Monday, April 26, 2004
Some of my friends have legitimately pointed out that there is no need to be so gush gush about "india shining" or whatever you might call it ..
The argument is that I only talked about IT and IT would directly benefit only about say at best 5 million people, a really microscopic number compared to a billion people that India's population is right now..
Further on, even those people who thought a step ahead , as in that there would be a trickle down effect and not sure about whether the trickle will turn into a flood , or still stay a phenomena which would benefit the only lucky few..
I agree with their concerns/comments , ofcourse IT is not the panacea of all evils and although i do believe the trickle down effect manifests itself in more ways than meets the eye and is stronger than is generally perceived I would again be foolish to think that it would have a far reaching impact..
However I think the point is not that at all.. The point is a bit more subtler than that.. The point is self-confidence and a belief that we can "get things done" ..this may sound corny but it is true.. I feel that Indians are like a man-eater that have tasted blood and the trickle down effect of this is far greater than one can directly measure... Its the image of the country , its how the world now sees us and in consequence how we see ourselves thats changing at a rapid pace and I believe that a large part of that was a direct consequence of our success in IT services. My american friends keep taunting me with statements like 'India is going to take over the world '..what the IT boom has therefore done is to give confidence to the rest of the world that Indians can inspite of all their problems build, create and manage projects on world class levels.. This will in turn obviously rub off ot other industries as well and is doing so..
When Naina Lal Kidwai was speaking at Harvard about India Inc.'s prospect in the future surprise surprise , she didnt speak about IT at all.. She spoke about other success stories, auto components , finance , paints ,telecom , biotech .. ofcourse the classical argument would be cost ..I would say the americans are no fools , they would stop using India for their services and product manufacturing if the quality was below par.. These things are not only cheap they are of superb quality too.. So from the fact that most major Indian IT companies are at CMM level 5 to Reliance having one of the best quality assesments in the world to Sundaram-Clayton Ltd., Brakes Division winning the Deming prize , indian products are no longer wanted for just being inexpensive..
So to summarize , why I am so optimistic is not because of the trickle down effect but the rubbing off effect to the other industries .. the value is , in addition to mrs Rao having a chance of providing lunch to the software enginners that live in her colony and mr murthy managing to expand his private bus business to a great extent because of the software engineers who need to get work outside the city , is 25 year old young mr . swami thinking that why cant he become the next azim premji of biotech ..
also check out tonnes of free online books at Guttenberg
there are some cool wodehouse books too , so I am happpy :) ..
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The argument is that I only talked about IT and IT would directly benefit only about say at best 5 million people, a really microscopic number compared to a billion people that India's population is right now..
Further on, even those people who thought a step ahead , as in that there would be a trickle down effect and not sure about whether the trickle will turn into a flood , or still stay a phenomena which would benefit the only lucky few..
I agree with their concerns/comments , ofcourse IT is not the panacea of all evils and although i do believe the trickle down effect manifests itself in more ways than meets the eye and is stronger than is generally perceived I would again be foolish to think that it would have a far reaching impact..
However I think the point is not that at all.. The point is a bit more subtler than that.. The point is self-confidence and a belief that we can "get things done" ..this may sound corny but it is true.. I feel that Indians are like a man-eater that have tasted blood and the trickle down effect of this is far greater than one can directly measure... Its the image of the country , its how the world now sees us and in consequence how we see ourselves thats changing at a rapid pace and I believe that a large part of that was a direct consequence of our success in IT services. My american friends keep taunting me with statements like 'India is going to take over the world '..what the IT boom has therefore done is to give confidence to the rest of the world that Indians can inspite of all their problems build, create and manage projects on world class levels.. This will in turn obviously rub off ot other industries as well and is doing so..
When Naina Lal Kidwai was speaking at Harvard about India Inc.'s prospect in the future surprise surprise , she didnt speak about IT at all.. She spoke about other success stories, auto components , finance , paints ,telecom , biotech .. ofcourse the classical argument would be cost ..I would say the americans are no fools , they would stop using India for their services and product manufacturing if the quality was below par.. These things are not only cheap they are of superb quality too.. So from the fact that most major Indian IT companies are at CMM level 5 to Reliance having one of the best quality assesments in the world to Sundaram-Clayton Ltd., Brakes Division winning the Deming prize , indian products are no longer wanted for just being inexpensive..
So to summarize , why I am so optimistic is not because of the trickle down effect but the rubbing off effect to the other industries .. the value is , in addition to mrs Rao having a chance of providing lunch to the software enginners that live in her colony and mr murthy managing to expand his private bus business to a great extent because of the software engineers who need to get work outside the city , is 25 year old young mr . swami thinking that why cant he become the next azim premji of biotech ..
also check out tonnes of free online books at Guttenberg
there are some cool wodehouse books too , so I am happpy :) ..
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