investigators sift through all those civil servants who mattered during the period and corner the culpable individual. Or he must identify himself forced by a crisis of conscience which in majority of the cases is a miracle.

The first option involves repeated questioning -lie-detector tests and the works - which could willy nilly undermine the morale and performance profile. It had happened in the CIA in the late 50s when James Jesus Angleton suspected the presence of a Soviet 'mole' and virtually demoralised the set-up with his obsessive enquiries. And Philby was running the Soviet Desk then and had come under Angleton's suspicious scanner. What Angleton feared was that a CIA mole working for Moscow could do irreparable damage.

A similar exercise will invite similar problems though there has been no precedence of such an investigation. The one that came nearest to it was Seymour Hersh's charge against Morarji Desai as the source who passed vital information when Indian troops had stormed the then East Pakistan and was rumoured to attack the West too. U.S. had moved its Sixth Fleet strategically to ward off the threat. The allegation did not stick and there was a laundering of a few names too. The needle of suspicion pointed at one senior civil servant named "Desai' who had expired by the time Hersh made the charge. Morarji had a unjustifiably harrowing time on a couple of visits to the U.S. court where according to the law the onus of defence was on the accused. The Indian government then did not use the opportunity to have a go at Morarji for obvious political repercussions.

Here the stakes are different though how long the dust storm raised will take to subside is to be seen. But an investigation is surely needed at least to clear the suspicions.

Well-placed? That is a million dollar question. Many small and medium sized companies find the going tough. And the competition is so intensely neck to neck that some employees end up with spondilitis early in their career. In India it came with a bang in the 90s, first in Bangalore, when the market was quite receptive. Many PSUs and private firms in engineering, fabrication and other areas were keen on product-specific research and software packages to update themselves with the market trends.

This writer had a different experience. I worked in an advertising firm which was financially secure - belonging to a leading industrial house – and wanted to try its hand in content advertising. There was no precedence of any company having been engaged in the area, apart from one which did not survive. Online market was huge because of the fact that many big and medium sized companies had their own websites and wanted to tap the ad potential because it was cheaper compared to television and print media. The sheer variety of content to be offered was wide – it could cover various sectors in the industries, commerce, loaning institutions, filim industry, stocks, art, crafts, auction and procurement of machinery, and the works. Even music and philosophy!

It had a well-equipped design team and was looking for contracts to create/modify designs of web sites of various companies. Every day there was brainstorming and content was offered at a price of Rs. 3 per word. Depending on the requirements of companies we prepared content plans but the response was slow and unpredictable. In their annual budgets most of these firms had either not allocated any thing for content advertising or if they did it was meagre. They were still preoccupied with TV and despite the enormous potential online they did not want to put their bets on it.

Though design and content teams won a couple of orders the wait was enormous and a stage was reached when the industrial house found that it was spending more on the infrastructure than the clients it was looking for. For all the market analysis done it was obvious that conditions were not conducive. It had to wind up the operations despite its enormous resources to survive and turn things round. Also there was a crash in the market and nearly 180 dotcoms collapsed.

Now the ad industry in India is buoyant, including the aforesaid industrial house. Maybe content too might pick up in the new scenario and net journalism will be a force to reckon with. Yes, the market has its own language and only the exceptional thrive in it.

Right now, Coimbatore is set to become a hi-tech hub, after Chennai, with land earmarked for it. The region is blessed with a string of engineering and fabricating units besides being known as a textile centre.

Tirupur is just an hour’s drive away and its knitwear sector has a strong bearing on exports, (it is estimated at over Rs. 5000 crores) so popular in the West, south-east Asian countries and even the U.S. This precludes exports to non-quota countries which could be estimated at over Rs. 1000 crores.

Tiruchengode has a established niche for engineering and fabricating units. Salem, Tiruchengode and other business centers are well within negotiable distance and transport facilities are adequate.

A number of loaning companies have already come up and extending their arm to investors at attractive interest rates. Though Coimbatore’s limits extend to only 12 km on all sides the proliferation of residential areas is amazing and the land price is steadily going up. Commuting a distance of over 10 km in buses is hardly a problem as it takes just 45 minutes to an hour given the state of traffic on a day.

And traffic bottlenecks are rare unless of course a VIP pops in or a political party organizes a public meeting. But these are existential hazards and hardly would emerge as a thorn in the flesh of an emerging IT sector.

Its biggest strength of course is the academic area where several institutions of unquestioned repute churn out scores of talents in various fields. In fact new courses in multi-trade are a recent phenomenon, including textiles. With abundance of talents available IT has just to come, see and conquer. Now job melas have part of life, held even in drought-prone and neglected districts like Dharmapuri and Hosur on the border with Karnataka. Sponsors are ready to put up their stalls advertising specific areas of product marketing and scout for talents. Print media too is active in the area, because of the profit hidden in the event by way of rentals from the companies putting up the stalls. It serves twin purpose – jobs on hand, advertising mileage. Two days back job fairs were held in Salem and Erode.

Many companies will be looking for tie-ups with the IT sector in regard to software packages for use in their offices and speedier processing of export orders at lesser cost. A bio-technology park is slated to come in Hosur, after having established itself in Bangalore.

The Government of India has been enthusiastic about concessions in the export front and cushioning the spread of information technology to the non-metropolises. The scenario is, as a result, very bright for IT.