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Its amazing how a couple of weeks of feel good can transform a sentiment
of recession of sentiment into a revival of the halcyon days a couple of years
back. A rampaging stock market, a revival in the fortunes of many domestic
industries and a strong new government promising all the right investments and
changes in policy to enable infrastructure, healthcare, education and even
exports, and people have started to see the green shoots of economic recovery.
All this and more good news have made many people believe that happy days are
indeed here again!
The good news about this relatively slow period that the industry has seen in
the last six months and more is that some burning issues are now being addressed
by industry, academic institutions and the government. One of the most worthy
experiences I have been part of is the CII initiative in Maharashtra. This is
aimed to empanel companies that are willing to extend a helping hand to all
interested academic institutions through a collaborative assessment process and
the establishment of IT finishing schools in the premises of the institution. At
a time when employment is still a tough ask for many worthy engineering and IT
graduates, the willingness to support the colleges in their endeavor has been
welcome by all participants and will soon be a model worthy of replication
across the country.
For a long time technology has been the holy Mecca of the graduates of
educational institutions but now the time may have come for technology to become
the enabler of better education. Cisco Systems has taken major leaps in enabling
this with their superior telepresence video-conferencing capabilities and the
acquisition of Webex. This has given them an edge in enabling learner centric
education.
So far so good, but the future success of the industry cannot be taken for
granted and more collaborative efforts are required. Not just in the seven
developed locations but in forty-three other towns and cities that have already
been identified. These will need to be developed and nurtured till they find
their own place in the knowledge firmament. The Perspectives 2020 study of
Nasscom with McKinsey suggested that the industry can scale to over $250 bn, if
the shortcomings are overcome and the right steps are taken to provide better
infrastructure and education and to innovate in more areas. If India does not do
what is needed and other countries which are eying the lucrative outsourcing
business are allowed to take the lead, we could well fall short by $70-80 bn.
In the global environment too, the US seems to have seen the benefits of the
Obama stimulus package. While the jury is still out on whether the recovery in
certain sectors is a transient positive or a serious sign and the slow slope to
recovery is being traversed, it is encouraging that many corporations have
started to loosen their purse strings and make investments in new technology and
process outsourcing have commenced. UK caught in its own political imbroglios
with the sequential setbacks faced by the Labor Government threatening to
overshadow even the severe recession on the front pages of all newspapers may
still take till next summer to recover. But some signs of economic stirring is
visible in other parts of the world as well.
So is all well? Not yet but there are stirrings of life which should serve as
a call to action! To enable Indias green shoots to flourish and IT to be the
favored destination again, each of the players in the IT ecosystemlarge firms,
entrepreneurs, academic institutions, associations, financial institutions and
even the governmentmust demonstrate the willingness to go that extra mile in
the next six months. Lets make it happen, folks!
Ganesh Natarajan
The author is Vice Chairman & MD of Zensar Technologies. He can be reached at
maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in
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