'It’s no use now," the shopkeeper says. "Mahesh is going for
Vocational Studies.'
Mahesh is his son, and the "it" is software. Two years ago, he had
aspired to be a software pro. He was in a good government school, he joined a Rs
15,000 Web course, and started reading IT magazines. But that’s off now. Now,
it’s plan B.
So is it a loss to Indian IT if my local shopkeeper’s son has decided to
opt out? It could be. For he has company. Hundreds of thousands are opting out,
or re-thinking their IT career plans.
That’s worrying. Across India, IT courses are seeing vacant seats. First,
the private training institutes saw scary drops in revenues; some folded up.
Then, the formal education system was affected. Southern states that had added
thousands of university seats for IT courses, in a bid to become IT powerhouses,
are finding them empty. Even in the top tier of IITs et al, computers have
dropped a little out of favor. Many second-tier colleges are reporting
lower-level "residual" students in their IT courses.
With revenues squeezed, training companies are shifting gears to software and
services exports. But a few years down, where are all these services companies
going to get the manpower from?
Software exports is more than half our Rs 50,000-crore industry, and more
than three-fourths of IT manpower. The $50 billion exports target for 2008, up
from $5 billion last year, requires 40% sustained annual growth. Sounds fine,
after last year’s 60%.
The Indian software industry model says revenues are proportional to
manpower. I don’t see a miracle of product marketing changing this equation in
this decade.
So we need quality manpower to grow at nearly 50%, once you count the other
countries also interested in our talent _ for the next ten years. Tough, even
with all those IIITs and additional seats … seats now going empty. Or getting
"residual" students.
We don’t see it amidst today’s slowdown, tight revenues, layoffs and
excess manpower. But a few years later, when these students and empty seats are
scheduled to graduate, there’s a big problem on our hands.
Suddenly, in 2004, we’re going to find a severe shortage of quality
manpower.
Now is the time to act, for the industry, for Nasscom, the IT ministry,
educationists and the media as well. What can we do? Aggressively market IT
itself. Bring up success stories, encourage entrepreneurship, highlight software
development successes and hold software competitions in colleges and schools.
Tell the kids that the dot com bust was not the IT dream going bust. Otherwise,
four years later, it could well be.