Towards an Indian Raj

What does one expect when the Prince of Wales comes visiting? Lots of

parties, chukkers of polo, the occasional photo opportunity for the society

glitterati and of course many opportunities for the royalty to pander to the

social cause–be it the slum dwellers of Dharavi or the dabbawallahs of Mumbai.

This visit of Prince Charles to India had all that in large doses, but it also

had an hour that would be of extreme interest to readers of this magazine–the

hour with Nasscom that he spent in Mumbai. Maybe it was because this was his

first engagement of a busy day, or maybe it’s just his style but the Prince

didn’t seem to miss a word of what was presented and spoken to him that

November morning.

From his very incisive remark that Mastek with its successful project to

relieve the London congestion should focus on doing something to the Mumbai

congestion first to his appreciation of the social initiatives of the Tata group

and his fulsome praise for the efforts of IIT Bombay in its technology projects

for the underprivileged, Charles showed an excellent grasp of digital divide

issues. He was all praise for the IT sector and its success in putting India on

the global map.

“The entrepreneurial drive has been strengthened by a revival of interest in domestic marketing as governments and corporations start spending more on IT” Ganesh Natarajan

For me personally, it was amusing to note that even when, in the interest of

time, I skipped some heavy jargon in my presentation on knowledge management and

solution blueprinting innovations from Zensar, as soon as I sat down after the

presentation, Prince Charles leaned across and said, "In case you thought I

wasn’t paying attention, can you tell me what the phrase ‘technology

agnostic’ meant on your slide?"

Try explaining in a simple answer that solution blueprinting frameworks

enable organizations to automate large portions of the system development life

cycle and generate software across a wide variety of technology platforms and

you realize the complexities of life for IT CEOs today!

Quite a coincidence that the same week that Prince Charles was here, an

interesting article was floating across the Web talking about the thousands of

manufacturing jobs that the British took away from India during the rule of the

‘Raj’ and how they taught us English so that they could rule us better. The

same English speaking services-oriented economy is now taking jobs away by the

thousands from British shores. This, of course, is an extreme view of the great

offshoring of services jobs that is happening all over the Western world today

and the rational view to take is that while there is a natural shift of

back-office services to lower-cost high-quality economies, similar to the flight

of manufacturing jobs initially to Taiwan and Malaysia and then to China some

time ago, there is enough innovation left in the G7 economies to create new

opportunities for their people. The future will see the BRIC economies (that’s

Brazil, Russia, India and China for any Rip Van Winkles!) lead the way in terms

of job creation and execution while technology and more technology drives the

economic engines of the older economies.

What will drive the economic engines of India?

In a country where millions are looking for jobs and a significant percentage

of the population still lives on a few dollars every month, there is an critical

need for a concerted effort by the government, academia and the industry to

build a movement of education and skill building that will put us firmly on the

road to success. The signs are already encouraging–the feel good factor is

very strong, not just in IT and BPO but also across various sectors of

manufacturing and services. The government has done creditable work in

substantially improving infrastructure and the entrepreneurial drive has been

strengthened by a revival of interest in domestic marketing as governments and

corporations start spending more on information technology. The next few years

will determine whether we can truly make this the India of our dreams!

By Ganesh Natarajan



The author is deputy chairman & managing director of Zensar Technologies and
chairman of Nasscom’s SME Forum for Western India