Department of Information Technology, Government of West Bengal (www.itwb.org) is doing a remarkable work in supporting and nurturing IT industry in the state of West Bengal. Their investor-friendly approach and innovative action-oriented leadership has changed West Bengal over last five years. I am fortunate to be doing business in this state in such exciting times!

They have put up their vision as:

• To Rank among top-3 IT States of India by 2010
• Contribute 15% - 20% of the country’s total IT revenues
• Create leadership position in executing high value-added IT work - developed through intellectual leadership and supported by Government initiatives

Their solid track record might just enable them to pull up and meet these targets. However, I seriously doubt that this position can be achieved and / or sustainable in long term. There are two core issues, which if not checked immediately will result in serious decline in the position that has been created with the initial efforts.

1. The poor quality of education
2. Indifferent attitude towards homegrown small and medium sized IT companies

Poor quality of education

Knowledge industry needs top quality human resource that are well educated, thoroughly knowledgeable and well groomed. Unfortunately our education system is inadequate and we are not creating employable talent.

• IT education has become a low paid job and is mostly taken up by individuals who are unable to make it to the professional ranks in IT companies.
• The education system is still based on text-books and spoon-fed course materials. Reading outside the prescribed text-books is hardly encouraged and/or practiced. This has resulted in a huge pool of IT resource pool with no individuality and poor problem solving capabilities.
• Quality education has become privilege of an elite few who go to the top ranking institutions and comprise less than 1% of the total resource pool. It is unfortunate that most of these individuals decide to join companies outside India for better pay-packages draining away one-million-per-student from taxpayers money!
• IT education has been limited to "programming"! I have spoken to thousands of It graduates and they have no idea that there are career opportunities in fields like testing, publishing, project management, etc.
• Current education system revolves around imparting IQ and not EQ, which is most important for success
• The current education system is biased towards commercially successful companies and their technologies like Microsoft and Sun. Low cost and easy-to-implement open source frameworks are ignored and are positioned as "alien" technologies which "does not have any career opportunities" to the students.
• The general attitude, that has been built up among youngsters who are going for a job is to find a safe-secure job in a reputed stable company. They are not encouraged to take risk and help grow new leaders for the economy. It is very important to have a general "rough it out" attitude to make a place a hot destination for growing great companies. This is the reason some locations are very successful in creating great companies, while others lack far behind.

Indifferent attitude towards homegrown small and medium sized IT companies

I have personally felt that the state government has an indifferent attitude towards homegrown small and medium sized IT companies. It seems that their action plan clearly talks about getting external investment from successful IT companies worldwide. In short term this looks like a very good solution as it will get major investment in a short period of time and they will find their graph moving towards their projected figures. However in long term, it is very difficult to achieve sustainable and long term growth without tapping into the local entrepreneurial capabilities.

If you see the IT industry in Kolkata, you will hardly find a homegrown IT company who features among the top software exporters from West Bengal. In fact most of the home grown companies collectively do not employ even 25% IT workforce of Kolkata. We do not have any national hero or brand, which has made a mark on the national / global platform. When we go to global expositions like IndiaSoft and CeBIT, you do not see any company from West Bengal competing against the national players in the global marketplace.

Some basic reasons I can see are:

• There is no affordable workspace for small and medium sized IT companies except SDF Building and a couple other locations built and operated by government or a government agency like Webel. There is major discrepancy in allocation of office space and land to small and medium sized businesses.
• The law and order system is not up to the mark and in tune with possible cyber crimes. 90% of the police stations do not have any idea about cyber crime. If they land up investigating one, they will try to get rid of the same by harassing you to an extent that you will give up. Most of the police workforce is either not trained about white collar crime or they pretend not to know the subject. It is a known fact that crime rate is highest in small and medium sized enterprises, and most of them go unnoticed.
• We get to deal with government official everyday, who does not know their own work. They come from different departments and confuse you to such an extent that you see no other option, but to bribe them and satisfy them!
• Government is more interested in job creation than value creation. They are less interested in the quality and sustainability of jobs that are being created. Also, there is lesser emphasis on profitability of companies that exist. The economic eco-system works on value creation, which leads of job creation. This is not the other way around.  
• Small and medium sized IT companies are not communicated the benefits they are entitled to! This results in a scenario that all the benefits are enjoyed by a select few.
• The benefit claim process is very cumbersome and an IT business which needs a level of agility to perform optimally will not be able to claim the benefits they are entitled to, unless they put in considerable amount of effort behind the same or forge the paperwork!

Again, I personally believe that it is not the responsibility of educational institutions and government to push a business. However, for economic growth of a state which has been lying at the bottom of the economic chart for last thirty years, there needs to be initiative to creative a conductive environment.

Without most of these issues addressed, I do not see any long term sustainable growth of IT industry in West Bengal.

I wish I am wrong.

Abhishek

A lot has been talked about call center outsourcing.

We have heard and seen how it is changing the lifestyle statement for the young Indians who are now earning a handsome salary and (many of them) living a bohemian lifestyle!

On the other hand there have been voices against it for reasons ranging from cultural differences, inappropriate implementation and job losses.

It is nothing less than a “boom”, similar to that we have seen in the dot-com era. And yes, a “bust” is inevitable. I am not drawing an analogy between sunrise-sunset and boom-bust. But, the reason is more deep rooted.

The model of call center outsourcing needs unprecedented changes in socio cultural changes which cannot take place at a pace businesses expect. This is a fact - even if it brings a sigh of relief or sounds very depressing.

Let us consider the situation at both the ends:-

Hundreds of companies from USA and Europe are outsourcing inbound and outbound call center operations to operators in India. Most of these operators hire young graduates (and sometimes even undergraduates) at attractive pay scale and train them. They are trained in western culture, accent and lifestyle (by showing them TV serials).

Let us see their priorities in brief:-

• Money (live life king size)
• Entertainment
• Friends
• Career!

Yes, the last one was “career”. I have spoken to many call center executives and very few of them consider the current job to be their goal. They understand that their current job does not have enough scope to add value and they need to move up the value chain to make an alternate successful career.

They care about the satisfaction of the person at the other end of the phone line because their job depends on that. It is not a passion! Besides in many cases, even if they want to solve a problem or answer a question, they are unable to do so, since they do not know what should be their reaction in the given situation. The cultural difference is clearly visible when they communicate with the person at the other end.

Now, let us examine what happens at the other end -

A normal call center employee in USA/ Europe will be middle-aged (around 35 or so). He is a graduate (even if he is not a graduate, he is knowledgeable about the subject or have received enough training) and working in a call center for a career. His priorities in life are very different -

• Family
• Career (A stable, safe job)
• Money (House, Car, Mortgage, if any)
• A decent lifestyle

So the priorities are very different here. Therefore the attitude towards work has to be different and much more serious.

This clearly makes a cause of better quality call handling by a person who is from the same cultural background (as much as possible).

So what are we going to see in days to come? 

1. Call center outsourcing will go down over the next decade. It may not dip immediately, because the problems are not surfacing and even if it is surfacing the cost difference is making the manager turn a blind eye towards the same.

This cost difference will thin down as the Indian economy picks up and per capita spending increases, resulting in further surge of salaries.

2. Call center outsourcing will be selective! People will realize that only “certain type” of communications can be outsourced and managed.

3. Several call centers will find it impossible to meet up to the quality expectation of their clients and may go out of business.

4. Selected call centers will retain their hold by focusing on those selective areas which are feasible for outsourcing. They will have excellent quality process in place and will offer call center jobs as a definite career option. We might even see hiring of middle aged professionals in call centers at that time to bring in further stability.

This consolidation is inevitable. It has happened in the “medical transcription” industry and the generic call centers seem to follow the same route in long run.

5. US/European countries may bring up a special “Do not call” list for people who do not want to be called by overseas call centers to stop the menace of unwanted sales calls. We may even see a blanket ban on outbound call center (making sales call)!

6. Company owned call centers will continue to operate in selective areas.

Conclusion 

We know that the bubble will burst. It is just a matter of time. And I really hope that this time it does not take the industry in the state of despair that the dot-com bust did. It is unlikely because now we have much more business than staring at the hoardings with some silly dot-com imprinted on it.

Disclaimer

My comments and analysis of the industry, people profile and their goals are a generalist view I have gathered during my interaction with several people. They are entirely based on my experience and I totally understand that they may be incorrect or wrong or may not apply to a certain segment of people.

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