The Hindu : 'IT awareness fund' mooted to help youth in smaller cities

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Feb 15, 2004

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'IT awareness fund' mooted to help youth in smaller cities

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, FEB. 14. A high-level task force has asked the industry to set up an "IT awareness fund" to create awareness among the youth living in smaller cities about the opportunities in this sector. This proposal supplemented by career counselling by universities and colleges, improved telecom infrastructure and other measures in small towns would ensure that India does not face a human resource gap in the IT sector.

Other measures that have a countrywide span include updating the formal education curriculum more frequently to reflect industry developments, providing fiscal incentives (tax exemption) to attract NRIs for high-end work, changing regulations to enable IT professionals to work from home, promoting the learning of alternative languages through the support of language institutions such as Alliance Francaise, Max Mueller etc., scarp-plan based research and development funding for universities to project-based funding, networking all educational bodies and developing a common, on-line test for IT-enabled services (ITeS).

The recommendations are aimed at ensuring that the country undertakes continuous upgradation of infrastructure, developing skill in present and newer areas, continuous planning and policy support from the Government. Projecting a gap of five lakh adequately trained personnel, the "task force on meeting the human resource challenge for IT and ITeS" has suggested a five-pronged approach to attract resources into IT/ITeS, develop requisite skills, certify skill levels of resources, deploy trained/certified resources and monitor and guide efforts related to IT/ITeS and R&D.

Headed by the former Tata Consultancy Services official, F. C. Kohli, the task force has recommended changes in the policy, delivery institutions, regulatory mechanisms and fiscal incentives. These suggestions, while intended at driving the growth of the overseas market, will also have a ripple effect on other parts of the economy as well, including the domestic IT services and products industry as well as other global market-oriented industries.

India's ability to become global R&D hub will depend on adequate availability of high-skilled human resources, which in turn requires changes in the education system as well as infrastructure, and faculty availability. Since IT has applications in all sectors of the economy, a National Technology Plan needs to be evolved to guide the scale and direction of human resource development efforts in the country.

The committee feels that 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. Estimates suggest that India could be one of few countries in the future with surplus manpower availability and these could be effectively trained and deployed to meet the requirements of the IT/ ITeS industry. However, at least one-third of graduates opt out of work force participation due to various social and economic pressures while another large chunk (58 per cent) get absorbed into other non-IT sectors. These non-IT personnel represent a significant source of manpower to meet specific requirement of ITeS/IT industry.

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