The concept of Benchmarking has evolved over the last decade and a half in all segments of industry and commerce, thereby helping the alert and agile players to reap significant cost reduction, efficiency gains and prepare for future competition. This study evaluates the level of assimilation and the extent of effective exploitation of the concept of Benchmarking by the manufacturing and software/services sectors and shows how these have translated into tiny islands of excellence, contributing to the steady increase in the nation's GDP growth rate and foreign exchange reserves. However, this growth cannot be accelerated or even sustained unless the quality of infrastructure and even more vitally the quality of governance and delivery of basic public services at the federal, state and grassroots levels is resuscitated and revitalized from the current state of near collapse to global standards in the shortest possible time. While the central government has shown signs of waking up from deep slumber by drawing up some passive documents and initiating a few token actions, sincere concerted efforts towards an awe inspiring, world-beating goal capable of transforming the corruption bedevilled, impoverished nation into a strong and healthy economic superpower is still not forthcoming.

Management pundits have always lamented that Indian companies have done little in the field of organizational innovation to attract global attention. For instance, Tony Joseph, Editor of a widely read Indian Business magazine, "Business World", in one of his recent editorials remarked, "I can't remember the last time an Indian company made an organizational innovation and attracted global attention. He then refers to the global management guru, C K Prahalad's comment that "most of us would rather follow Best Practices from around the world than create Next Practices for the world to follow" as the reason for this lag. It would be rather dismissive of the efforts of Indian industry and many of its respected homegrown companies if their efforts to rewrite the rules of the game are not even cursorily mentioned. It is these companies which really instilled confidence in the domestic economy in general and the other `would-be' entrepreneurs in particular that there was life beyond the MNCs. The success of many of these local (read Indian) companies showed that MNC practices imported lock,stock,and-barrel from their home were not always the "best", by any yardstick, especially when they proved ineffective against competition from local minnows! For example, among the old economy companies, Asian Paints' journey from being a tiny Indian outfit in 1942 to an Indian MNC in 2000 is truly remarkable and inspiring.

This was achieved on the back of a constant flow of organizational as well as technical ideas and even some "global first" marketing innovations, which helped the company to acquire market-share in global markets earlier held exclusively by established paint goliaths. Among the New Economy enterprises, the birth and growth of companies such as Infosys, Wipro, TCS and many others involved in software development and other IT services are truly stupendous. And these homegrown companies have seemingly effortlessly broken the `sonic barrier' of "six sigma" and "zero-defect" quality watermarks as a matter of routine! Naturally, these companies are now on the threshold of "Next Practices" referred to by C K Prahalad. What motivated these companies to embark on such onerous expeditions as ISO, SEI-CMM and other certifications in an ever-growing software market? What were the benchmarking tools and techniques adopted by these companies to achieve their business objectives and long-term enterprise goals? How have these exercises helped the companies to change or evolve their own organizational philosophies aligned to their customers' constantly changing needs? These questions will be dealt with and efforts made to seek satisfactory answers as we continue the discussion.

Management Research Journal, Benchmarking in India, Indian Companies, Global Markets, International Standards Organization, ISO, Quality Management System, Reliance Petroleum Limited, RPL, Textile Industry, Market Capitalization, Indian Pharma Companies, Software Industry in India, Benchmarking in Public Administration, Globalization.