The Hindu Business Line : We could do better with some Govt help: Nasscom

HR challenges amid slowdown: (From left) Mr Subash Menon, Founder Chairman, MD and CEO, Subex; Mr Som Mittal, President, Nasscom; Mr Lakshmi Narayanan, Vice-Chairman, Cognizant Technologies; and Mr Sharad Sharma, CEO, Yahoo! India, at the Nasscom HR summit in Chennai on Thursday.

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Chennai, July 3

The top five players in the IT industry could together save between $450 million and $500 million a year if the effort that they put into retraining fresh recruits can start from the college level (from which recruits graduate), according to Mr Som Mittal, President, Nasscom, the industry’s apex body.

Speaking to Business Line at its annual Human Resource Summit, Mr Mittal said, “No other industry has had to do so much for itself”, such as retraining fresh employees soon after they graduate, providing transport for employees, captive power generation and the like.

“We would obviously increase the gap with our competitors should our Governments take care of these requirements,” he said.

Election impact

Asked if the IT industry’s prospects could change depending on who is elected as the new American President, he said, “Economic reality is different from election rhetoric. During the previous US elections, the benefits of offshoring were not fully appreciated. It is different now.”

Unemployment in manufacturing, not services, is the US’ greatest concern now, he said. “If you look at the job postings of the likes of Microsoft, Oracle and Cisco, there are thousands of unfilled positions. Unemployment in manufacturing should be the US’ top priority.”

Asked if he felt that the ceiling of 85,000 for H1B visas issued per year is too low, he said, “That is a different problem. Only after a new Government is elected can we expect any change, if at all. Anyway, India uses only 14,000 of the total.”

Education focus

He added that the industry has succeeded in making education as top priority for the authorities and now what remains is execution of the plan currently on paper. “We have brought it to the attention of the Planning Commission; the Prime Minister himself has referred to the Eleventh Five-Year plan as the “education plan” — such is the importance given to it.”

But, increasing the number of IITs and IIMs is at least a 5-7 year process, according to him. For the short-term, he said that we still needed to increase the “yield” of employable graduates in the countryIn the context of the US slowdown, Nasscom said last month that the Indian IT and ITeS industry would grow between 22 and 24 per cent in the current fiscal instead of the usual 28-29 per cent.