On India as an Emerging Knowledge Hub

This special issue, commemorating 50 years of computing in

India, is as much an occasion to look forward as to look back. The IT software

and services sector now employs over 1.3 mn, and is the nation's largest

exporter. With exports growing robustly at over 30% a year, the target of $60 bn

in 2010 is within reach. However, while this may be impressive, it is but a

minor fraction (less than a twentieth) of the overall worldwide market.

India already dominates the global off-shoring scene, with a

market share greater than the sum of all the other offshore destinations. In

years to come, the capabilities of Indian IT will certainly make it an important

player, particularly in many newer areas: engineering services, animation,

e-games, embedded systems, software products, and e-Governance. In animation and

e-game the challenge — and opportunity — is to go beyond outsourced

production to the creation and ownership of intellectual property.

Kiran Karnik, President, Nasscom

Embedded systems and engineering services are at the cusp of

software and hardware. With the growing improvement in the overall environment

for manufacturing and the increasingly important role played by software, India

could become a hub for such knowledge-intensive manufacturing. While the greater

part of the value will be in software, the scale of manufacturing would help in

creating larger employment.

The future is all about confluence and convergence; not only of

hardware and software, as mentioned, but also between domain knowledge and IT

(taking further the concept of KPO), entertainment and IT (animation and

e-games), communication and IT (remote infrastructure management, single-chip

cellphones). India could, with a decade of intensive effort, be a leader in

areas of confluence like nano-electronics, quantum computers and bio-

technology. The growing possibilities inherent in the interface between

biological systems and IT offer unlimited opportunities in areas like

health-care systems, implants, tele-health, etc. India's needs in this area

— particularly providing health-care services to populations that do not have

easy access to hospitals and doctors — are, in many ways, similar to the

problem of far wealthier home-bound people in developed countries. Here also,

integration of software and hardware plays a greater role to enhance country's

development.

However, there are serious challenges to be overcome-particularly

in the area of human resources. Quantity, quality, innovation and

entrepreneurship need to be ensured. In this too, IT may play an important role:

extending the reach and quality of education through distance-learning,

accelerating the pace and increasing the depth of learning, freeing the teacher

from routine tasks and providing large-scale peer-level interaction. IT in

education can be as important as IT in health.

India is on the verge of being in IT what Japan is in

automobiles or China in white goods or Saudi Arabia is in oil. While the

bread-and-butter role of conventional IT services (applications maintenance and

development, etc.) will continue, an evolution to IP creation and IT as a tool

or input into larger systems/solutions will make India a true knowledge hub.

India created the onshore-offshore model for IT services and pioneered offshore

BPO. In the coming years, it is now poised to create new rule-changing and

role-changing models. This evolution — towards setting standards rather than

meeting them, making the rules of the game (even creating an altogether new

game) rather than merely playing by them, inventing new roles rather than

fitting into a given one — is what we should aim for, not the high-sounding

but empty title of "IT superpower".

(The views expressed by the author are personal).