The almost $900-billion American stimulus plan for reviving the beleaguered economy has many interesting and intriguing aspects and will be analysed and discussed for long. However, only time will tell how much it will turn out to be delusionary in its real impact in job creation and economic growth, and what will really deliver the impact President Obama seeks. And indeed, what will be the effect on the technology sector in general and the Indian technology and businesses services exports industry, which is watching every move of the new administration with bated breath?
Three hi-tech areas have been specifically mentioned in the new plan?the computerisation of medical records, the creation of smarter electrical grids and the expansion of high-speed broadband access to the internet in rural and underserved communities. In a somewhat cynical comment, The Economist has likened the broadband initiative to ?motherhood and apple pie? which will immediately provide a warm feeling to the already favour-able Obama public, but achieve precious little in terms of real progress.
However, there is room for optimism here, both for global technology proliferation and for the Indian offshore industry. Availability of reliable connectivity across the length and breadth of the huge landmass of the US will open up opportunities for a digital economy to spring up. With SaaS (software as a service) solutions being touted as the next wave of the technology revolution, hosted solutions for small-scale manufacturing, retail, hospitality and healthcare can be developed and rolled out not just by the larger players like Microsoft, Oracle and SAP, but by high quality entrepreneurs choosing specific services and niche opportunities across manufacturing and services sectors.
The thrust on healthcare and education combined with the network proliferation will see a new thrust on deployment of technology-based learning, diagnosis and telemedicine solutions to make uniform education and healthcare available to all.
The new plan is not short of its critics and particularly on the issue of government participation in broadband, one could argue that this will cause delays as private sector participants who are already engaged in wiring up the country wait and watch for signs of interference or additional incentive that may be forthcoming in future. But there are indisputable advantages, not just in the form of the labour requirement for the laying process, but also in catapulting American usage of the Internet for serious bandwidth hungry applications in business, education and entertainment into the league of countries like Japan, Korea and China. One can expect to see a boom in the demand for new Internet access devices and integrated communication & applications management devices in the next few years as the US moves to the forefront of the communications revolution.
Education is one field that India can and should analyse and embrace in its efforts to build a more robust partnership with the technology industry in the US. The partnerships we have already seen in India, between Global Talent Track and Cisco to transform skills learning for college students and between Ignou and Accenture to develop new content for e-learning, can be transported to the US to make the Obama dream of providing employability to hundreds of thousands of young Americans. The availability of unlimited broadband, which remains a deterrent in our own country should see smart learning solutions develop with compelling content and distance learning pedagogy, all of which provide a great opportunity for private and public sector learning solutions firms to take their wares to the land of opportunity. And multinationals like Cisco, which has the numero uno position in the global network solutions and has also made serious investments in a raft of applications in education, healthcare and other areas of societal transformation, can look forward to the new plan providing a significant boost to their business prospects.
The overall impact of the stimulus package on the fortunes of the Indian IT sector, in a year when traditional opportunities from the corporate sector are expected to be quite slow, is also worth watching. The computerisation of records may not provide too many BPO opportunities given the sensitive nature of the data, but the boost that the healthcare sector will receive by this inflow of funds will provide technology development and globalised process optimisation possibilities for Indian firms. Add to this the emerging opportunities in e-government and state-funded sectors like transportation, infrastructure and education and there is a fair slew of opportunities available for entrepreneurial firms who are willing to do what it takes to explore these new segments.
Finally, what will be the impact of the proposed $30 billion spend on job creation, which is the need of the hour in the US? An earlier study produced by the Obama transition team had mentioned the creation of 9,00,000 jobs in the first year and some think tanks have reaffirmed that such results are possible with this outlay, limited though it may seem at the first glance. This administration has already shown in the first few days that it means business, and that should translate into jobs and new opportunities for all.
?The writer is the chairman of Nasscom and a management board member of the RPG Group