This is inexcusable  - Mr. Nilekani, the newly appointed head of the National Authority for Unique Identity and ex-Infosys head honcho, asks for time to even issue a public statement because his new group has not been able to set up an email account.

Assuming you have a DNS entry like uuid.gov.in (and even if you dont, creating one on Godaddy.com or anywhere takes 10 minutes), you can sign up for a free Google Apps account that gives you a @something.com email address in 10 minutes (that’s the time taken to copy paste the CNAME entries).

Say, you want to host your own email - an Ubuntu Server 8.04 install takes 15 minutes. Install Postfix or qmail (no sendmail please), sign up with Postini@Google for spam filtering in 10 minutes and start using it. Assuming unfamiliarity with Postfix, let us take 2-3 hours more.

Why is this such a bottleneck - is it the big corporate tendency to enter into negotiations with Microsoft, get an invoice and set up Exchange Server and get it configured - that should take 30 days or more.

Mr. Nilekani needs to look beyond the workflows and habits of big businesses with their appetite for Windows and byzantine workflows and look towards technologies which are free, fast and supported with a very small setup step.