Indian IT, soccer and Misc

I thought of writing this blog at Work because the feelings would be more justified that way. This post is an outcome of the dissapointment that Indians like us suffer when we find that all we do every year is support a Brazil or an Argentina or a Spain for the World Cup Soccer. How does it feel when you are sitting in front of the LCD monitor at work during a WC game everytime and someone pops out this question - Why does India never qualify for the World Cup? You guys lost to Lebanon this year in the first round? You guys are 133rd in the World Ranking? Well embarassing indeed. It's sad to see that all the money in India goes into Cricket which we call our religion but then Cricket has never been a world sports - and by the likes of it - it would never be. Anyway this post is not about Indian Sports rather it's about the Indian IT.

Hell yeah, if you have to compare anything to the Soccer in Brazil that runs with the same passion in India - It is the Indian IT industry. After living in Canada for the past 8 odd months, i have realized that parents in India have no intentions of producing a Diego Maradona or for that matter a player of any smaller stature. Reason is simple, we go for the safest bet of them all - Education. Sports is not big in India. The reason is not lack of nutrition but lack of money. A sports person in India is not guaranteed of a future - but a IT guy, yeah sure he is. We Indians are quite instinctive. I remember when i was getting admitted for my Engineering and that i had chosen IT as my stream of Studies - A lot of people gave a lot of opinions about it because of the post 9/11 after effects. But then IT survived, and as i can see reality - India would be the biggest exporter even going forward for the next 20 years minimum. It is slowly becoming like playing football in the streets of Brazil. Every nook and corner of the Streets in India has a infotech company or an Engineering School teaching the two basic streams - Computer Science and IT. A staggering 400,000 engineers were produced by India in 2010. That's like 10% of Canada's total population. I know studies say that only 25% of them are worth working for a multi-national company - that too leaves the figure at 100,000 people.

However, the sad side of the story is that we are not investing much on innovating - We are mostly renovating. If you go to a market in whichever part of the world - there is 90% chance that you would be using a product made in China. Now i also understand that India can never be China. A normal Indian guy wants to supervise work or fights for that day when he can do that - you cannot even dare imagine the work culture that a Chinese man would go through if you compare it with India. Well let it be that way then. Let's do it our own way - but let's make a product of our own - An Indian Product. I don't take away anything from the Services sector at all - I have heard terrible reviews/comments from people here about our work in the BPO sector - but then face reality - India again is the biggest exporter of Call Centers. If i dig more to find out why we could do it - true, the dollar is a BIG factor but then a normal Indian doesn't "live" is life like the way a normal guy in the west would do. We value work as our source of money, entertainment and amusement. At work here, we leave office by 6 max. No one wants to stay beyond that. But in India i have hardly left office at 6 in the past 2 years. How do we celebrate? - Eat food at good restaurants and save a lot of money.

Going forward, India will produce gallons of MBAs. I would say it's a good sign in a way - but the fact remains - that you can either manage or you just can't. A degree is just an aspiration to your desires for more money. So we should know our strengths and invest on that - which is not always being the manager. I would wish to see more money put into grooming people in Engineering or other fields of Education. Good faculty and rising awareness on faculty management would be just an added benefit. The professors in the IITs and NITs are getting older now - we need to have a concise movement in that region. As the new age comes forward - I can see India shining all the way. I don't boast because i am an Indian but the fact of the crux is that - Even though population is our biggest concern, it is our biggest strength too.

I hope the dots were connected well enough for you to make any sense out of this post. Eventually i wrote it over a period of a week. So until next time - Signing off!