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INFORMATION
TECHNOLOGY
Knowledge
Based Industries-Networking for Global Leadership:
Pravasi Bharatiya Divas
January 10, 2004
India
needs to address domestic IT-and BT opportunities
first, sell to the world later: Shourie
There is need to position
India as world class provider of services
and products which have a potential of creating
10 million jobs, said R Ramaraj, MD
& CEO, Sify, and the chair of the session
on the Knowledge-Based Industries: Networking
for Global Leadership. He also suggested
that appropriate changes in curriculum should
be made to accommodate the needs of the
industry.
Moving up the value chain
is alright, said Kiran Karnik, chairman,
NASSCOM, but what is more important is building
on the value chain, which can be achieved
by creating intellectual products. This
again is possible, he added, if the professionals
are able to understand the sectoral challenges
and device solutions. But another associated
challenge is creating an environment in
which the industry champions feels best
to operate. And finally, marketing to the
global customers what is created. Mr Karnik
also drew attention to the huge potential
of the front-end R&D potential.
India was a knowledge society
long time ago, said Dr Krishna Ella,
one of the speaker in the session and MD,
Bharat Biotech International Ltd., as the
very basis of information generation and
its storage, "0" was invented
here. And, it has the potential of becoming
a knowledge society today as well if the
right kind of incentives are provided to
the already existing huge pool of trained
people, e.g. India has the second largest
trained manpower in the area of Bio-technology.
He said that because of
long gestation period in the area of biotechnology
not many venture capitalists are coming
up. This can be overcome if the government
provides long- term incentive and support
to VCs in this area.
However, to leverage India's
potential most in the area of biotechnology,
what is most required is to align life sciences
with information technology, which is possible
if IT professionals also learn the basic
concepts of the life sciences and the major
area of immediate interest is the pharmaceutical
sector.
All this is possible in
an environment of fast connectivity, which
is yet to reach the global standards. Broadband,
he added is the answer to this challenge,
which has a low penetration in India as
of now, pointed out Pradman P Paul,
CEO, Hughes Network Systems. The idea is
to connect to anywhere, anytime and from
anywhere. Satellite -Broadband could be
the answer to this challenge.
Arun Shourie, Minister,
IT & Communications, said in his keynote
address that creation and application of
knowledge within the country is as much
important as it is beyond the boundaries
of the country. There are profit opportunities
in the country and the same can be converted
into export opportunities. Currently our
attitude is that we do what has succeeded
abroad rather than addressing our own needs.
For example, he added, our expertise in
the area of multilingual computing can be
later applied to countries that are multi-lingual
like South Africa. India also needs to work
on how best to use the extensive network
of copper lines for broadband. He agreed
with Mr Karnik that India has to create
a world class work environment or what he
referred to as the right kind of eco-system
for work.
Mr Shourie drew the attention
of the NRI community to the responsive polices
of the government in the area of IT what
he termed as moving away of power from the
state to society. He enumerated some of
the major areas in which joint projects
with NRIs have been already started. NRI
community is the EYES & EARS of India
in dealing with the rest of the world. But
Indian firms have to realize that there
is no option to R & D, either they do
it or they perish.
K. K. Jaswal, Secretary,
Ministry of Information Technology said
that Ministry is planning to create a support
system of Knowledge Bank through Research
& Development efforts. The areas covered
in this system would be of high performance
computing which will include Natural Language,
Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Security
and Digital Library. Other areas will cover
the Curriculum Development. Under this curriculum
development comes the non-Formal Information
Technology Education & Training and
Infrastructure development to cover the
gap analysis between industries need and
available resources.
Paying attention to the Economic System
issues, he said that the Tariff structure
of the Hardware sector needs to be rationalized,
Venture Funding needs to be created and
encouraged and the attitude of Bankers need
to be changed. He also said that the Government
might create a Credit Guard fund. At the
end he said that we can achieve all this
through Indian and Diaspora support.
The Indian global community
can only help the Indian businesses in competing
on merit, added Neville J Roach,
chairman, Fujitsu-Australia, and the Indian
government needs to think beyond US in terms
of outsourcing- clientele and take Australia
seriously.
Some
other major areas of concern pointed out
were:
Dr Zareen K Araoz: (President,
Managing Across Boarders)
Creating the culture of innovation and work
environment and they need to learn to be
punctual. Instead of overselling, they need
to understand the clients, especially the
Japanese. They can certainly get the Diaspora
-help in all this but homework on how best
to manage the cross-cultural issues is important.
Dr Mani Bhaumik: (President,
Heliotronics Inc)
There is need to take the high end scientific
research, say e.g. the area of laser technology,
to the users and consumers, which is capable
to repairing retina without the conventional
operation.
Dr Saroj Basak:
(VP, Celprogen Inc)
The business of biotechnology has also to
be understood from discovery through development
and marketing, in which the help of the
NRI community can be critical. Dr Basak
is an entrepreneur as well as a teacher.
He is Asst. Professor, California University.
He also said that there is the potential
of creating niche for every entrepreneur,
without much of investment.
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