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Tremendous National need for IT Professionals 
 
  

In the first article of a five part series on the future of Computer Science in India, we examined the recent phenomenon of the IT “Bubble Burst”. IT Bubble largely is a phenomenon that originated outside India. In this article we will examine facts and figures that show the importance of IT to the future of India.

There are tremendous initiatives being implemented in central and state governments, public and private sector undertakings as well as social service organizations, to widely spread the use of IT. The following facts may surprise you.

• Every government department is guided to spend 1 – 3% of its budget on procuring IT products and services every year. This translates to over Rs.5000 crores of national IT purchases and deployment every year.
• The Central Government encourages all companies, in IT as well as other sectors, to set aside 6% of their value added revenue to support education and training in IT. 
• The government has stated its intention to make available computers and Internet in every school, polytechnic college, university and public hospital in the country before the end of 2003.
• Premier national institutions (IIT’s, IISC, REC’s, etc) are encouraged to triple their out put of students in IT.Ř Not too far into the future, an IT course module shall be made a compulsory component of all degree courses in the country.
• Bar coding of every item sold in the country shall be made compulsory within a five-year period.
• Just the IT training (HRD) sector aims to achieve an export target of US$5 Billion (approximately Rs. 23000 crores) by 2005. The entire IT industry has a target of US$ 50 Billion. 
• All 600,000 existing public telephone/public call offices (PCO’s) will be transformed into multimedia information service centers by 2008. 

The above numbers indicate for opportunities in IT generated within India. In addition, multinational organizations are looking at India as one of the most promising destinations for outsourcing low-end as well as high-end development work in Computer Science. Over 70% of the top 100 IT companies in the world have already set up state-of-the-art development centers in India either by themselves or through collaboration with Indian IT companies.

In short, from the current 60,000 or so computer science diploma and degree holders produced per year in India, we will need to grow several times to cater to just the internal demand. Let us now see some specific areas where IT professionals are needed.

Programming: In addition to the conventional, promising software development and integration jobs, thousands of professionals are needed whose knowledge spans computer science plus one more area. CS + Industrial engineering, CS + Finance, CS + Applied mathematics are extremely attractive expertise areas sought by today’s employers.  
Customer Service: Large IT hardware and software organizations worldwide have realized the prudence of setting up their technical customer support centers in India. PC purchase worldwide has become a consumer/ retail activity rather than an institutional activity. Customization and customer service are important parts of the business of IT majors like Dell, IBM, etc. Computer science graduates with good communication skills ideally fit these requirements. It is expected that in customer service alone tens of thousands of jobs will become available in the next 2 years.

Research & Education: It is increasingly being acknowledged worldwide that Indian students possess a strong logical and mathematical abilities as well as the inquisitiveness required for research. Even internally in India, considerable research is required for Indianization of operating systems, applications and services. To impart IT training to school students, teachers, existing work force, etc, a large number of trained professionals in computer science are required. 
If so many opportunities are available one may wonder why some students graduating in computer science are failing to find attractive jobs. This is because these students lack some essential skills. A successful computer science graduate should have adequate skills and competencies in the following areas, in order to be attractive for Indian and multinational employers.

Domain Knowledge : In crucial areas like networks, databases and programming skills, student should possess up-to-date knowledge. Familiarity with recent subject areas such as wireless, embedded systems and knowledge-based systems would be welcomed by employers.

 
Software process and quality: Each graduate computer science student, irrespective whether they are completing BE, MCA, MSC, etc, should understand how software development happens in the real world. They should know software engineering practices and quality criteria. Knowledge about software certification systems such as SEI-CMM will be greatly appreciated by employers.

Communication Skills and Personal Effectiveness: Very few software engineers know to speak. Even fewer know to write. Employers are greatly attracted towards software professionals whose domain skills are matched or even surpassed by their communication and people skills. In the knowledge economy, fewer and fewer professionals have the luxury of being long insulated from the customers. This means that computer science graduates should particularly place emphasis on their communication skills and soft skills. 
In the next article on the future of computer science, we will discuss specific higher education opportunities in computer science along with their relevance.

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