Govindraj Ethiraj: Should Indian IT do more for India?

DOUBLE EDGE

It's not silly to ask what in return the Indian IT industry might do for India, Amartya Sen told a packed hall of industry folks in his keynote speech at Nasscom's annual summit in Mumbai last week. "The country has made huge contributions, even though they are not often clearly recognised, to help the development and flowering of the IT industry."

What was Sen doing at a Nasscom summit? Well, he was delivering the keynote speech. As it happened, he put the same question to himself. "When the Nasscom invitation came, I thought that this either indicated some mixing up of my identity ("wake up, wake up," I wanted to say, "I teach non-IT subjects at a university!")"

"Or," as Sen went on with an expression that seemed to suggest mild befuddlement, "Alternatively, it reflected generous interest of Nasscom leaders to reach out (or, as my students say, "hang out") beyond their principality.

On a more serious note, Sen argued that his point was not that the IT industry should do something for the country at large, it does that anyway. Instead, he stressed it could do more, indeed in some ways, much more.

The night before, at a dinner hosted for him, Sen touched on the same point, asking whether the Tunnel Effect was beginning to play out in the context of Indian IT and the rest of India. In a Tunnel Effect, he said you usually feel happy when a fellow passenger stuck in the lane of cars next to you begins to move. The reason is that you believe at some point you too will move.

But as time passes and you don't move at all, that happiness changes to frustration, desperation and anger. So while the rest of India might cheer the IT industry for its achievements, the Tunnel Effect will start playing out soon, as realisation dawns that the Effect is limited to one line of cars only. As is perhaps already happening.

Sen's presence reflects the increasing concern within the industry that managing success, perceptionally that is, may not be that simple. "We are seeing the early signs of a reaction," Nasscom President Kiran Karnik told me. That's not news but the fact that the IT industry is getting worried is. Two questions possibly arise here. First, should the IT industry care? And second, is the Indian IT doing enough to counter this perception?

The first question is somewhat easily answered. The industry has little choice but to demonstrate it cares. Else prepare for more ugly fracas like the H D Deve Gowda-N R Narayana Murthy face-off. Even today, the Karnataka government seems to loudly wonder why Infosys Technologies needs so much land, particularly if it is going to be building massive five-star guest houses on their premises.

Until the recent past, many IT companies have taken the line that their duty was to their shareholders and by generating jobs and paying taxes, they were doing their bit for society. That's changing. I asked both Jerry Rao and Kiran Karnik whether there was agreement on the fact that IT companies need to do more grassroots corporate social responsibility. Their answer is in the affirmative""most Indian companies, presumably led by the larger ones, have broader development on their radar.

The question now is, what is enough? To backtrack a little, it's not that the IT industry and its founders are not doing enough. There are specific examples like the massive Learning Guarantee and Child Friendly School programmes driven by the Azim Premji foundation. Or Ramalinga Raju's own Byrraju Foundation, which, among other initiatives, is helping create the "second" level of outsourcing, from cities to villages in Andhra.

And there are the modest examples. In Mumbai, Mphasis (now part of EDS) employees take classes in municipal schools in a north Mumbai suburb. The effort began with school children visiting the offices, and contributions. Incidentally, it was Mphasis founder Jerry Rao's idea to make Nobel laureate Amartya Sen the keynote speaker at this year's Nasscom event.

Some of this is more than what the traditional manufacturing industry has been doing. And yet, many would argue that IT has to give back much more. It may feel singled out, but that's how it happens to be.

The industry is meanwhile trying to get some statistics in order. A joint Nasscom-Crisil study to be released shortly will highlight the "multiplier economic impact of the linkages and induced impact through consumption spending by IT-ITES professionals"""essentially, a quantified sketch on what Indian IT has done for India so far. My own sense is that this is useful but will only go some of the way. A fact that most industry leaders only recognise too well. Credit at this stage must obviously be for effort already made.

If all this fails, there is tradition. Amartya Sen says love for mathematics has inspired so many young Indians throughout history, and which is important in many different ways, for the efficacy of IT operations. And a final gem from him. "The general maths-friendliness of Indian intellectuals is relevant here: according to some accounts, the mathematician Bhaskara even tried to convince his daughter Lilavati that if she came to master mathematical puzzles then she would be highly popular when she went to parties, which seems to me be, to say the least, a little doubtful."