Gearing up to meet shortfall of skilled hands in IT
Shiv Kumar Anand

A country that till a decade and a half back was known to be in everlasting slow motion, with one of the lowest literacy rates, and was also infamous for its lack of service attitude, has now become a global services hub. Thanks to the information technology sector.

Now, the Indian IT industry is in for another round of growth pangs. The growth of the Indian IT industry has been phenomenal in the last decade and finally it seems to have found its feet and emerges from the turmoil, stronger and much mature.

Future scenario

According to an IDC India press release of December, 2005, India will continue to be the fastest growing domestic IT market in the Asia-Pacific region. This growth will come in the hardware, software and IT services sector.

The main factors that augur well for the sector are the rapidly expanding infrastructure required for its future growth — we have already laid out more than 500,000 km of fibre optic network. Our telecom infrastructure has improved a lot in the last five years and will improve further in the coming years. A large pool of English-speaking population gives India a big edge in IT services and back-office work also.

At present, the total strength of people employed in the IT sector in India is about 700,000, which is 28 per cent of the global pool of suitable professionals, whereas China and Russia have 11 per cent and 10 per cent, respectively. By 2010, India needs to add another 1.6 million suitable professionals. The Nasscom-McKinsey 2005 report highlights that the country may, by 2010, fall short of five lakh people in terms of required workforce for the IT sector. The main reason for the expected shortage is the lack of suitable talent required for the industry.

Manpower gap

The manpower required for IT services would be an additional 5 lakh in 2008-09 and 10 lakh in 2012. India could be one of the few countries with a surplus of personnel within the employable age group by 2020; there is a possibility of shortage in terms of availability of skilled IT professionals, even in medium term i.e. by 2009. This gap could be of 2,35,000 personnel for IT services and 2,62,000 of IT-enabled services.

Role of B-class institutions

To maintain such a lead as it has acquired, is not child’s play, unless institutions of higher learning maintain standards of excellence, and produce persons of requisite quality in large numbers. A few institutes like the IITs altogether produce 2500-3000 top first-class engineers every year. About 2000 migrate abroad; another 500 opt for business management. Finally, few are left at the end of the stream for scholarly work in their discipline. At present, almost 135 universities across the country control almost 17,000 colleges which generates 350,000 diploma holders or graduates every year, of which only 25 per cent are able to fit the IT services area.

Here, the role of B-class engineering colleges becomes more important than is generally perceived. Interactions with industry and academia suggests the issue of manpower gap is not as much about institutional seat availability as about the nature of skills and training provided in these institutions. In India, 1012 institutes offer MCA with total intake capacity of 54,167 students every year. Andhra Pradesh, Tripura and Pondicherry jointly have 25,000 seats. Punjab has approx 2200 seats for MCA. Throughout India, 1346 institutes have a total intake of 4,39,689 engineering students. Punjab has approximately 4140 seats for CSE and IT out of a total 14,880 seats (source: www.aicte.ernet.in).

The overall strategy to meet the human resource requirement rests on the ability to inculcate the right skill-sets, establishing a standard to certify the quality of skills provided and attracting people to get them certified and deployed in ITeS/IT. Also, we need to revise curriculum of IT and IT-related courses more frequently as compared to other disciplines.

China is competing with India and they have started teaching English to their students and after three-four years, they will also have a large pool of English-speaking professionals who will be competing with Indians. We have to concentrate on quality services and also we have to work harder than earlier to sustain the lead.

Fields of tomorrow

A series of new disciplines is about to break out in India to which IT will be what arithmetic is to calculation. Biotechnology, nanotechnology, telemedicine, tele-surgery, distance learning, products with embedded software, product-design, drug discovery, robotics and optics are some of the areas which have tremendous potential. Keeping present industrial requirements universities have to review the syllabi of IT and IT-related courses more frequently and also go for emerging disciplines like biotechnology, nano-technology, tele-surgery, etc.

India has much to gain by vastly extending the range of non-IT services that are provided via IT. The services of lawyers and chartered accountants are ever so expensive in the US and Europe. We just have to get our young graduates to bone up on American or German law, or our accountants to learn the particulars of accounting practices in those countries, and they will provide the high-flying legal and accounting firms there the kind of research and back-up assistance they can’t dream of.