The National Stock Exchange of India had to temporarily discontinue its pre-opening and post closing trading sessions on 8 June. Likely reason -- snag in the Y2K software installed in the systems. A Y2K-compliant software had been installed and this was its first day of operation.

Now that would send jitters all around, what with visions of jammed lifts, crashing planes and jammed bank accounts already giving nightmares to people. (The Y2K problem, as you would know by now, happens on earlier systems programmed with the earlier-generation software, which coded the year with just the last two digits instead of all four, to save on memory and program size. But come 2000 these programs would misbehave -- with just 00 in the year's slot. The chaos can be imagined. Of course, it is not just computers -- even lifts, timers, ovens, airline traffic systems... wherever you can imagine programmed chips).

Banks, financial institutions, airline companies and even wayside merchants were flaunting Y2K-compliant certificates to their customers and general public as a sign of safety. But now the reality of implementing Y2K solutions also seems to be hitting us.

The Y2K bug is not expected to act up all over on 00 hrs on 1 January 2000. It could be days or months later. The key issue is the fact that we woke up late to the problem. Organisations are working against time to put their Y2K solutions in place and give it a reasonable check in the available time.

Desperate situation, desperate solutions and desperate results?