THE POLITICS OF IT

At the glittering Dataquest function held one wintry evening in the National

Capital, the irrepressible Raman Roy accepted the Pathbreaker Award "on

behalf of the 200,000 workers of the IT-enabled services industry". IT

minister Pramod Mahajan, in his closing comments, was quick to pick on that when

he said statements like "speaking on behalf of 5 crore Gujaratis" was

more the prerogative of consummate politicians and he was amused to hear a

statement like this from an IT CEO.

This little interchange sparked a thought–while all of us have revelled in

the fact and the minister himself has remarked on many occasions that two

industries in India–IT and beauty–grew to world-beating status because of

the total absence of government involvement. Today, the IT industry has grown to

a level where a healthy interface with politics and politicians is not only

inevitable but even desirable to meet the lofty goals we have set for ourselves.

If there is one incident, which brings this need into sharp focus, it is the

unfortunate episodes in Indonesia involving Arun Jain, which needed the combined

force of business and politics to resolve.

"The IT industry has grown to a level where a healthy interface with politics and politicians is not only inevitable but even desirable to meet the goals we aim to achieve"

Which are the areas where Government involvement can facilitate the growth

and smooth functioning of the industry? The Minister mentioned that it would be

impossible for the Government to provide the same support to the Telecom

Industry as it had to IT because unlike in IT, the Government was itself both a

player and an umpire in the Telecom sector. Would it be possible then for the

Government to hasten the process of privatization and ensure that it ceases to

be a player? Ideally it could even take off the Umpire’s coat and at best be a

third umpire and provide a consultative voice to all segments of the industry.

The area where Government participation would be most welcome is of course

the area of infrastructure. And infrastructure is not just better telecom and

road facilities, but also attention to the small things like declaring IT

Enabled Services as an essential service.

The Information Technology industry too needs to move beyond small time

competitive tactics to working together for a larger industry strategy in the

new year–2003. NASSCOM’s moves towards setting up best-in-class contracting

practices to avoid repetitions of the Polaris problem, its participation in the

laudable National Institute of Smart Governance initiative to showcase and

replicate e-Governance successes on a national basis, the efforts of the CII to

make State Governments active participants in IT Services, IT Enabled Services

and Bio Informatics–all these are welcome steps to close ranks and present a

unified national face to a world, which is increasingly becoming jealous of

India’s rapid strides in this sector and will make all efforts to trip us

before we reach the vision that industry doyen FC Kohli articulated " 100

bn in Software and 100 bn in Hardware."

In conclusion, the highlight of the DQ evening was the humorous interactions

between the very eloquent Jairam Ramesh from the function venue and the

energetic Satyen "Sam" Pitroda through video-conference from Chicago.

Jairam mentioned that in the initial days of the Telecom Mission, the duo would

go calling on Chief Ministers and explain that C-DOT was not some foreign body

but just a mission for "Commoners Doing Outstanding Things". The

industry salutes Sam for showing the world that India can do it–Let many new

Pitrodas come forward with or without the patronage of visionary politicians

like Rajiv Gandhi and Pramod Mahajan to make our IT dreams come true!!!

The author is the global CEO of Zensar Technologies



ganesh@dqindia.com