The Hindu : Kerala News : Making use of the human capital

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Monday, Jul 28, 2008
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Making use of the human capital

ON HUMAN CAPITAL: T.V. Mohandas Pai, board member and head of Human Resources Department, Infosys.

As a board member in charge of HR, Education and Research, T.V. Mohandas Pai focuses on building and strengthening the human capital of Infosys. He is also the key driver behind the company’s ‘Campus Connect’ programme that aims at effecting systemic changes in engineering education. In an interview with G. Mahadevan on July 26, Mr. Pai spoke about the upcoming launch of Infosys in Thiruvananthapuram, about the role of government in attracting industry and investment in various states and about the urgent need by the state to invest in higher education. Excerpts…

What is the state of your project in Thiruvananthapuram? When do you expect to launch Infosys?

In phase one we want to build two software development blocks—a food court and a place for utilities and facilities—the total area will be three lakh seventy thousand square feet. The first building of 1,65,000 sq feet will be ready by the end of March, 2009.

We will occupy it in April.The second building will be started by November this year. By March, 2009 we will have 1,500 seats and possibly by November or December that year we will have another 1,500 seats: So 3,000 seats by March 2010. In the entire first stage we will be investing about 250 crore rupees, including for technology infrastructure.

What are the operations that you plan to bring to The State capital?

Thiruvananthapuram will do operations across various horizontals and verticals we do in the rest of the company. Thiruvananthapuram will have a large retail unit and also in the communications and testing area. It depends on the quality and availability of talent. And that is the major concern in Thiruvananthapuram because even though Kerala has local talent, not many people want to relocate to Thiruvananthapuram. And that is inhibiting growth in Thiruvananthapuram.

Why is this so? Is it a problem with infrastructure or is it the perception of Thiruvananthapuram as a small town?

If you look at major cities in India which have done well in IT—like Bangalore has 60 lakh people in IT and is making an export of 51,000 crores, Chennai has maybe about 3 lakh people, Hyderabad maybe about 3 lakh, Pune has 2.5 lakh—what sets these cities apart including Chennaiis that fact that they are very cosmopolitan. Bangalore is extremely cosmopolitan. Pune is number two in being cosmopolitan. Hyderabad comes third and Chennai comes fourth.

Since the last 3 to 4 years many more people want to come and work in Chennai, it has a much more welcoming atmosphere; there is good infrastructure there though there are much more traffic jams in some parts of Chennai than in Bangalore.

Firstly you need to be more cosmopolitan-welcoming to an outsider who is not from your culture. Two, the medium of communication cannot be your own language. Three, the IT industry is a very young industry with a young workforce.

The average age of 2 million people employed in India is 26 years.

What do young people of the age group 24 to 30 want? They want recreation facilities, they want to go to pubs, they want to go dance in the discos and they want to go to movies. These are their legitimate aspirations. People who are young have different aspirations than people who are old. The tragedy of India is people who are old run the country. And the gerontocracy does not understand the aspirations of young people.

In the HRD ministry for instance, they don’t understand what young people want. The young people want foreign universities to come here but you have an ideological bar against foreign universities. So unless you create an ecosystem where young people feel wanted, you will not grow as a (IT) centre. That is the biggest inhibiting factor we see in Thiruvananthapuram. Over the last 5 years things have improved, still a long way to go.

Does IT come in after infrastructure or does infrastructure grow along with IT?

The primary thing is attitude. For example we asked for more space from Technopark about a year ago. We didn’t get space. Nobody built space here in advance and then they rationed space. So we expanded elsewhere. Of course we got the land and we are building the campus.

If you go out on the mains street and you have people doing hartals and marching on the streets and putting flags all over, it is going to create a fear complex among people; and that inhibits people in the IT industry because people in the IT industry are very mobile. They can work in any part of India, any part of the world. There are lots of jobs. So we have to go where people want to go. Kochi, for example, is more cosmopolitan. See, IT is the right industry for Kerala. It is a service industry, it attracts educated people. So you need surplus infrastructure, public investment in roads, good schools to come up.

You should invite the top 10 international schools to come to Thiruvananthapuram, invite 50 of the best engineering colleges to come to Kerala. Invite top management schools in the private sector in India to come here and set up shop- make this an education centre. That will drive all the business here.

The government should be welcoming. See what the government in Rajasthan has done. In the last four year Rajasthan has become an extremely vibrant place for industry. Look at what happens in West Bengal. But perhaps the most important thing is to invest in education. That is the key differentiator between states that are doing well economically and those that are not.

Keralites think of themselves as an educated society?

Education does not mean literacy. Education is all about higher education. It is taken for granted that you have a literate population. In India only 11 percent of the eligible population go to college. In all emerging markets it is 25 per cent. In developed nations it is about 50-55 per cent. A key stumbling block is language, even in Kerala. What the government should be doing is to set up finishing schools, places where people can go to learn in speak and write in good English.

Every child from standard one should learn English. Every child from standard five should learn English as a medium of instruction. Once you learn English, the whole of India opens up before you for jobs.

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