The Hindu Business Line : ‘Sense of urgency should guide in building of knowledge network’

Chennai, Jan. 8 There is a window of ten years to make transformational changes in “how we leverage our human resource advantage, our technical and research advantage. This sense of urgency must guide all our actions as we build an effective Diaspora Knowledge Network,” according to Mr S. Ramadorai, CEO and Managing Director, Tata Consultancy Services.

One of the challenging tasks is going beyond ideas and converting the “brain gain into action on the ground”. Using an analogy, he said, India does not need general medical advice. It needs surgery, precise and incisive changes in critical areas. “Education is the foremost of them (tasks), to my mind. Unless India attacks with vengeance its primary education issues, we will have only limited success in building our skill capacity,” Mr Ramadorai said at the three-day Annual Pravasi Bharatiya Divas organised by the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs.

He said when it comes to education 16 per cent of villages do not have a primary school within a three-kilometre radius, and seven million school-age children still do not go to school and perhaps do not have access to healthcare as well. Of those that do, a high proportion never goes beyond grade eight, and many drop out before that. Vocational training needs urgent attention and higher educational institutions have an enrolment of just 12 per cent, well under the figure of countries such as China, Malaysia, he said.

The IT industry is an example of the power of diaspora networks — Indian immigrants working in Silicon Valley, were in 1998 running nearly 800 technology companies in Silicon Valley accounting for $3.6 billion in sales and employing over 16,000 workers. On an average, one in three Silicon Valley firms was headed by an immigrant from India, he said.

Over the last few decades the nature of the relationship between diaspora Indians and India has changed dramatically. One pillar of this relationship has been inward remittances.

According to the latest figures of the quarter ended October 2008, private transfer of funds brought in $14.2 billion.

“It is amazing that remittances even beat the $60 billion Indian IT industry, which managed net software earnings of over $10.3 billion, followed by net foreign direct investment which brought in $5.6 billion, while stock market investors pulled out $1.3 billion during the same time period,” he said.

Higher education is better off with the Government implementing several initiatives, including setting up a national network that will connect the higher education institutions to enable greater collaboration and co-creation of knowledge, he said.

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