LEADER ARTICLE
Asking for Trouble: Introspection Time for IT Industry

The Indian IT industry is squirming at the treatment meted out to its professionals by overseas authorities. Indonesia jailed the Polaris chief for alleged contract violations late last year, Citibank-funded I-Flex recently saw its chief arrested in London for visa irregularities by his outfit in the Netherlands. In between, a number of Indian IT professionals were taken for interrogation by the Malaysian authorities for allegedly flouting visa rules.
The IT industry, the government and the media are alarmed. The government has been raising the issue with alacrity through diplomatic channels. These efforts have borne fruit in Indonesia, and also in Malaysia, where the police officials responsible for the act have been taken to task. However, while the diplomatic initiative is fine, one should not lose track of reality.
The fact is that a number of our software professionals, and the companies they represent, have often courted trouble on visa and other issues. Some of it was due to ignorance, some due to wrong information, but often because these professionals seem to think no one can harm them, thanks to the mollycoddling the sector receives from the government. Therefore, if anything, what is surprising is not that there is this so-called harassment but that it took so long in coming.
Now one hears that a couple of the biggest and respectable names in the Indian IT industry may be headed for trouble in Japan for some other violations. So some more trouble may be in the pipeline. Why is it that Indian IT companies suddenly find themselves at the wrong end of foreign authorities for shortcomings which have existed for a while?
One reason is, as several analysts have pointed out, that these governments are trying to protect local jobs and the high- profile Indian industry is an easy target. So we have regimes, such as New Jersey in the US, which want to ban outsourcing of IT Enabled Services (ITES) jobs to Indians to protect local interests. The truth is that Indians have been at the forefront of the software coolie jobs that, till recently, never posed a real threat to workers overseas. Irregularities committed by companies and professionals were often overlooked. But things changed with the ITES. These are among the biggest employers in all service-oriented economies, which most of the developed economies are.
As long as the economies were growing at a robust rate it was fine. But as soon as recession set in, the local workforce began to feel the pinch and opposed these jobs being outsourced to Indian workers. This is normal and should have been predicted. Regrettably, industry bodies such as NASSCOM, or the government, through its sundry officials and the export promotion bodies, which claim far more credit than is due when the going is good, have failed. NASSCOM is now talking of steps to create a dialogue between the Indian IT industry and foreign missions to ensure a clear understanding of the issues and the export council wants to be proactive in informing Indians about the do’s and don’ts.
As for the government, IT is no more than a political game. This government, for example, talks about IT as a liberator for the middle classes, just as Indira Gandhi did with her garibi hatao slogan. Even now it is no more than sloganeering and a chance for some to hog the limelight. But one surely expected more from the industry bodies. Now that regimes all over are indicating they are no longer willing to ignore the wrongdoings of Indian IT professionals, they have no real plan other than to run to the government and media.
The government can do only so much, and only for a while. The government’s job is to ensure no wrong is done, not to firefight endlessly. For that, the industry itself must learn to be responsible. Of course, if it cares to listen, the government too needs to look at the entire IT sector as a whole. Hardware and R&D, among others, are as important as software. The stepmotherly treatment meted out to anything but software is not desirable.
One only need look at China, where the government is laying special emphasis on hardware through a series of measures. For example, the total tax on computers in China is 17 per cent, compared to 32 per cent in India. The resultant huge hardware industry there is also fuelling growth in a robust software industry, albeit in the local language. But as soon as English as a limitation is handled, which will be done sooner than later, China will have a strong software as well as hardware industry.
As for R&D, everybody knows the hype with which the Media Lab Asia project took off. And crash-landed. The project was ill-conceived not because it does not have the potential to deliver, but because it was done without any preparation. Hence when an opportunity existed to have distributed research, and reverse the trend to always do reverse engineering in the name of R&D, it was wasted by politicians who were more interested in seeing that the development funds released by the government were controlled by a political appointee.
Although our reputation in IT far exceeds our real capabilities, it is still something we can be proud of. This pride is also due to the perception that reigns about the industry’s capability among people. It is in the industry’s interest to maintain this perception.