SHINING SPOTS AND AREAS OF DARKNESS

Steve Ballmer, the Microsoft Chief, during his recent visit to India, said that one third of the software engineers in the world would claim India as their home. In sheer rate of economic growth, India is one of the super powers today and by 2020, India is likely to brush shoulders with China, if not brush her aside. An Indian wins Booker Prize and another Indian, Jagdish Bhagwati, was short listed for Nobel Prize in Economics. If they wielded the Hockey stick with great wizardry a few decades earlier, today they are the acknowledged Kings of Steel ingots. We feel elated and announce it from the housetop that we have arrived.

Steve Ballmer also said that Indian supply of Technocrats and Scientists for Research and Development was too short of the need and demand. Chemistry Graduates and Civil and Aerospace engineers send their CVs to software Companies. If the Business Schools and software companies ensnare the bright, the lower end among the educated finds solace in BPOs and undergo cultural transformation. In the process, educational institutions do not get quality faculties and research institutions are deprived of dedicated men and women to do research. Research scientists are odd men out everywhere. Indian Manufacturers complain that they do not get quality engineers.

It is no doubt true that the four leading software companies alone employ more than two lakhs knowledge workers across the globe. But the vast army of the unemployed in the rural areas does not belong to this class. The intellectual calibre of the educated rural boys and girls is certainly not inferior. What they lack is self confidence and communication skill in English, two attributes needed for success in Software and BPOs. Chinese are aware of their limitations in English and therefore, they used their work force for building infra structure and manufacture. If India is the back office to the world, China provides the shop floor. Now they have turned towards software too. If 55% of our GDP is in the services sector which provides jobs to the educated, in China, manufacture occupies the major portion of their GDP and that takes care of their masses.

Prof. Indiresan, a former Director of Madras IIT, maintains that the millions of uneducated in India need to be provided jobs in the condition in which they are and there is no short term course to transform them. Emphasis on manufacture and infrastructure alone can provide millions of jobs. A Mittal buying the Arcelors may be headlines for the newspapers. But a Murugesan at Madurai continues to be unemployed. Only more deployment of Capital in India by our entrepreneurs and the foreign ones in manufacture and infrastructure would create jobs for our millions who are otherwise not employable. Thirty years of Communist rule made China a disciplined country. That discipline stands them in good stead today when they have switched over to an alternative and more rewarding economy. In India, we did not cultivate that discipline. We have arm chair critiques, pointing fingers at what they call bourgeoisie culture. We have too many proverbial frogs to drag us from moving ahead. And yet we too can do like China, even if it takes a little longer, by emulating them. Be conscious of your strength, and yet understand your weakness too.

When our builders build life style houses, let the government make them to build small functional and less expensive houses, for the poor too, as demonstrated by the 82 years young Jimmi Carter. The textile mills in Mumbai, which provided jobs to over one and a half lakhs of skilled and semi-skilled workers have now yielded place to marble floored palatial apartments, malls and multiplexes, depriving the mill workers of their wages and roofs. When we talk of higher disposable income of the employed class, should we not spare a thought for the incomeless unemployed?

Distracters thrive, when there is dissatisfaction around. Let us light the areas of darkness. ‘Diyas’ are meant for that.