The Hindu Business Line : Select rural talent too

India is now widely acknowledged for its software prowess. The humble software engineer has enabled an increasing tribe of Indian-managed multinational software service companies to take a shot at global leadership.

The Indian software export industry continues to break one barrier of financial success after another. Infosys and Wipro broke the $1-billion revenue ceiling in the last financial year while a larger number of companies broke the Rs 500 crore and Rs 1,000 crore ceiling. The software industry juggernaut rolls on as the industry provides jobs to 4 lakh plus highly-educated professionals, constitutes 3 per cent of India's GNP and contributes to over 20 per cent of India's export earnings.

However, there is a realisation that the benefits of globalisation and prosperity have been cornered by a disproportionate few in our urban areas. They have left untouched the vast majority of young Indians who live in smaller towns and in villages. And the IT industry is asking itself if there is a way to help reduce disparities in society while increasing the supply of entry-level engineers.

Beyond English skills

For instance, the ability to speak English that is a significant reason of the industry's success needs to be examined. This skill has a flipside — it dramatically increases the divide between the urban haves and the rural have-nots. We need to realign mind-sets and explore innovative ways to bring capable rural youth into the IT job mainstream.

We insist that we will not compromise on the quality of our human resource as this is the main source of our competitive advantage — and we continue to search for talented young people from the best colleges and yearn for sharp-eyed IITians to join our company. `Merit' and `capability' are much bandied words for any individual to get a job. However, do we stop to understand merit from the point of view of those outside the system?

There is truly a case to question the very methods companies currently use to gauge merit and suitability for long-term employment. We make our choice of people based on class positions, percentage marks and we test candidates' analytic ability. The traditional educational system leads us to believe that those with higher scores, from acknowledged educational institutes are `better' than those who have lower academic scores, a poor command over English, and come from unknown IT institutes.

The reality is that the young rural Indian does not even reach a stage of being considered on this kind of merit as he/she is effectively shut out from the system that the IT industry recruits from. The vast majority of these rural students continue to be marginalised. Our industry can help bridge the digital divide through an apprenticeship programme for promising students from rural backgrounds. To enhance the industry's Rural Quotient, we should:

Establish an apprenticeship programme for 12 months that pays each trainee Rs 5,000 per month; provide them classroom training along with other traditionally-hired college graduates; mentor them to learn English, on ways of the urban world; and provide on-the-job training as shadow programmers with bench or internal projects for 6-12 months, post-training.

Choose graduating students (MCA, Engineering) from underprivileged rural backgrounds from below average private or government colleges in semi-urban or rural areas.

Use alternate methods for selection in addition to traditional `merit' and `IQ'. Look for desire to succeed (drive and initiative), hunger to advance, and a fear of failure in the candidate.

At the end of the apprentice period, these students would have developed sound skills in programming and would have learnt English sufficiently to commence their work life in a software company at the entry level.

They will be low-cost, stable and committed resources for the company and, in all probability, likely have a longer tenure than the educated urban graduate.

There are 4,000 plus software companies in India of which 100 odd companies have a strength of 500 employees. If each of these 100 companies pilots this project, where each company takes 10 such students in one cycle of campus recruitment, it means churning out 1,000 rural trainees a year.

Even if a company decides not to provide permanent or temporary employment to these candidates, they will have the satisfaction of having provided life success skills to some individuals and of having provided a fair chance to them to compete for jobs in the market.

A small way to start changing the world!

The author is Managing Director, TechSpan India Ltd.

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