And the entire Enron Corp board is set to visit what is turning out to be its most attractive emerging market of all---this time, they expect roses all the way.

You name the bigwig, he (or she) is coming. Kenneth Lay, Enron chairman, Jeff Skilling, CEO, Rebecca Mark (the-one woman army that marched roughshod over all opposition and rancour to win the day in the end, now serving as Enron's water subsidiary CEO) and Joseph Sutton are coming, along with 13 colleagues. They include former US ambassador to India Frank Wisner, and board member Ronnie Chang.

They land in Mumbai tentatively on February 9, and party to the strains of none other than violin maestro L Subramaniam, a symbol of the US-Indian fusion that Enron has tried to replicate in the dry and brutally competitivefield of utility business.

The team the splits up, with one group scheduled to visit the power plant, the other to check out the oil and gas operations of the energy giant. They then leave for Delhi, where Kenneth Lay and Rebecca Mark meet old friends (and, who knows, foes) in the corridors of power, while the rest meet upcountry Enron contacts.

With all that, the DPC's plans to commission the 740mw phase one of the 2184mw power plant at Dabhol in the Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra on a large scale is sure to grab media headlines and international business attention.

Enron started negotiating with MSEB in 1989 for the power project, and it has taken long years for what was in those early chats to transpire into a giant project--replete with political controversies, charges of both high-handedness and under-handedness, and even a scrapping of the all-important power purchase agreement.

From here on, apart from Phase II of the project, Enron also plans to bid for new projects and is pursuing plans toset up a liquefied natural gas terminal in Maharashtra.