In his fascinating new book, “The world is flat” Thomas Friedman, the NY Times journalist describes his visit to the high-tech Infosys campus in Bangalore. But to get there he “reached by a pockmarked road, with sacred cows, horse drawn carts and motorized rickshaws all jostling alongside our vans”. The path to TCS’s campus in the SEEPZ (a technology park) near Mumbai is even more of a turnoff – again, once you get there you are in a cocoon of high-technology. The capital, New Delhi is somewhat better – as the locals say, the politicians make sure there are few potholes for their cars.
An executive who does business throughout Asia once told me “India is the only large Asian country where the infrastructure from when you land to your hotel has not improved in the last two decades”. A US CIO recently told me it is tough to get his staff psyched about visiting their India locations. In comparison, he gets volunteers for Philippines and China.
This is a huge, sore subject for the Indian offshore executive community. They keep imploring Indian politicians for improved physical infrastructure - and for expanded educational infrastructure as wage inflation grows.
The Indian software industry has done fine to date without the politicians. India had some of the poorest telecommunications a decade ago – all the major Indian firms invested in their own massive private networks.
They need to similarly reach out to peers in western and Indian construction companies like Bechtel and L&T and airlines like BA and Jet Air and work with them on infrastructure and “free skies” issues. An Indian firm, Mastek did a show case project helping the city of London with its traffic congestion problems. Time for Indian vendors to do their own part with India’s infrastructure - but with private sector solutions.
On education, I think Indian firms have been too “choosy” – there is a plethora of talent, which can be mined with training investment. I would like to suggest India’s growing staff shortages and wage inflation are self-inflicted –and at least some of the blame must go to the excellent Indian Institutes of Technology graduates who run most of India’s firms. In their desire to hire “clones” - only the top engineering talent, they have not invested enough in recruiting and developing talent from secondary educational institutions. Andersen Consulting (Accenture) in the 1980s developed a U.S staff development infrastructure that turned thousands of business, arts and other graduates into very disciplined technical resources. Indian firms need to similarly mine a broader talent pool. They are doing so for BPO offerings and need to for their IT practices as well.
Given their intense interest in (and rivalry with) China, I suspect the infrastructure they see around the 2008 Olympics in Beijing will jar the Indian politicians in to action.
Till then, the Indian IT industry needs to continue that relationship of “benign neglect” with the politicians. Do not expect them to deliver much, instead just plead them not to screw up things.
