Indian IT– Industry-Institute Interaction, Bridging the digital divide key to success

By Purushottam Darshankar

India is gaining a prominence in the IT outsourcing. However, interpretation of outsourcing has changed over a period of time.
Initially it was process of delegating activities which were not part of organizations prime agendas. However, outsourcing today has a whole new prospective. Now we see outsourcing where full ownership of their product, in all aspect of product life cycle like ideation, R&D, prototyping and testing are outsourced.
The outsourcing product development stand to around $11 Billion in India today. Expectations are still bigger since todays $150 - $200 Billion global IT market is expected to grow further in spite of US market slowdown.
This brings us to an important question. Will technology education in the country be able to keep pace with tomorrow’s manpower requirement? Currently we have 1.6 million people employed in IT and ITES domain (with around 6.6 million people indirectly linked to this service) and it is estimated that five times that number will be required in next 6-7 years.
While the numbers by themselves are worrisome, the quality of the talent is even more critical. As of now, the talent pool is almost running dry, with companies fighting amongst themselves for right talent. With around 0.5 million engineers graduating from various universities, demand supply should not be that critical. However fewer that 10% graduate are actually employable or come with proper combination of technical expertise and soft skills (communication, teamwork and leadership abilities). One solution to this would be more industry institute tie ups. The industry can help institutes in setting up their curriculum to the current needs of industry.

The other issue in India is digital divide between the urban and rural population.
Technology and technology driven services can not and should not be the privilege of urban educated. Rural India is still far away from the complicated world of network and technology. The IT can be used to do wonderful things to bridge the digital divide between the urban and rural India.
The IT sector, which has long serviced predominantly international clientele, began adapting to itself to Indian conditions late in the day. It has its own challenges of geopolitical and geosocial challenges.
Frequent power shortages, widespread literacy, reluctant flow of capital & poor PC penetration have compounded the issue.
70 Percent of India’s one plus Billion population needs are very basic – transparency in price and market information, organized land, social justice, healthcare, farming goods subsidies etc. IT can help address few of these needs to some extent by creation, storage and transmission of electronic data in all forms.
However the government and bureaucracy in India have kept pushing for introduction of better ICT infrastructure in country. Today dozens of NGOs and corporations are working independently to find applications for technology in rural India to reduce the digital divide.