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At
the Nasscom conference in Mumbai last February, management
guru Sumantra Ghoshal began his presentation with a slide
that stated, simply, “Thank You”. He was expressing
his gratitude to the huge audience of software industry professionals,
whom, he felt, were largely responsible for the new, respectable
image that Indians now enjoyed globally. He was seeing, he
explained, a newfound sense of pride and confidence among
the Indians in the class he taught at the London Business
School. Pride and confidence such as which the good professor
had never seen before. Indians abroad were finally proud to
be Indian. And, the super success of the Indian software exports
industry was the reason.
Cut now to Indians in India. I’m willing to wager that
a snap poll in any Indian city would reveal something quite
the opposite. Pride and confidence would make only an infrequent
guest appearance with the average Indian man-on-the-street,
I’m betting.
While it would be incorrect to aver that we have nothing to
be thankful for, most Indians still have to contend with a
country that’s a mess of antiquated procedures and obsolete
technology; a slothful public sector that hobbles along lamely;
and, a government and bureaucracy that often functions at
an unautomated pace that would make a snail seem like Maurice
Greene on steroids.
All of which have contributed to keeping the country’s
economic growth far from its oft-cited huge promise and potential.
And all of which would have been completely different and
phenomenally efficient had they benefited from that same information
technology prowess that we’re so famous for. Ironic,
isn’t it, that most of the best Indian software brains
have been applying their intellect to improving the functioning
of companies—and indirectly, economies—at just about
every other civilised spot on the globe to a far greater degree
than in our own beloved Motherland.
Of course the industry cannot be ‘blamed’ for this.
The exports dollars are most welcome, and there are all those
aforementioned indirect benefits, so businesses can’t
be condemned for trying to maximise profits for the next quarter.
If the dollars
are pouring in, that can only be to the good.
But I’m really glad that the realisation is finally setting
in that we would be doing ourselves an even bigger favour
by concentrating simultaneously on the domestic side of things.
No matter that this sudden inward look has been prompted by
external slowdowns; no matter that business opportunity rather
than nationalistic fervour is mostly the driving force—it’s
great that the pieces in the jigsaw are beginning to fall
into place for the massive electronification of India. We
see it in the improvements in the telecom sector; we feel
it in reduced bandwidth tariffs, we hear it in the ambitious
projections of the Tenth Five Year Plan, and we’re likely
to witness even more in the forthcoming Union Budget. IT may
not be the panacea, but it sure is the enabler that can dramatically
transform the life of the average Indian and reduce many of
the ills that keep this country infirm.
To my mind, the $37 billion figure for the domestic software
industry in the Nasscom-McKinsey report has always been far
more important than the 50 billion for exports. Whether we
achieve that figure or not, I do believe that the next six
years will see such a massive surge of IT activity domestically
that it will surprise supporter and sceptic alike. At Express
Computer, we’d like to do our bit to help accelerate
this growth as we did ten years ago when the software exports
industry—and we as well—were fledglings from the
same nest. The India Computes! section every month in EC,
to highlight innovative and viable alternatives to digitise
the nation, is just the first step in this direction.
So c’mon IT Industry! Let’s do the country proud
once more—and this time do it right here at home.
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Val Souza, Editor
valsouza@expresscomputeronline.com
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