A recent IDC study commissioned by Microsoft stands out for
highlighting the role of IT as a creator of jobs. The study shows that in 2001,
the IT sector added more than 5,61,357 jobs in the country.
The vast potential of IT to create jobs was never in doubt.
This has been made evident in the software sector by rapid growth in exports
which slowed down only in 2001 because of the global economic slump. However,
the same growth in jobs has not been witnessed in hardware because the Central
and state governments have not given adequate attention to this sector.
This is unfortunate. While a few measures were taken in the
Central budget for 2002-03 to boost hardware manufacturing, nothing radical was
done in this regard, which would have gone a long way in creating new jobs.
But what Andhra Pradesh has done needs to be commended. The
state has become the first one in the country to introduce a policy for
IT-enabled services. Many more states need to emulate the good example set by
chief minister Chandrababu Naidu who has taken the lead to encourage IT-enabled
services.
The Microsoft-sponsored IDC study has some other interesting
data. The study reveals that there were 16,530 local IT companies in the country
in 2001. This is more than 100 percent growth from 1995 when there were only
8,082 companies.
The exact definition of ‘local IT companies’ is not
available. However, reading between the lines of the study, what one understands
is that local IT companies in the study consist of all hardware, software and
services companies.
Thus, based on this data, one could safely conclude that the
number of partners in the country could be in the range of 20,000-25,000. For
vendors and distributors this is an important piece of information. They could
take this figure as a benchmark when they look at a country-wide partner
network.
These very partner companies too have played a major role in
creating new jobs not only in India, but also in 28 other countries where IDC
did the study. Of these, 18 saw growth of 50 percent or more in IT employment.
In these 28 countries and regions, 2,00,000 new IT companies
have been added in the last five years. This very clearly indicates that IT is
playing a vital role in the growth of economies and will continue to do so in
the coming years.
What is required is a clear foresight on the government’s
part to remove shackles that pull down IT from its growth path. When Pramod
Mahajan was managing only the IT ministry, one saw his dynamism in running this
ministry with a clear focus.
Now that he has come to handle both, IT and communications
ministries, his attention has been naturally diverted and IT has become a loser.
To add to these woes, the political uncertainty is weighing heavily on policy
decisions.
One only hopes that politics does not play the spoilsport
when IT can create more jobs in the country bringing new hopes to the educated
unemployed.