The Great Indian Revolution
It was a warm, pleasant summer day when I landed in the US to pursue my version of the much-touted ‘American Dream’. The year was 1994. Indians, humongously more illustrious had been arriving at US shores for more than four decades, then. To be sure, I was under no illusion then that my ride was going to be smooth. I absolutely knew that my dip into the American melting pot would have its own challenges and surprises.
“India!” I told with palpable pride to the politely curt immigration official first, and then to my colleagues at work later and expected laudatory nods on hearing the country of my origin. That didn’t happen. What left me more flummoxed was how, about one-fifths of humanity, figured nowhere in their value systems - news, politics, society or economics. I initially took it upon myself to educate people about my country but realized later – with a pang of agony – that people didn’t want to know. In the “New World”, they were not interested to know how a five thousand year old leviathan pulls along.
Buzz, my middle-aged colleague, used to unleash on me, with amiable condescension, all the stereotypes that he had about India – he actually preferred using “Asia”. He had asked me with irritating innocence; “Do you have many universities in India or do you go to another country for college?” On one occasion, when the company invited nominations for international assignments in China, Thailand and India amongst others, not ONE chose India. I would often wonder – with a deep sense of anguish – why the “most powerful country in the world” had chosen to ignore the land of peerless beauty and mysticism. That was 1994.
The Day the World Changed
This is 2004. Today, the Indian twenty-year old need not ponder over such identity crises that baffled his antecedents. Buzz would have been asked to “buzz off” if he had made unwittingly deprecatory remarks about India. I needn’t take it upon myself to introduce Indian culture to America and Europe. Time, New York Times and Washington Post do that for me – albeit begrudgingly (on how we are “stealing” American jobs). IITs, IIMs and other citadels of Indian education are mentioned in the same breath as the Ivy League institutions of US.
“Don’t get Bangalored!” read T-Shirts in America. Social anthropologists indulge in serious psychoanalysis of the Indian education system and the deeply entrenched family ethos to find answers to the sudden blitzkrieg of “knowledge workers” and Indian companies storming the US. “India is the back office of the world!” proclaims one famous US publication.
Looking beyond the surface and the hype I still think we are part of a vibrant and resurgent India oozing with such confidence as never seen before.
One line of work has come to symbolize this tectonic shift that has rocked India favorably – Information Technology (IT) & IT Services. In the late 80s and early 90s, in spite of the intellectual mass we produced, as a conglomerate we seemed to figure nowhere in the world order. Now we are stirring that order, developing websites for it and providing 24 by 7 support!
On a more serious note, beat this:
· Every major software/technology company in the world has their development center in India – if not out of necessity but out of fear of losing the market edge. IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Oracle, SAP, Baan, Accenture, Adobe, GE, Texas Instruments... The list is long and leaves one in a trance.
· Foreign vendors prefer India the most for their outsourcing needs, says a world-bank funded study. GE, Walmart, Coke, General Motors, Sony, Siemens, Citibank, Pepsi, United Airlines. The list again is long and illustrious.
· Bangalore’s haloed status as the software development center of the world is not entirely exaggerated. All companies I had mentioned above and several hundreds more have offices and centers in Bangalore enabling the city to thrive on intellectual capital as no Indian – or probably any – world city has ever done before.
· The Indian software industry grew from US$ 150 million in 1991-92 to what was over US$8 Billion in 2003.
· It is still growing, by some estimates, at 25% a year and constitutes 2.5% of our GDP and 15% of our exports.
· A Nasscom-McKinsey report expects India’s exports to reach US$ 50 billion by 2008, 7.5% of our GDP and 35% of our exports!
And why exactly did the world change…?
There have been debates and analyses galore about what made India thrive in the IT sector. Indian votaries attribute this to our traditional emphasis on education and math, the stable family structure, and the engrained spirituality of the nation.
The cynics dismiss this as an aberration caused by the overreaction of the western nations after the Sept 11 attacks.
The truth probably lies somewhere in between.
The strong foundations of mass urban centers of higher education that we built at Independence, and the Government-owned Public-Sector Units and “Research Organizations” which provided employment to our educated class during the pre-liberalization era, set us up for a future which coincided with our objectives. The irrepressible Indian spirit to take chances and go to any part of the world to pursue a dream (yes, the dream was mostly monetary; but what is wrong with that?) definitely helped.
What does the future hold…?
This is no time to bask in glory. We need sustenance of the current economic model for decades together to be able to achieve the prosperity of developed nations.
The “Great Digital Divide” that people talk about is something we need to address. Urban India is growing richer and prosperous but our infrastructure is miserably lagging behind compared to other nations. We should remember we are still an agrarian nation, with more than half the nation reeling in illiteracy with no power and potable water.
Our cities are exploding because our small towns and villages don’t have much work for the youngest India has ever been and they are thronging the cities.
More related to the IT sector, all our achievements in the past decade have been in the Services sector – IT and IT-enabled. This is no doubt significant. But we should realize, amidst the euphoria, that we don’t provide anything unique but provid what others do more cost-effectively. The price advantage is transitory and deceptive. There are a dozen nations who would challenge us there in a few years from now. We need to build niche-skills, develop our own products and sell our services to the domestic sector and to the Government. For that we need to computerize the nation in a hurry. The strides of progress made by software vendors in the banking sector and the science sector is gratifying but we need to do more.
And most importantly, is IT the only answer to all our vows?
In my extended family between the ages 20-35, almost all are Software Engineers. In a way, the larger Nation also seems to be going the same monolithic route. If in the event of a slowdown in the IT sector, my family would have a lot of jobless people for sure, but would be ramifications on the nation be the same?
The government should pave the way to encourage more sectors and encourage opportunities in them with tax breaks and attractive borrowing schemes. Biotechnology, Automobiles, Textiles, Tourism, Horticulture, Arts and Sports (definitely!) should be developed in parallel, and should receive the same incentives as the IT sector.
Parents should stimulate young minds and let them follow their dreams. To be a great nation, we should also be a diverse nation with free and creative thinkers.
The challenge before us is no doubt daunting, but entirely plausible. Ten years ago, nobody in the world would have believed we could have pulled off the “IT miracle”. We should duplicate more such miracles and innovations and include the larger nation in our prosperity and growth.
To paraphrase an old Tamil proverb,
“What we have achieved is a handful;
what we should go after is the world itself;”
Go India!
“India!” I told with palpable pride to the politely curt immigration official first, and then to my colleagues at work later and expected laudatory nods on hearing the country of my origin. That didn’t happen. What left me more flummoxed was how, about one-fifths of humanity, figured nowhere in their value systems - news, politics, society or economics. I initially took it upon myself to educate people about my country but realized later – with a pang of agony – that people didn’t want to know. In the “New World”, they were not interested to know how a five thousand year old leviathan pulls along.
Buzz, my middle-aged colleague, used to unleash on me, with amiable condescension, all the stereotypes that he had about India – he actually preferred using “Asia”. He had asked me with irritating innocence; “Do you have many universities in India or do you go to another country for college?” On one occasion, when the company invited nominations for international assignments in China, Thailand and India amongst others, not ONE chose India. I would often wonder – with a deep sense of anguish – why the “most powerful country in the world” had chosen to ignore the land of peerless beauty and mysticism. That was 1994.
The Day the World Changed
This is 2004. Today, the Indian twenty-year old need not ponder over such identity crises that baffled his antecedents. Buzz would have been asked to “buzz off” if he had made unwittingly deprecatory remarks about India. I needn’t take it upon myself to introduce Indian culture to America and Europe. Time, New York Times and Washington Post do that for me – albeit begrudgingly (on how we are “stealing” American jobs). IITs, IIMs and other citadels of Indian education are mentioned in the same breath as the Ivy League institutions of US.
“Don’t get Bangalored!” read T-Shirts in America. Social anthropologists indulge in serious psychoanalysis of the Indian education system and the deeply entrenched family ethos to find answers to the sudden blitzkrieg of “knowledge workers” and Indian companies storming the US. “India is the back office of the world!” proclaims one famous US publication.
Looking beyond the surface and the hype I still think we are part of a vibrant and resurgent India oozing with such confidence as never seen before.
One line of work has come to symbolize this tectonic shift that has rocked India favorably – Information Technology (IT) & IT Services. In the late 80s and early 90s, in spite of the intellectual mass we produced, as a conglomerate we seemed to figure nowhere in the world order. Now we are stirring that order, developing websites for it and providing 24 by 7 support!
On a more serious note, beat this:
· Every major software/technology company in the world has their development center in India – if not out of necessity but out of fear of losing the market edge. IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Oracle, SAP, Baan, Accenture, Adobe, GE, Texas Instruments... The list is long and leaves one in a trance.
· Foreign vendors prefer India the most for their outsourcing needs, says a world-bank funded study. GE, Walmart, Coke, General Motors, Sony, Siemens, Citibank, Pepsi, United Airlines. The list again is long and illustrious.
· Bangalore’s haloed status as the software development center of the world is not entirely exaggerated. All companies I had mentioned above and several hundreds more have offices and centers in Bangalore enabling the city to thrive on intellectual capital as no Indian – or probably any – world city has ever done before.
· The Indian software industry grew from US$ 150 million in 1991-92 to what was over US$8 Billion in 2003.
· It is still growing, by some estimates, at 25% a year and constitutes 2.5% of our GDP and 15% of our exports.
· A Nasscom-McKinsey report expects India’s exports to reach US$ 50 billion by 2008, 7.5% of our GDP and 35% of our exports!
And why exactly did the world change…?
There have been debates and analyses galore about what made India thrive in the IT sector. Indian votaries attribute this to our traditional emphasis on education and math, the stable family structure, and the engrained spirituality of the nation.
The cynics dismiss this as an aberration caused by the overreaction of the western nations after the Sept 11 attacks.
The truth probably lies somewhere in between.
The strong foundations of mass urban centers of higher education that we built at Independence, and the Government-owned Public-Sector Units and “Research Organizations” which provided employment to our educated class during the pre-liberalization era, set us up for a future which coincided with our objectives. The irrepressible Indian spirit to take chances and go to any part of the world to pursue a dream (yes, the dream was mostly monetary; but what is wrong with that?) definitely helped.
What does the future hold…?
This is no time to bask in glory. We need sustenance of the current economic model for decades together to be able to achieve the prosperity of developed nations.
The “Great Digital Divide” that people talk about is something we need to address. Urban India is growing richer and prosperous but our infrastructure is miserably lagging behind compared to other nations. We should remember we are still an agrarian nation, with more than half the nation reeling in illiteracy with no power and potable water.
Our cities are exploding because our small towns and villages don’t have much work for the youngest India has ever been and they are thronging the cities.
More related to the IT sector, all our achievements in the past decade have been in the Services sector – IT and IT-enabled. This is no doubt significant. But we should realize, amidst the euphoria, that we don’t provide anything unique but provid what others do more cost-effectively. The price advantage is transitory and deceptive. There are a dozen nations who would challenge us there in a few years from now. We need to build niche-skills, develop our own products and sell our services to the domestic sector and to the Government. For that we need to computerize the nation in a hurry. The strides of progress made by software vendors in the banking sector and the science sector is gratifying but we need to do more.
And most importantly, is IT the only answer to all our vows?
In my extended family between the ages 20-35, almost all are Software Engineers. In a way, the larger Nation also seems to be going the same monolithic route. If in the event of a slowdown in the IT sector, my family would have a lot of jobless people for sure, but would be ramifications on the nation be the same?
The government should pave the way to encourage more sectors and encourage opportunities in them with tax breaks and attractive borrowing schemes. Biotechnology, Automobiles, Textiles, Tourism, Horticulture, Arts and Sports (definitely!) should be developed in parallel, and should receive the same incentives as the IT sector.
Parents should stimulate young minds and let them follow their dreams. To be a great nation, we should also be a diverse nation with free and creative thinkers.
The challenge before us is no doubt daunting, but entirely plausible. Ten years ago, nobody in the world would have believed we could have pulled off the “IT miracle”. We should duplicate more such miracles and innovations and include the larger nation in our prosperity and growth.
To paraphrase an old Tamil proverb,
“What we have achieved is a handful;
what we should go after is the world itself;”
Go India!
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