Don’t lose grip

With India slipping further in the global IT industry competitiveness index this year despite its offshore IT prowess, Forrester has said that stepping up human capital investment, technology usage in rural areas, and addressing the existing talent crunch will be critical in raising the global competitiveness of India’s tech economy.

India dropped from 46th to 48th position in “The Economist’s global IT industry competitiveness index 2008”, which measures the environment for IT producers to thrive. “India’s worrying demotion is due to its dismal IT infrastructure, acute talent shortage, and unproductive R&D environment,” Forrester Research said in its recent report titled ‘How can India boost its tech economy’s global competitiveness.’

The just-released IT industry competitiveness index compares 66 countries on how well they support the competitiveness of IT firms. India, at 48th position, ranks way below East Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea, but marginally better than China, which has ended 50th in the pecking order.

‘Strengthen the demand side’

Forrester says Government and captains of IT industry will immediately need to focus on strengthening the demand side.

“The reason why countries such as the US, South Korea, and Japan top the index is not because their tech firms crank-out dozens of patents per day but because they boast a very tech-savvy customer base….What makes a region’s IT industry competitive is smart customers, not smart engineers,” it says.

India — which is still attempting to drive corporate and societal innovation by wielding policy instruments such as R&D investments and science parks — should instead strengthen institutional capacity to drive customer-focused and market-driven innovation. “Government must spur adoption across India. It must recognise that in today’s knowledge economy, IT infrastructure such as Internet access is more critical than physical infrastructure such as roads and ports. With good connectivity in place, the Indian government can then partner with tech providers such as Cisco Systems, Microsoft, and TCS to bring IT applications such as tele-education and telemedicine to Indian villages, where 70 per cent of the population lives,” Forrester says.

Ruing that Indian public agencies have been slow in digitising public-service delivery to citizens, Forrester says it is imperative for Government to work with state-level politicians to appoint CIOs at the federal and regional level who can collaboratively drive an IT-enabled innovation agenda. Besides this, there is a need to revamp science and engineering education curriculum — with the help of the National Knowledge Commission — to produce multidisciplinary engineers capable of brokering connections between Indian technology inventions and global business opportunities.

Forrester says Indian tech CEOs too need to overcome their export orientation and focus on India as the next big IT market, particularly now that the domestic spending is slated to rise by 18 per cent this year, the second-fastest-growing tech market after China.

“Tech suppliers such as Infosys, Satyam, TCS, and Wipro must beef up their corporate social responsibility (CSR) investments — by contributing more to teacher training programmes and new learning models.

Such a programme will allow their most experienced employees to teach part time or even full time in their local communities,” it adds.

Ref : THE HINDU, Monday, Oct 20, 2008