DQ awards night sees congregation of IT industry

NEW DELHI: The one thing that will go down in people's mind about the ninth

annual Dataquest Award Night was the congregation of the best known faces in the

IT industry. If the success of an event is assessed by the profile of the

guests, then this one has been a runaway success.

Guests present on the occasion were a virtual who's who from the IT industry.

Any scribe covering the beat would have been thrilled to find so many industry

representation in one evening and stories would have poured dime a dozen as

stalwarts relaxed in an evening of gaiety and networking.

Sample the guest list--FC Kohli, the doyen of the IT industry; Rajat Gupta,

CEO McKinsey Worldwide; Arun Thiagarajan, President, HP India; Balu Doraisamy,

MD Compaq India; Ajai Chowdhry Chairman and CEO HCL Infosystems; Rajendra Pawar,

Chairman and MD NIIT; PS Saran, Former chief of DoT; Arun Kumar, President and

MD, Hughes Software Systems; Saurabh Srivastava, Executive Chairman, Xansa

India; Satish Naralkar, CEO, NSE IT.

And there was a reason for this attendance. There were two special people

being honored during the event. Pramod Mahajan, the Minister for IT,

Communications and Parliamentary Affairs was chosen as the IT Man of the year.

The other person to be honored at the event was Late Dewang Mehta who was

awarded the Lifetime achievement award.

The Nasscom team led by Phiroz Vandrevala, Chairman, Nasscom, Kiran Karnik,

President, Nasscom, and Sangeeta Gupta, VP, Nasscom received the award on

Mehta's behalf. Accepting the award Vandrevala said Mehta always took awards

seriously and that he would have been thrilled to be honored for lifetime

achievement.

Evidently thrilled at being selected as the man of the year, Mahajan arrived

at the event dot on the time, much before a lot of guests from the industry had

arrived. His happiness sparkled through the acceptance speech. Although he

started off modestly that as a politician he was not used to awards but rewards.

Yet he was happy that his sincerity and hard work to contribute to the sector

has been acknowledged by way of this award. He announced that as Minster of his

portfolios he would establish a village public telephone in every village in

country and work towards the promotion of IT deployment in the Defense forces

and in enhancing the security of Indian citizens.

Jairam Ramesh and the brilliant session

The event would not have been half as interesting had it not been for the

brilliantly conducted interactive session by Jairam Ramesh, MP Congress and

Secretary of Economic Affairs cell in the party. During the course of the

discussion the industry pitched for the growth of the hardware sector saying

that the time has come for India to provide the much needed impetus for the

growth of the sector. Then, and only then, will the country be able to sustain

the buoyant growth it had witnessed during boom times throughout the nineties.

Industry suggestions to the Finance Minster ranged from slashing import duty on

components to zero to acknowledging depreciation to 100 per cent in IT goods and

facilitating import of second hand computers.

In response to the industry's demand for zero duty, Mahajan said that

expectations from the industry have to be rational and a minimum duty of 8 per

cent has to be paid. He however said that the Ministry would try to push for 100

per cent depreciation.

F C Kohli, the Deputy Chairman of TCS and popularly known as the father of

the Indian IT industry, opined that all duty restrictions on the import of

components be removed and allow the hardware industry space to grow. He said

that it was important to nurture the growth of hardware engineers along with

producing world class software engineers. Incidentally, Kohli who has been

conferred the prestigious national award, Padma Bhushan, was informed about the

honor during the event.

HCL Infosystems chairman and CEO, Ajai Chowdhry said, "The government

should accord 100 per cent depreciation to IT products to promote corporate

spending. This will enable corporate to donate second hand computers and

products to schools and educational institutes since the book value of the

products will then be zero." He also suggested that manufacturing clusters

be created on the lines of China mainland and Taiwan and that the government

should make it mandatory to spend 3 per cent of the budget on IT.

S Regunath, Principal Secretary IT and to the CM, Govt of Delhi said,

"Over and above, a change in mindset is the call of the day. Government

spending is not an issue, but it is the mindset in accepting IT as part of their

lives is the issue amongst government employees."

NIIT chairman and managing director, Rajendra Pawar, spoke about the need to

streamline government procurement processes since the current system of awarding

bids to the lowest bidder is faulty. Although the CVC has sent directives urging

employees to attach value to intangibles, employees are averse to taking the

risk and the faulty system of procurement continues.

During the course of the discussion, the threat from the China factor was

inevitably touched upon and experts opined as to why the Chinese hardware

industry was thriving. Phiroz Vandrevala, Chairman Nasscom, said that although

there was so much talk about the threat posed by China there is not a single

position paper available on the exact scenario and that Nasscom has undertaken a

task towards that end.

The China topic elicited interesting observations from Jairam Ramesh. He said

the Chinese threat has to be understood from the point of view of the nexus

between the hardware industry in Taiwan and the growing software strength from

the Chinese mainland.

After studying the Indian model carefully, the Chinese wanted to emulate the

Indian higher technical education process of setting up IITs and RECs. To that

effect, the Chinese government has approached McKinsey to plan the setting up of

100 IITs across the country. Simultaneously they have hired 200,000 English

teachers to make the Chinese affluent in English. Ironically, "India might

be on the verge of a crisis soon as there is lack of quality faculty at IITs

what with the remuneration in academics not being as rewarding as in the

industry," added IIT Delhi director Dr RS Sirohi.

Another very significant suggestion came from the of Nasscom president, Kiran

Karnik who said that the way to ride the crest of the IT revolution was to

develop strong and appealing content. He made an allusion to the experience of

satellite television, which stormed Indian households, and no amount of

regulation could stem the tide of its growth since the driving factor was

content.

Hughes Escorts Communications president, Shashi Ullal said that the time has

also come to promote indigenous technologies like the Simputer which would go a

long way in driving the growth of the IT industry. Selectronics Equipment

president, Veer Sagar, and a pioneer of the medical transcription industry in

the country mooted for providing impetus to the IT-enabled sector. Being

employee intensive, the growth of the sector was critical in generating

employment avenues for the unemployed graduates as well as pushing the growth of

the hardware sector.