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National Development Figure 2: Indian IT is a worldwide business. of such rare COTS skill-sets include Geneva, in billing and Clarify in CRM and BEA. In each case, an opportunity is created. Education for life In the West, lifetime education has become a fashionable talking point. Leading management writers have waxed lyrical about aspects of the subject from the learning organisation to knowledge management. Still, success is, as yet, comparatively rare. Yet in India, it is a reality, fundamental to corporate culture and embraced by workforces. Employee surveys across the IT industry report routinely that staff place such culture at the top of their requirements, alongside more obvious factors such as pay and rewards, and the international opportunities afforded by the IT world. It is often the educational opportunity, which becomes the critical decision-making factor. This mutual commitment is reflected in staff loyalty. The average rate of employee attrition in the Indian IT industry is about 15 per cent; in Europe comparable employers expect double the churn. The staff tell their friends and family they are happy, too. In fact, the buddy system is a primary recruitment source. The policy of continuous development of staff is matched by a steady rise in corporate standards. Most Indian IT companies operating globally are certified to international quality standards like CMM and ISO 9000, a further testament of seriousness. are now prime contractors for bluechip businesses worldwide. They provide innovative design skills as well as cost-effective coding. Rather than just react, they lead and benefit from staff members who are respected at every level. In December 2003, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology reported that, "Maintaining Indias momentum and share of this global opportunity will depend on its ability to create and make available a growing and appropriately skilled pool of talent. While India is well positioned today, high growth aspirations demand that adequate actions be taken to ensure that supply-side constraints do not prevent us from realising the potential of the opportunity." True, India cannot rest, but its opportunity is great. Continuously higher investment in its burgeoning neural network benefits all — whether employed in the IT industry or not. A better developed workforce will enable Indian IT to increase its penetration of the world market, enhancing financial returns for its companies, their staff, and the wider community. Then too, the benefit extends globally. As Indias participation in, and contribution to, the world economy grows apace India is playing its own substantial part in global growth. Collectively, these represent rich dividends for Indias commitment over the past two decades and are a testament to the strength of its neural network, but this, perhaps, is only the beginning. www.connect-world.com Visit the decision makers’ forum for ICT driven development on line. Here you can preview past issues, upcoming events and contributing author’s from across the globe. Subscribe to receive Connect World Highlights, a fortnightly on line news letter to keep you up to date with the latest happenings in the ICT world. Visit Connect-World at Beyond bodyshopping So Indian IT today is moving far beyond its bodyshopping roots, to a situation where its leading companies www.connect-world.com 16
National Development From tortoise to hare: the transformation of Indian telecom by Dr Arun Mehta, Chief Technical Officer, Net Radiophony India Government controlled Department of Telecommunications or DOT was Indias primary supplier of phone services and its telecom regulator. When India opened its market, private companies had little choice in the technologies they could use; DOT could use anything. New entrants paid high licence fees; DOT paid none. To level the field and attract investors, a regulatory agency—TRAI—was established, but court battles, and DOTs resistance, defeated its efforts. A special court now handles telecom disputes and the sector is growing. Dr Arun Mehta is currently the Chief Technical Officer of Net Radiophony, India; a Director of Kaleidoscope Private Limited a film and TV production company and the President of the Society for Telecommunications Empowerment (STEM), which seeks to bring the benefits of modern telecommunications to the poor. Dr Mehta, an electrical engineer and computer scientist is also a high profile social activist, an ex-President of the Indian Section of Amnesty International and was the co-host of a weekly IT news programme. The multi-talented Dr Mehta, a consultant to firms and organisations, large and small, for many years is the author of eLocutor, a system to meet the communication needs of Professor Stephen Hawking. Arun Meta studied and taught in India the US and Germany. Dr Mehta earned his Doctorate from Ruhr University, Germany, a MS in Computer Science from the State University of New York and a Bachelor of Technology in Electrical Engineering (First Class with Distinction) from IIT Delhi. He speaks Hindi, English, German, and French. At the start of the 1990s, telecommunications was a government monopoly. The Department of Telecommunications (DOT) was the sole supplier of phone connections in the country, except in Delhi and Mumbai, where MTNL, also totally government controlled, was the supplier. International communications was the preserve of VSNL, also a government-owned entity. Together, they constituted what might be called the DOT family. In a country with a population of almost a billion, there were just 5.1 million phone lines in 1990 — roughly one for every 200 people. The DOT made telecom policy, implemented it, and acted as the regulator. A phone was considered a luxury, so those who used theirs a lot were charged at a higher rate. Around this time, the Indian state neared bankruptcy, and was even forced to sell some of its gold reserves to stay afloat. Rapid liberalisation and the dismantling of state monopolies was not just a path to faster economic growth, but also of quickly refilling the state coffers. In 1994, the National Telecom Policy was announced, which allowed the private sector to bid for licenses in different states. The DOT, an entity directly threatened by this, was put in charge of formulating and implementing this policy. The policy did not address key questions essential for the private sector to function in this area, including those of rights of way to lay cables, and spectrum allocation for wireless communications. The over enthusiasm of the private sector for what it saw as boundless possibilities for growth in a telecommunicationsstarved country led it to bid absurdly high sums for licenses. The combination was a sure recipe for disaster. By 1999, it was clear that the licence fee regime was not working and an alternative had to be found. The problems with changing the terms of the licence arrangement midstream were several: besides questions regarding the propriety of providing relief to large and rich multinationals, there was also the question of the reaction of losing parties in the licence bidding, who could legitimately feel aggrieved for being punished for having bid responsibly. In an admission that the DOT could not be relied upon to come up with workable policy, a taskforce called the Group on Telecom (GoT) was set up to formulate a new telecom policy. A complicated scheme for migration to a revenue-sharing arrangement was announced, under which the telecom companies had to still pay a share of their overdue licence fees. 17
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