IT a superhighway for employment (II)

by Jaliya A. Wickramasekara

We can learn a good lesson from our neighbouring country India and we could lead our young generation towards the Information Technology (IT) horizon without making them addicted to go behind Bollywood film culture and allied areas blindly unless as entertainment to balance their mind.

India had strongly decided in 1997 to improve the IT sector, which was moving in an average rate according to a well-organised methodology. As a consequence of their timely decision they were able to improve this sector gradually and were able to earn US$ 12 billion (Rs. 1,200 billion) in 2004-05 from software and service exports, 34 percent higher than $ 9.2 billion in 2003-04,according to the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) of India. They have planned to increase this income up to US$ 50 billion by year 2008 including software exports and providing IT enabled services.

For IT industry mainly we require 'learnt human resources' as raw materials and computers and allied peripherals as machinery and telecommunication, with electricity as infrastructure facilities. India is having more than 160,000 software programmers and envisages 290,000 new engineering graduates joining the existing engineering pool of 2.1 million each year. In fact every year we are not utilising more than 100,000 students, who have passed the A/L examination and graduates. This is one of the good ways to slow down or gradually reverse the brain-drain to the West which becomes a great drawback to the country.

Most of the politicians considered them as a big headache as far as providing jobs are concerned but the reality is that these persons are a significant asset to the country. If we can concentrate on this sector we also can produce thousands of software programmers all-around the country. It is self-explanatory while having the basic raw materials we are struggling to improve the economy as well as to provide proper employment. In spite of relatively low literacy rate among the general population, India has several key advantages in human capital; a large pool of English-speaking population whereas global industry needs a world-class education, research and management institutes a direct result of investment in self-reliance in science and technology. As somebody has aptly put it, what Saudi Arabia is to oil, India is to software professionals. Why don't we try to be second only to India in this region?

In May 1998, former Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee Bharatia formed a National task force on IT and Software development to formulate a long-term national IT policy for the country and also to remove impediments for the growth of the IT industry.

Politician's role in India

The objective was to help India emerge as an IT superpower, with a target of US$ 50 billion for software exports by 2008. Adding new hardware exports and domestic sector requirements in hardware and software, the total size of the software industry is projected to reach US$ 100 billion by 2008. Prime Minister Vajpayee's technology-friendly government has firmly placed IT on the national agenda, and many states, encouraged by Bangalore-dubbed India's 'Silicon Valley' have formulated IT policies. This has further strengthened India's position in the software-driven IT sector in the world. The state policies focus on key issues of infrastructure such as electronic governance.

As a consequence the said reforms done by the Prime Minister Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a group strongly committed to economic and technological progress, won a solid victory in the general election in August 1999.

In the same year the central government, moving ahead with its plans for India to become a global IT superpower and announced the formation of a new ministry called Ministry of Information Technology.

IT education and training

High literacy rate of the country is a vital factor to improve the computer literacy knowledge among people. This opportunity is not on hand with African countries, China etc., which is very valuable for us. The only fact is that we should strengthen the English knowledge of the people who are in the remote areas. Apparently China can do more in this sector than India but they are lacking in opportunities of this nature because of the language barrier.

Most of the training institutes available in Sri Lanka are conducting their courses not in a proper direction as required but merely for commercial purposes only, hence the knowledge gained by students is going down the drain with the time. This situation is worse than having a driving licence and not driving a vehicle hence it will become useless with time.

On official matter I had an opportunity to visit several remote areas of the country such as Girandurukotte, Dehiattakandiya, Moneragala, Mahiyanganaya ..etc to meet owners of small-scale computer companies and I have seen the interest of the students to learn about computers and it's applications.

There is a border village with terrorist threats in Anuradhapura district called Mahawilachchiya where a computer lab is functioning and converted as an e-village by the help of ICT Agency and other organisations. One former English teacher who had initiated and wasn operating this e-village providing knowledge for poor students. Even if they do not have telephone lines they are browsing Internet, programming and designing WebPages with the help of WiFi technology. Though the roofs of most of the houses are fixed with metal sheets or other alternative materials the children are using computers in their homes even to do school assignments. Most of the students who are in the towns with all infrastructure facilities are not conversant with this knowledge they are not up to the standard of these poor but talented children.

This is a very good sign and we shouldn't demoralise their objective. If you follow a word-processing course in an IT school your parents might say my son/daughter is studying for computer engineering in a proud manner without knowing the simplicity of the word-processing course and provide money for their classes with lot of hope. Most of the IT schools are doing this business but the responsibility of the government is to guide them in the proper direction.

Resource centres

Semi-government institutes like NIBM can do better than now by going to outskirts of the country and also the UGC where they can use their university network (all 17 universities) not as separate bodies but as interconnected resource centres. The Open University (OUSL), which is run by the UGC, is having 18 study centers all over the country with computer laboratories could also utilise them according to an agenda. In order to carry out this, OUSL can start an IT degree in their Engineering faculty. Especially they have a well-equipped audio-visual center gifted by the Japanese government with all modern facilities, which again can be utilised as a modern tool to provide distance education for the people who are in remote areas via the television. This is an era of the universities in the world becoming the virtual campuses rapidly, because of the distance education concept. In fact the high TV penetration rate in the country will also help this purpose.

Government is conducting several projects such as 'Nena-sala' and teacher training program on computers under e-Sri Lanka project. It is noteworthy to state that the University of Colombo started Bachelor of Information Technology (BIT) external degree program several years ago and Kelaniya and Katubedda universities have also followed them subsequently. SLIIT is doing a tremendous job in this regard. UGC can start IT faculties in all universities with all facilities.

However we shouldn't do everything through the government sector but we should utilise the private sector as well. In fact some of the leading IT institutes are also doing very well with the help of their branch network and even producing graduates in the IT cordon in collaboration with foreign recognized and non-recognised bodies but government has to intervene and introduce proper standards otherwise we cannot gain the desired results. Conducting IT schools are a more profitable business than selling ICT (Information Communication Technology) related hardware products hence if the government can show them the correct path then they will produce programmers conversant with well-known software languages such as Oracle, Java ..etc. If any institute, which may be in either public or private sector, can easily recruit specialised lecturers in the field of IT from India for reasonable salaries since they have plenty of excess people. One of the pioneer computer companies where I have worked in mid 90s' obtained the services from the Indian lecturers for their computer school.

Higher wages

We should not forget the fact that this is one of the top industries in the world where you can earn higher salaries than doing traditional and well-known professions. Even several companies in Sri Lanka pay Rs. 30,000.00 as a starting salary for newly passed out graduates and within a very short period it will exceed Rs. half lakh limit. We should educate our parents in this regard then it will help them to direct their children to this industry for a better life. If you go especially to Matara and Galle districts you can see that most of the parents are trying to send their children by various means to the universities to do either Medicine or Engineering. If they fail to enter the university they will at least try to get through second or third shy in the A/L examination. But the reality I understood was we shouldn't do so, if we can open other avenues in the country. This will lead to save time (=age) , hard earned money and frustration created in the minds of the students and the parents because of the unnecessary competition. This culture should be changed gradually.

Computer usage

The government is in the process of popularising and making every opportunity for the usage of computers among the people. This is a great move, which we have seen the President after he took over the leadership of the country. Since the government waived off 15% VAT on computers with effect from early this year we have seen a tremendous sales of computers in the country.

However, waiving off the VAT component is not sufficient. As India did we should bring down taxes on computers and associated devices into 'zero' percentage. Then computers will become cheaper and affordable to most the important segment of the people.

Also some of the retailing companies, which entered into this field in order to sell computers through their easy payment schemes, have found different market segments. Among retailers some of them have started to sell under 'zero percent' interest rates and they are able to attract especially the lower middleclass people.

Some companies in Sri Lanka are concentrating only on selling IT products and solutions reached Rupees 4 billion turnover within a period of 10-years. But some retailers who are selling household items earned this revenue only after 100-years of business with low profit margins and high overheads in the recent past.

Therefore, there is a trend among some of the retailers in the country who have not yet considered selling IT products to enter into this industry.

The Department of Education in collaboration with Microsoft is selling low cost computers on and instalment basis under the e-Sri Lanka project and it became more popular and useful among schoolchildren and teachers. However, providing computers are not sufficient since if they cannot use them for a target and a valid requirement and this may create a tendency to sell them for higher prices so as to earn money like car permits sold by certain government servants given by the previous governments.

Some of the big computer companies are in the habit of selling computers competitively through their branches and thereby the usage of computers is further strengthened. I hope vendors of the IT hardware products have already identified the market size for the coming year. When we consider the IT products, carrying out the after sales service support is the key role. But most of the companies available in the country are one-time sellers, since once they sell a computer they do not look after their valued clients.

However, customers need efficient after sales services support for cost effective price on islandwide basis through a trustworthy 'service provider' in order to maintain their IT-products since these equipment fail due to various reasons unlike televisions. Therefore, there is a vacant slot in the market for a good service provider who can provide cost effective services with a strong customer oriented attitude focusing toward the total IT vision.

Likewise the private sector can look after the service and marketing side of the IT products.

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