Discovering new horizons!
Loading ...It’s been a year of discontent and yet a year of great satisfaction – for the country, the industry and for me personally. Taking over the reins as Chairman of NASSCOM at a time when there were just a few clouds on the otherwise blue skills of the Indian IT and Business Services industry, it has been interesting to see the constant word “growth” being quickly replaced by recession, slowdown, protectionism and layoffs as the repetitive lexicon of the times.
The discontent that has been stirred by all the negative trends and aggravated by the almost compulsive negative reporting that is the practice gleefully followed by most members of the press in our country has resulted in a transformation of the “feel good” sentiment in the country and industry to one of FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) and a Keynesian Depression of Sentiment that is not a good sign at the beginning of a new fiscal year.
What we could and should take satisfaction from is the fact that the country will still grow at seven percent and most of the significant players in our industry are still recording double digit growth, no mean achievement in a year where declines are predicted for almost all the global economies and the customers for all exporters are finding it difficult to put even quarterly investment plans together. The outlook however is still positive given how well we are entrenched in the value chain of global corporations which gives the confidence to ride out the global recession and sharpen our value propositions for the anticipated demand revival by the end of the current year.
And while the industry has shown the resilience to swim through the perfect storm, NASSCOM has also demonstrated time and again why it is a role model for industry associations, not just in India but all over the world. The focus on key initiatives – Innovation, Industry-Academia partnerships, Security, Global Trade development and Green IT has enabled the reputation of Indian Offshore Service providers to be enhanced. The quick actions taken in the case of the Satyam fraud revelations and now to mitigate the impact of the visa curbs that are expected to hit the US Congress floors in this session have established NASSCOM as a trade body that means business and helps business to succeed and the outstanding leadership provided by Som Mittal and the experienced NASSCOM team has kept the industry flag flying proudly in fair weather and foul.
There are new horizons that the industry and the association must recognize and conquer. New overseas geographies like Japan and Latin America, new focus segments like engineering services and gaming and new services like SoA and SaaS will take priority for the companies but what the association with the support of all ecosystem partners – the Governments, companies, individuals and academia must do is to implement its laudable fifty locations plan so that the growth of the industry can be spread to all corners of the country. Indeed, the corners that really need our attention are the seven sister states of the North East and the battered Shangri-La of. Visits I have made to Guwahati and Srinagar in my term as Chairman have shown the potential that exists in these places.
Here is a specific appeal to readers of this column to put Srinagar on their travel map, not just to do a shikara ride on the famous Dal lake but also to do their bit to help the Kashmiri youth find their place in the IT and BPO sun. A recent NASSCOM delegation visit to the State mounted in three weeks at the invitation of young and dynamic CM Omar Abdullah demonstrated that all aspects of the eco-system are prevalent there – Devender Rana the CM’s Advisor, Dr Ahmad and Dr Rasool of Kashmir University, Dr Haseeb Drabu Chairman of J&K Bank, sons of the soil like film maker Ashok Kaul and Mumbai CEOs Ishan and Anjali Raina, well meaning individuals and groups in the city and even our cab driver Haneef who lectured us passionately on the potential of Kashmir youth are all examples of a passion that is waiting to be unleashed if only all of us can lend a helping hand not from a CSR perspective but as a matter of enlightened and clairvoyant self interest. For all of us and me personally, it would be both a responsibility and a privilege to make these locations buzz with economic activity in the years to come!
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“…lend a helping hand not from a CSR perspective but as a matter of enlightened and clairvoyant self interest.”
Thank you so much for this. You managed to find the perfect words to voice something which I have been trying to vocalize for a while. I am nearing the end of two years of research into the vast potential for IT training to catalyze development in slums worldwide. I was very excited to have discovered Nasscom. No where else have I found a group which has talked about this simple truth: people who are held back because they lack oprotunities can be an incredible resource. Not in an exploitive way, but in a synergistic one.
My focus on slums has many reasons behind it, but a couple of these reasons seem particularly relevant to your post. First, and very simply, Slums have an extremely high population density, access to urban infrastructure both physical and information, and they are near enough to commercial centers that regular contact could occur. These geographic factors make any potential project extremely cheap per person affected. A fifty dollar Wireless router, for instance, could serve hundreds of people, where in a village it might serve a dozen (not to mention the costs involved in stringing cable to remote locations).
The second factor which could make slums ideal for an IT takeoff is that many slumdwellers are young migrant laborors who are searching for oprotunities for advancement and success. The third factor, and probably the one which provides the most promise for the future is the base level of technical profficiency and education which many slumdwellers have. Obviously these trends are not universal, but in many cases slumdwellers have a pretty good level of education or vocational training. One of the largest obsacles in trying to spread IT in rural areas is a general lack of technological exposure among the populace. On the other hand, nearly every slumdweller can use a mobile phone and many have their own. The challenge in slums is not getting people “plugged in” to the digital world. They are already very connected to media and gadgets and technology.
The challenge in slums is to give people the tools they need to go from being passive consumers of IT, to becoming content creators. I do not see this is some sort of idealistic fancy. I’m not saying that everyone in Dharvi is going to found a software company. But the success of people like Jockin show that there are many people with a great amount of potential which is not being used.
I also don’t think that getting personal computers to everyone is anywhere near as cost-effective or productive as simple training programs. These should not just be basic computer litteracy, though. Those who are interested can learn the basics on their own time. I am an advocate, instead, for teaching introductory courses on HTML, programming, and command-line sysadmin tools. Most poeple will not be interested or will not be able to follow this type of rapid instruction. But they don’t have to. Those who do learn any of these things will be an enourmous asset to their communities. They can build web-pages for local small companies, or maintain the few computers which people might have in the slum. More importantly, they will be able to get good jobs in the city, or for that matter, from anywhere on Earth.
In any case, thank you for your article, and if you have read this far, thank you very much for that. This is, obviously, something I care very much about, and I would very much enjoy any comments or thoughts you have.