What are the implications of an IT boom for the thousands of engineering graduates that the country produces?

India is a land of farmers. so it seems appropriate to give a farmers analogy here. Just as seeing that a particular crop is more profitable in a season most of the farmers in the area switch to producing that instead of the variety that would naturally result same would be the case of IT boom, it would allure the masses (of graduate engineers from all streams) towards IT resulting in over-supply thereby shrinking profits and reducing overall quality.

Although India might be producing thousands of engineering graduates, only a fraction of these posses necessary skills and knowledge that are essential to ensure employability. Barring the several top engineering colleges, there are many colleges which don’t possess the necessary faculty, infrastructure or the financial incentive to produce graduates with the necessary analytical and communication skills. A boom in the IT sector acts as a second chance for these graduates. In the event of an IT boom, these companies recruit large number of engineers; they also invest in huge training facilities to train these recruited engineers. These companies have exceptionally structured training programs which groom these fresh graduates in terms of their communication and analytical skills. The training programs of companies like Infosys and TCS are well known for their rigour and have been compared to the academic programs of some of the best engineering college. Hence these programs fill up the gaps in an engineer’s education. This is probably one of the reasons that these companies can recruit from all campuses and yet maintain the quality of their business solutions. However these IT companies can add very little to an already good engineer passing from a good college. So in times of IT boom, good colleges should relegate IT companies to the last slot on their placement schedule so that only those people who require any further grooming are selected. The engineers passing the other colleges can then benefit immensely from the training and grooming the IT companies provide. Arijit GAnguly IIMK

The implications of IT boom for engineering graduates that our country produces have been 1)Wider, Diverse jobs / job functions to choose from . 2)Better paying jobs, with increased growth prospects and a fast accelerated global career ,greater exposure ,on-site/abroad experience coming in a relative short period. Compare this with the times 15 yrs back where the traditional govt. jobs ruled the roost , with a fixed remuneration, stagnant wok conditions , a sycophantic culture and experience –based promotions 3)Indian IT industry thrives on meritocracy. The harder, smarter you work, the higher you go in life, the faster your career. Age and years of work-ex. ,no longer determine what you make, but all that matters in modern India are skill and determination. 4)IT wave has produced a kind of multiplier effect. Our intellect has earned global respect and global firms in different functions (like those in banking, manufacturing etc) have come over to India to tap the potential, thus generating multiple jobs in different sectors as well. 5)It has stopped the brain drain and engineers can now expect a truly satisfying, intellectually stimulating job / work in India itself. 6)Its made engineers well-off , creating their demand globally , ushered in a wave of entrepreneurship , a feeling of “ I too can do it “ , added tones to the confidence of young men and a large number of people have started their own ventures or are now on their own. Rahul Mittal IIM Lucknow

When we want to make an account of the implications arising from an IT boom, we should look at it from 2 perspectives opportunities and risks. Opportunities would be •Unemployment rates would drastically come down in the nation and this would lead to an increase of the per-capita income of the population •Increased FDI flowing into the country •Increasing job opportunities would have its implications upon the education systems also, where in more people would be encouraged to take up engineering studies leading to a change in the quality of education •A strong IT boom means that the government can concentrate more on other sectors such as agriculture and move subsidies solely towards those sectors Risks would be •The IT boom is primarily seen as an opportunities for the elite class and constant effort would have to be made to make sure that all sections of the society benefit from it •Too much importance on IT (due to its $ & Euro value) would lead to problems in other necessary sectors like agriculture, mechanical industry etc which will not get required attention and thus suffer •For a country and its population to depend on a single industry for its prosperity would be suicidal, since there would be nothing to fall back upon, in case of any disturbances in the global scenario which would lead to destabilization of the IT sector Sreehari M - MICA

An IT boom will lead to more jobs with higher average salaries for India’s vast pool of engineers. India produced over 460,000 engineers in 2004-05, compared to entire Europe that produced just over 100,000. An IT boom leads to much higher incremental recruitment as it is human capital, rather than capital investments that drive the sector. The other industry sectors such as manufacturing and chemicals will be crowded out by the higher paying and more comfortable IT jobs. The demand will shift further away from ‘old economy’ branches like civil engineering. IT can also take away the sheen from other emerging areas such as biotechnology. A major casualty of an IT boom will be research. Number of students pursuing MS/PhD or taking up research jobs is likely to dip further. The UR Rao committee(2005) stated that India needs about 10,000 PhDs a year but is able to produce only about 400. Faculty crunch is also beginning to emerge at the leading universities. However, proponents of the IT sector can argue that it also leads to reduction in brain drain. A consequence of an IT boom will be the rapidly proliferating entrepreneurial opportunities for engineering graduates. The IT sector itself is evolving into a number of attractive niches, many having minimal entry barriers. IT startups have ranged from product companies like I2 Technologies to websites such as naukri.com. It is much easier to secure VC capital and convince prospective employees to join entrepreneurial ventures in periods of boom. Source http://inhome.rediff.com/money/2006/jun/09bspec.htm Manish Verma IIMA

India currently has 113 universities and 2,088 colleges (YOY growth of 20%), many of which teach various engineering disciplines. India produced 500,000 engineering graduates in academic year 2005-06, (31% were computer engineers) and this number has been growing at 25% YOY. China on the other hand produced 600,000, US 70,000 and Europe produced 100,000. With such fabulous numbers behind us, it is not a surprise when foreign IT MNCs are flocking to set up shop in India. This has led to huge amount of opportunities on offer to the engineers- mostly for people related to computer science. Most of the colleges have been having record breaking campus placements, the recruitment firms like TVA and career net from Bangalore has been doing great business, real estate markets in cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad and Gurgaon are booming. So in short, a win-win situation for all. Right? Well, not exactly. If you look at the jobs on offers, most of them are related to maintenance projects, quality assurance or plain simple network administration or support roles. The development roles, consulting profiles, high technical R&D profiles are still eluding most of the graduate engineers. One of the reason being the low number of PHDs(just 400 engineering Ph.Ds a year) and other being the quality of engineers produced (a McKinsey Global Institute study found that just 25% of Indian Engineers are employable). So even though Indian engineers are living the dollar dream, it would be some time before we give competition to Silicon Valley. Manash Bhattacharjee, IIM Kozhikode

1.India releases 3.5- 4 lakh engineers into the market and a majority of them are absorbed by IT industry. Demand conditions are healthy but supply has not kept pace; NASSCOM predicts a shortage of half-a-million workers in IT/ITES sector in 2010 2.India has traditionally concentrated on application-sciences and research in pure sciences has always been given a short shrift. The attractiveness of the IT industry has worsened the scenario. 3.Intense competition especially between the large and medium scale IT companies for talent has created wage competition characterized by increasing salaries and mobility opportunities for workers. This has reduced loyalty and longevity of the employee in organizations. 4.Most of the opportunities in the IT/ITES industry are still being created for low-skilled jobs which do not allow for creative expression of employees. India has a very poor track record in creating/preserving intellectual property. USP of Indian companies has been cost-solutions; hence the tradeoff in favour of services vis-à-vis products. 5.The policy of offering large salary packages for fresh graduates creates complacency and reduces the motivation to expand the knowledge/skill/competency. 6.Most Engineers irrespective of specialization are settling for IT jobs which creates a mismatch between education and utilization of skills on the job thereby reducing potential workers for other industries. 7.Companies are facing issues in identifying and recruiting talented people. Only 25% of the workforce are deemed worthy of employment (Source: Mckinsey Global Institute). Hence there is a need for differentiation among graduates. Karthik Krishnaswamy FMS Delhi PS: Thanks a lot to the organizers for providing us the opportunity to take part in such a wonderful competition. Please don’t add these words to the word count of the text.

Indian economy is certainly booming in IT sector. The forex reserves have swelled and a large contributor is the ever increasing dominance of India as “Global Back Office”. Young, smart, English proficient engineering graduates, being picked up by this industry across India, are lured by salaries that seem “out of the world” (due to the offshore jobs and huge government concessions). Current data shows the number of Engineering and technology graduates in India as 2,588,405. Positive implications: 1. Humungous increase in the number of job openings 2. More number of engineering colleges will come up 3. Increase in the revenue of the Indian companies a. Economic boom for the country b. Exponential rise in GDP 4. Higher pay packages for IT employees a. Subsequent increase in pay in other sectors to balance the inequality b. General increase in living standards 5. Lower Brain Drain a. Brain Gain: Foreigners may come to India to work 6. Increase in number of satellite townships like Gurgaon and NOIDA 7. IT Parks on the theme of SEZs will come up Negative implications: 1. Manufacturing industries and other service sectors will not find manpower a. Engineers would have been lured into IT b. Lead to the stagnation of our indigenous manufacturing and agriculture sectors which needs these engineers more c. Mushrooming engineering colleges provide low quality education d. No development of entrepreneurial skills i. Engineers are satisfied with short term gains, the so-called ‘fat’ salary

The most important implication will be employment. Not only software engineers will get employed in IT companies but also the booming of IT sector will also help other engineers in getting their jobs in different sectors. Many of the engineers can open their own business in software or hardware which in turn will add to the total employment process. There will great demand for Indian Engineers by foreign IT companies because of low salary as compared to USA software engineer and greater analytical skill. Because of IT boom, there will be increase in country's revenue which in turn can be channeled to other fields for development.