Stories from India
India's significant transformation from a poor agriculture to a wealthy technology country is based on a vision that was planned during the time India just won independence from Britain in 1947. With a population near a billion people and an economy solely depending on agriculture, the newly independent country was so poor that it could not even feed its own people. Indian leaders believed that the only way to get out of poverty was to invest in the “brain power” of their people by having a good education system, as good as the systems in developed countries. Their first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru believed the foundation of the education system should be a technology university similar to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that will produce more engineers and scientists to help advance India forward.
In 1950, the Indian government established the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and the first school was built on a former prison where the British had held political prisoners. Eventually the institute has expanded to several technology schools around the country. In the early days, India government sent their top students to the U.S and UK to get the best education there where they adopted the most advanced programs and brought back to India. The IITs built the reputation on a very rigorous training program. Each year it admits only 2 percent of the 300,000 annual applicants and because of this highly selective admission, IIT has developed the best engineers and scientists for India. To get accepted to IIT is a guarantee for good jobs or a chance to continue to go to graduate schools overseas. Even today, the dream of every Indian student is to get accepted to IIT.
To set a firm foundation, Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru selected Bangalore, a small city in the middle of India to be the “city of the future.” where he put most government research and aerospace laboratories there as the base to implement the technology vision. Overtime, all Indian leaders continued to follow the vision that their predecessors started. When the technology industry exploded in the late 1980s, India is ready to seize the opportunity. Citibank was the first American company established a data center in Bangalore in 1985 to process bank transactions and paper documentation. Later, Texas Instruments opened a small data entry center there then Hewlett-Packard built an electronic factory there in 1989. The reasons some American companies set up factory in Bangalore were Indian workers could speak English and the 12 hours difference between the U.S. and India allowed companies to operate 24 hours continuously. As U.S workers go home at night, Indian workers could continue the job as it was morning there. India government continued to improve its infrastructure to make the city better suited for more foreign companies to come. There were Tax and financial incentives, discounted electricity rates, exempt zoning, and reduction in registration fees to lure more foreign companies to locate there. However, the investment in technology education is the key factor to the growth of India's technology industry. As U.S. companies need to meet the growing demands of IT skilled workers, Indian companies are ready to provide the skilled workforce and the outsourcing trend began in late 1990s.
Throughout the 1990s, U.S. companies were outsourcing whatever they can to reduce costs and increase profits. According to a study, about 65% of U.S companies were outsourced some works to India. Bangalore became the major destination of many technology works. As more high paying jobs were available, it encouraged more students to study technology and the technology industry exploded. Today more than a third of college students in India are enrolling in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) and creating the most powerful technology workforce in the world.
As we walk through IIT Mumbai campus, my friend, professor Krishnan explains: “In the past outsourcing was about lower cost but today it is about higher skills. If we continue on low cost than we cannot compete with lower cost countries in Southeast Asia and Africa. To stay ahead, we have to continue to improve our trainings to keep up with market demand. During the 2000s, programming languages were important because our customers needed software developers but today mobile and cloud computing are high demand skills so our training program is updated with these new skills. You probably know that many high demand skills today did not even exist five years ago but we monitored the demand carefully and adjusted our training accordingly.” I agree: “You are right, five years ago jobs like User Interface designer, Cloud computing specialist or Big Data analyst did not even exist yet.”
As we are walking into a modern air-conditioned building, Krishnan explains: “This building is donated to our school by one of our alumni, Infosys's Chief Executive Officer Nandan Nikelani. He graduated from here and went to work for Patni Information Systems where he met Narayana Murthy and together they found Infosys, one of the largest IT company in India. Even he became a billionaire but he never forgot the school that educated him. Instead of spending money on materials things like other millionaires and billionaires, he built a brand new computer center for his old school.” I agree: “Your university has succeeded in develop more leaders in engineering and technology for India. Your graduates have developed your country into a high technology country.” Krishna shakes his head: “Not yet, the investment in education has risks. Most of our best graduates are now leaving the country to find better jobs oversea. Although there are many job opportunities here but about half of our IT graduates prefer to go to the U.S. to work. Until they come back and contribute to our economy then our vision is completely fulfill.”
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
