DEVELOPMENT-INDIA: Bill Gates Points Hurdles to ‘IT Superpower’ Status

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Sep 15 2000 (IPS) - The world’s richest man was even more impressed with what he saw on his second visit to India, but computer software tycoon Bill Gates also noted hurdles to this country becoming an “IT (information technology) superpower.”

Gates emphasised that India had emerged as a major global IT hub not because of the availability of low-cost skills, as many believe. Rather, it had more to do with the “quality” and “world class skills” to be found in India, he said.

“The key is the quality of the human talent here. When people do software projects in India, they do so because this is the place they can find people with latest skills. It is not on the (cheap) price (of labour),” he was quoted as saying by ‘The Times of India’ newspaper.

Gates’ announcement of a 50-million U.S. dollar expansion plan for his company ‘Microsoft Corp’s’ development centre in the southern city of Hyderabad was seen as a ‘vote of confidence’ in India’s human resources, despite a shabby infrastructure and persisting mass poverty.

Speaking to reporters, Gates referred to the big change he saw in the Indian government’s attitude to IT since his last visit three years ago. He referred to the setting up of the new IT ministry and the fact that the chief ministers of 10 state governments came to see him.

“Three years ago there was just Chief Minister Naidu with his laptop,” Gates recalled, referring to Chandrababu Naidu who heads the southern Andhra Pradesh state government based in Hyderabad.

He appreciated the growing popularity of ‘e-governance’ among Indian state governments. First introduced in Andhra Pradesh by Naidu, this is making day-to-day administration more accessible to people living in the remotest parts of the sprawling state.

However, Gates’ announcement of Microsoft’s expansion plans was tempered by a 25-million dollar basic health care grant for Andhra Pradesh. He gave another five million dollars to train students from poor families in Andhra Pradesh in the use of computers.

He also took time out from his busy 24-hour visit to go to a low-income squatter colony in the Indian capital to personally feed polio vaccine drops to infants.

Gates, however, complained that communication costs in India were still “too high”. This, along with slow “deregulation”, was holding back the growth of the IT sector in India, he said.

According to N.R. Narayana Murthy, chief of ‘Infosys Technologies’, which is Microsoft’s main partner in India, the Indian IT industry will have to spend some three billion dollars annually over the next several years on building the needed physical and technological infrastructure.

One of the priorities, according to Narayanamurthy is to make Indian roads world class. He said that Infosys employees often complain about the daily drive to work in the southern city of Bangalore.

Microsoft and Infosys jointly announced a “strategic global alliance” to develop “e-business solutions”.

Microsoft’s other Indian partners include ‘Satyam Computer Services’ and ‘Wipro’, the latter headed by the now legendary Indian IT industry leader Aziz Premji.

Gate’s company, which has been in India for the past decade, has been followed by other big international IT players.

In August, global IT networking giant ‘Cisco Systems Inc’ announced a fresh investment of 150 million dollars to upgrade its research and development facility in Bangalore to make it the company’s biggest outside the United States.

But such investments alone cannot help without massive investments in infrastructure, specially in the government-monopolised telecom sector, say critics.

A report prepared last year for the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM), by global consultants McKinsey, said that with the right infrastructure, jobs in software and related services could jump seven-fold jump to 2.2 million by the year 2008.

While Gates had high praise for the “quality of educational institutions which could make India into an IT super power”, critics say these are the preserve of a privileged few, backed by huge government subsidies at the cost of basic education.

Rather than helping the country, as originally intended, most graduates from the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), leave the country for lucrative jobs in the industrialised nations, they say.