Nasscom president Som Mittal probably has the biggest pair of ears in the Indian IT industry. In case of any doubts, please have a good look next time around. The man has to listen to umpteen numbers of concerns and complaints from IT honchos, and he needs to hear them well, before he can fight it out for the industry both within India and overseas. Skills and the need to develop them are topmost on his agenda, with growing concerns that Indian IT workers are not specialising enough or updating their skills.
On Thursday, he met with the media to explain why India needed to brush up on skills to remain competitive in the IT world. ?There is a certain resistance to change,? he said, opening the conversation. ?We need a curriculum change. Better technology and policy adoption are required,? he said, while having lunch during a Nasscom conference in Bangalore.
The fact is that somewhere along the line, the industry has forgotten about specialised skills. Unlike in the field of medicine, the IT world has not tried to gain in-depth domain knowledge. ?The need of the hour is specialisation,? Mittal said. ?We need to dig deep.?
India?s transition to a knowledge based economy requires a new generation of educated and skilled manpower. And that?s a common feeling among all stakeholders. The country needs a lift in knowledge base. India? s IT sector has been running on borrowed fuel for too long. For many years, it has been subjected to contract work and somewhere along the line we need to up the ante. A few of the topline IT companies are doing it, but that?s not enough. Can we invent something for the world to use? That?s the moot point.
For a start, our education system needs an overhaul. We need more flexibility in the education sphere, that can enable workers to gain better technical skills. Faculty up-gradation is a key factor in driving this. The research programmes need to be more robust, if we have to become an innovation hub. Everyone knows these, but little is being done to correct the mistakes.
Nasscom has been driving partnerships with industry, encouraging internships, projects and faculty development programmes. The intention is fine, but we need more desire.
Re-skilling the talent pool by supporting university labs is crucial and the emphasis should be on invention. The spirit of creation, missing thus far, has to drive the sector.
The accent in this country, of course, has always been to find a job and settle down. The average Indian IT engineer has been driven by the perks of a good salaried job. Innovation and invention have not been part of his lexicon. This is a far cry from the US where a techie, usually means a person with great technology knowledge and someone who uses that to create and invent something. In India, the term ?techie? just translates into someone who has a job in an IT firm and who takes huge loans to buy apartments. This has to change.
The talent pool is growing, but it needs better channeling. The number of engineering colleges has doubled from 1,668 in 2007-08 to 3,241 in 2010-11. The number of seats in this period has moved up to over 13 lakh! These are the kind of numbers which Obama is worried about. This is exactly why he wants more Americans to take up science and engineering. But we in India need to now think about quality. Quantity is something we have in plenty, but we need to do some serious bit of polishing. And the time to act is now. Som knows it, for he has plenty of ear for detail.