On India's Hardware Potential

The last 50 years have witnessed an IT revolution in the world.
The revolution continues, and shall continue for many more decades. This
revolution has altered the way we work and think. It has touched every
enterprise, sector and government. As an enabler, IT will increase growth rate,
and enhance our ability to tackle complexity and uncertainty. IT has increased
employment opportunities. It has made a large number of smaller enterprises and
retail services highly efficient and productive.

We Indians need to employ IT extensively to make digital
technology an integral part of our lives, government and industry. So that we
can create value and employment opportunities to help transform our country from
a developing to a developed country.

We, Indians, failed to appreciate that hardware development is
as necessary as software development. Our focus has remained exclusively on
software. India has achieved a lot in software design, development and services;
yet, India's software output of $30 bn is less than 2% of the world's
software. The software industry has created over a million jobs for
professionals and many more at the support level. But our hardware industry has
earned mere $5 bn. Most of the hardware and digital components are imported
India and assembled here.

While it is clear that IT will be a major driving force for
India's economic growth and prosperity, there are major gaps in two areas that
need to be bridged-availability of PCs (10-15 mn units required per year, as
against 4-5 mn units today) and softwares in Indian languages.

It is now possible to make a fully configured PC with monitor
with open source software for Rs 10,000 or less. India needs assembly units and
design engineers to meet the volume and price targets. This means that India's
engineering colleges will need to produce 3000-5000 microelectronics engineers,
as against the 200 engineers produced in 2001-2002. In an attempt to tackle this
problem, the government, along with TCS and IIT Mumbai, has been working on the
curriculum design and hardware facilities. IIT Mumbai will support 50-100
engineering colleges by sharing their course material as well as providing
assistance in setting up of required facilities. India aims at producing 3,000—5,000
microelectronics engineers a year within the next three to four years. At that
stage, India can become a leader in design engineering in digital electronics.
As a result of this initiative this year, 800 engineers in microelectronics will
graduate from IIT Mumbai and other institutions. With this, India will build
capacity in design engineering and building embedded software. For the time
being, capital intensive activities of fabrication and testing can be outsourced
to Taiwan, Malaysia, South Korea, Singapore and other countries.

The second constraint is availability of software in all the
Indian languages. Much effort has been made in this direction and still
continues at CDAC, NCST, IITs, IISc and many other educational institutions.
Linux open-source middleware and application software have become available in
Indian languages including Telegu, Tamil, Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu. By March 2007
applications should be available in 10-12 Indian languages. It indicates that
within the next 2-3 years, India can set itself on the course of extensive
computerization. In 2002, I had made an educated projection that India over the
next 10 years can achieve a business of $200 bn in information and digital
technology- $30-100 bn in hardware and $100—20 bn in software (exports
$60-70 bn and indigenous $30-40 bn). This is doable and achievable.