Produce high calibre software professionals - IT expert

If the Indian software professionals have caught the eyes of the Americans, this one has captured the ears of Uncle Sam. That is Prof. Raj Reddy. He was an adviser to the former U.S. President, Mr. Bill Clinton. And, he continues to advice the Bush regime on IT-related subject. He was in Chennai to receive the honorary doctorate award from Anna University for his contribution to the field of research on human computer interaction and artificial intelligence. He took time off to have a free-wheeling chat with K.T. Jagannathan. Excerpts:

QUESTION: Has the demand for information technology professionals gone in the wake of the economic slowdown?

ANSWER: The need for high quality IT professionals is going to increase. People who have been trained to do Y2K, Cobal-type of things and those who have become Java programmers after taking a one-month course, the need for such types of things will probably go. Graduates who have been trained in computer science in universities which offer high quality education will have a huge demand.

What kind of an impact the slowdown is having on the Indian software professionals?

The first thing many who used to prefer onsite jobs do as they begin cutting cost is to get rid of contract programmers. They are also shrinking lot of other things. Soon, however, they will see all of those things they used to do have to be still done. So, there will be a lot more employment offsite in India. Many of these companies will come and start either their own activities or join hands with major companies such as the TCS, Satyam and Wipro and do activities here rather than do onsite jobs.

The IT has done a lot to the Indo-U.S. relationship. What kind of an impact the slowdown will have on the long-term economic ties between the two countries?

The relationship between the two countries is based on a few things. One is strategic. Two, the democratic values. Third, the commerce. In commerce, information technology has been one of the major sources of communication and community building. Many who were influential earlier are still influential. As they say, their lot is down to last billion. They still have a billion. In that sense, it is not the case that the entire U.S-India relationship is based on large number of people going and working in the U.S.

Software exports to the U.S. have brought lot of visibility to India in the global arena. Will the slowdown cloud this visibility?

There are over million-and-a-half Indian people in America. May be 100,000 -200,000 will come back. Still there will be significant section left there.

What prescription will you suggest given the current IT scene?

It is all going to be on the basis of self-help. The U.S. will do whatever is in its best interest. Likewise, India has to do whatever is in its best interest. So, I think educating our people into high calibre professionals is probably the single most important thing we can do. If you have a high quality education, then these people will be successful no matter where they are. And, there will be need for them.

What could be your advice to the Indian software industry?

The first thing they have to do is to consolidate and continue to be profitable. This means they should discontinue their weak operations. There are lot of other smaller operations that have been started - copycat-type things. Many of them don't have professional support and management. They will close down by themselves because it would not be practical for them to succeed. People who have unique ideas and do their business efficiently will succeed.

The slowdown has resulted in job loss, cut in salary level and the like. Will it force people to move away from software to other areas?

Some of that will happen. Basically those who have got into this after one week or one month training won't be able to sustain. They will have to get out and do something else. The companies, however, will continue to need high calibre IT professionals. They will be paid respectable salaries. What happened in the last couple of years is that there is a significant salary inflation. People were getting paid huge salaries and many of them suddenly find they can't justify their salaries. The best matrix will be where they will get the 1995-96 starting salaries and not 1999. Those were pretty good salaries.

The shift towards onsite jobs one sees now - will this get reversed at all?

They won't get reversed. As the bandwidth gets expanded substantially, the physical distance won't matter. Increasingly the trend will be towards lot more off-site jobs here in India. So MNCs will hire people and set up operations here either through joint ventures or through their own facilities like what HP and General Electric did. In all cases, people will be educated and located here. A few alone will go out. Most of the people will be employed here.

A McKinsey report release recently says India is capable of exporting $47 billion worth software by 2010. Is it feasible?

Yes. The total IT industry is around $700-800 billion. It will grow to trillion. May be more than half of it will be software. It is not unreasonable to expect India to do 10 per cent of this. This is what they have predicated. It is not unreasonable.

With the Chinese too getting into the software, what kind of competitive advantage India can hope to have?

Our competitive advantage has always been our ability in English. That they are going to catch up. The second I think is the somewhat more cosmopolitan nature of our society. Both Japan and China are much more uniform and insular.

What could be your advice to the U.S. and Indian governments on the IT front?

We are advising the U.S. government that there is going to be a shortage of software professionals. We need to train the U.S. citizens as IT professionals. In so far as they are not available or not keeping up with the growth, the U.S. will have to seek to import immigrants from countries like India. And, the advice to the Indian government will be that in order to take advantage of the opportunities, we will have to have a highly trained high quality manpower.

The absence of thrust on products by the Indian software industry - how does it impede export efforts?

It is not that important. If you look at IBM, its most profitable venture is solutions. That are all services. So products will be needed up to some points. We must have an hardware industry. We must make PCs.

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