Monday, Jun 23, 2003
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By Anand Parthasarathy
Earlier last week the CII released a survey that suggested that Information Technology, biotech and pharmaceuticals were three areas in China waiting for the canny Indian entrepreneur. The domestic IT market in China was huge — $ 12 billion worth, this year itself — that Indian IT companies could fill large chunks of this need, CII said. *This will be among opportunities explored on June 26, when the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, inaugurates a first-ever IT summit in Shanghai, organised by the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM). At present, Indian IT software and services for China account for about Rs. 25 crores a year — a tiny fraction of her global exports. *India's largest IT trainer NIIT, is all set to increase presence in China beyond the 100 centres achieved earlier this year. The company has created a special `e-Tian Tong' syllabus in Mandarin. *So many Indian IT professionals hot footing it to Chinese IT centers — the majority from the southern States — has created a culinary opportunity that the Taj Pavilion in Beijing has seized: As of this week, `idli', `masala dosa' and `vada' will be on the menu. IT is one arena where the disparities between the two countries are not all on one side: China's internet bandwidth is about 7 times more than India's; the number of telephones may be 10 times as much and in the personal computer count, the dragon may gobble up nearly five times more than the tiger. But things look different when the human resources and their output are totted up. The Indian software professional base still outweighs China's five fold and software exports are nearly 6 times more. Salaries are comparable though wages in India in the IT sector are marginally lower. IT industry visitors to China come back full of praise for the way they get things done there. The pace of change is most dramatic in traditional trading centres such as Shanghai — whose long Waitan waterfront along the river was once the mightiest trading centre of the Colonial powers at the turn of the 19th century. The old British and French skyline still survives — but across the creek looms the futuristic skyline of the new Pu Dong district, home for the city's second international airport and almost all its 21st century enterprise. Since January this year, you can travel from Pu Dong airport to downtown Shanghai by the world's first magnetic levitation train. But the hype about China's giant strides into the future notwithstanding, some things are curiously out of sync. There are two competing government-owned telecom providers and the phone cards of the two are not interchangeable. A canny visitor learns to buy one of each to remain connected. Indian visitors who carry global roaming cell phones often find that the feature does not always work in China. And lay visitors who are used to the ubiquitous `cyber café' that provides Internet connections at around Rs. 20 an hour almost all over India, will have to look hard or ask locals the way to the nearest Internet café. They are by no means so common — and unless someone has written out the word for `Internet' in Chinese for you, it may be difficult to make your need understood. Another surprise awaits those who think their international credit cards will serve them in places like Shanghai. Many of the middle rung establishments — similar in standard to Bangalore's Commercial Street, Delhi's Karol Bagh or Chennai's Usman Road areas — will ask for cash. Perhaps that is why the city is chock-a- block with automatic cash dispensers. In the Malappuram district of Kerala these days, citizens are being motivated to have at least one computer-literate member in a family. The State Government's `Akshaya' project is already being hailed as one of the most exciting IT drives in the world for the lay person. This is an investment that the State Government considers to be necessary — as important as attracting global IT players. As the jumbo entourage of the Prime Minister exclaims over the justifiably rapid strides that China has made in creating the environment for global business, it might also reflect that the compulsions of a democratic way of life imposes social burdens that may slow down roller coaster rides into the future. Sometimes you have to slow down to carry your people with you. As the crouching tiger checks out the markets of the hidden dragon, that might be cause for a sobering thought or two.
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