The technology landscape is undergoing significant changes in the current world, and it is redefining ways in which technology interacts with humans. About half a century ago, the computer was perceived to be an elusive daemon, sitting in a research and development lab with a world market for maybe five units. The variables in the information technology industry are very transient in nature. Even today it would be very difficult to predict how the industry will evolve in the coming decades. But with proper positioning, the very same challenges can present us great opportunities for the IT industry in the state of Telangana and India. In a country like India, government policies, programmes and services must ensure positive outcomes for all stakeholders by evolving a holistic approach in which people are at the centre of governance and automation.
One of the major challenges confronting the IT industry today is “technology adaptation”. The latest buzz in the IT industry is SMAC (social, mobility, analytics on big data and cloud computing). Some term it as the fifth wave of the IT architecture. With the social media gaining momentum, the industry has to shift from being largely client focused to individual consumer focused. One study indicates that there is a market worth $1.3 trillion in social technologies. The last decade saw a huge proliferation of the mobile market and more and more citizens are moving to smarter devices even in places such as Sircilla, a highly rural area which I represent. Also, 4G services are right around the corner. Government departments are one of the highest data producers and yet we rarely utilise any of that data in making intelligent decisions, be it for conceiving new schemes or streamlining the existing ones. For example, application of big data analytics on the data in the transportation and the civil supplies departments can reveal that a person who bought a luxury car holds a white ration card. This is one example where technology can directly save public exchequer lots of money and lead to better governance. Cloud technology is critical for businesses to succeed, especially for small and medium businesses which can avoid procuring and maintaining hardware/software and focus instead on their core competencies.
Information technology relies primarily on human resources. The workforce needs to be very versatile in the rapidly changing technology landscape. Along with good technology skills, the employee is expected to possess superior communication skills as well as soft skills to be able to work with global clients. In most cases s/he is expected to be client-facing, i.e. understanding the needs of the client and suggest technology solutions that would directly affect the bottomline. With companies focused on growing their per employee revenue, it is imperative that the workforce is well trained in cutting-edge technologies.
With this in mind, we have taken up multiple initiatives in our state, Telangana, to develop and encourage innovation and creative thinking. Our aim is to create an enabling environment where any new idea or solution can flourish and prosper. One of the first big initiatives has been to set up a technology and business incubation centre called T-Hub. This hub will act as an anchor for the start-up ecosystem in the state and provide budding entrepreneurs with mentorship and guidance in their journey towards building a successful venture. We plan to collaborate with the industry, academia and financial institutions to ensure availability of all kinds of resources that might be required by a start-up.
Another focus area for us has been enhancing skill levels and creative thinking among the youth. With over 100,000 students graduating from 350-odd engineering colleges every year, the government has the challenge of addressing the quality and employability of these students. The number of students graduating from Telangana alone is about 70 per cent of the entire engineering produce of the United States. The problem here is that the number of engineering colleges grew rapidly in a span of hardly five or six years without accounting for quality. We need to address the issues of infrastructure, faculty and content of the entire ecosystem. We are creating a TASK (Telangana Academy for Skill and Knowledge) to promote linkages between academic institutions, research institutes and the industry, and thus improving the educational standards and employability of the graduates. The ultimate goal for TASK is to increase digital literacy among the underprivileged and rural population and facilitate the creation of new job opportunities and innovation.
The United States offers the perfect example of an ecosystem where universities work very closely with R&D institutes. A university like MIT incubates over 200 companies every year from its internal research. In Telangana, we would like to promote R&D in our engineering colleges in a big way. We have several premier institutes such as the NIT Warangal, BITS Pilani, IIT Hyderabad, IIIT Hyderabad, etc., that can engage in advanced research and act as hub institutes for disseminating their knowledge to Tier-2 and Tier-3 colleges.
We also plan to introduce early interventions at the high school level for students to get introduced to communication skills, soft skills, application oriented thinking, lateral thinking for creating better inputs into the higher education stream. The government is cognisant of the supply-demand issue and we need to carefully make policy decisions so that we are not creating inflation in any of the higher education streams.
The IT economy is still a new economy and is undergoing constant yet rapid changes. We need to effectively adapt to these changes, generate wealth and ensure equitable distribution. There is a lot of hope across the state in the IT sector, especially among the rural youth who are aspiring for jobs in this sector. Innovation, entrepreneurship, R&D, academic interventions and proper skilling of our manpower is absolutely essential to sustain high growth rates in the industry.
The writer is Telangana minister for information technology and panchayat raj
