The Indian IT sector- Are we any less?

Three years is not a long period for a person to write about an industry and what it means and has done to the people of the country, I agree. But a few observations are quite evident even in the first look. IT the whirlwind that came and seized thousands of youth in India in the late 90s and early 2000s is now a ticking time bomb.

I am generally not a crass observer and hate painting pictures of dystopia. So let me tell you what good IT has done to us ever since its screen presence in our country’s stage. India’s economy, the 7^th largest in the world is measured through a nominal GDP. The Indian IT sector is a major player and had contributed to about 7% of the total GPD in 2008, 8 years ago. A projection of stats would lead us to believe that IT might even be the leader of the services sector now.

Why am I talking about complex terms like GDP and Three Sector theory, though Colin Clark and Jean Fourastié would have been happy? Because, I like many others are unhappy with the way we work. Though numbers can be quite boring, let me dish out a few. India has the maximum annual working hours, a staggering number of 2,365. Am I unhappy because Germany has the least, a paltry 1,371? Am I unhappy that Sweden has recently switched to a 6 hour, 5 day work week? YES, I AM.

Let’s stop being proud that the Western companies come to India to SEEK engineers to work for them. Let’s stop using euphemisms, like George Carlin says. The stark truth is, WE INDIANS ARE CHEAP LABOUR. Internet statistics say that to hire a developer of decent calibre for an hour in America would cost about 50-80 USD whereas the same can be obtained for 15 USD in India, including his/her utter dedication and dog-like gratitude. A three-fold profit for company on every single resource is not a joke when extrapolated to the tens of thousands of employees all across the globe.

People cannot change it. If I say that I will do a job A for a price Y, there are several countrymen who'll do job A+E+K+O for a price far lesser than Y. It becomes the question of survival. Who do we have to blame? No one in particular, if you'd like to consider holding the guy who invented condoms accountable for being so slow. Population, that was, is and will be our nemesis. 

The IT giants realised this decades ago and arrived in India. Worst of it all, they portrayed an image of doing favour by setting up operations in our country. The Government hitherto has often provided them SEZs (a zone where anything produced and exported does not come under taxation). All this has led companies outsource their IT requirements to India so much so that within the circles a word called, “Bangalored” exists. It means, losing one's job to outsourcing in India, and more specifically, to Bangalore.

The external façade of the IT employees is quite different. They are rich, compared to the fellow countrymen and on-site opportunities enable them to buy a couple of Shoba-designed flats or an incredibly expensive Porsche. Bonuses and shares become perks with which their spending capacity tenfold. The non-IT people generally have a feeling that the notorious salaries of their counterparts has created incredible rise of commodities. House rents have sky-rocketed; flats are no longer sold in lakhs, termed only in crores and cinema tickets can cost an arm and a leg. It is true in a sense that the IT employees in India still rule the roost with a median gross hourly salary 24% more than anyone else.

This becomes a paradox at one point of time. I earn the highest salaries in land and create trauma to the rest of the countrymen because of that but I also complain that I am being paid 3 times lesser than my counterparts in the US or Europe.

Yes, the IT salaries is increasing the rift between sections of population but that is something that comes along with Capitalism, something that we chose over the unsay-able word, “Communism.”

It is high time the Government intervenes and raises salary standards; more importantly, work hour standards for the IT sector. Why can’t pay commissions extend to private sectors with directives covering maximum working hours and minimum salary?

This does not end here. If I have to play the devil’s advocate, we can’t go too far either. Indians are cheap labour, but don’t forget the Chinese. They have a bigger population and they put in mad hours too. The only drawback with the Chinese is their mastery over the English language, rather the lack of it. That is the only life line which keeps the Indian IT sector running.

However, the Chinese government over the last decade has taken several steps, the result of which many people travel abroad for education are slowly getting better with the English language. When presented with choice, the software giants can tilt either way depending upon what they consider profitable. India will no longer monopolise the market of cheap labour; don’t know if I should feel happy or sad about that one there.

All is not lost. Historically speaking, the USD vs INR has generally been lower than the USD vs CNY. Technically speaking, even if China scales up to proficiently operate in English, we’d still be cheaper, another fact for which I am ambivalent.

With automation, cloud computing and virtualisation, concepts that are fascinating for mankind but incredibly terrorising for an IT employee like me (who has no zeal to learn (hope my manager is not reading this), no plans for the future and no ‘Do-you-know-who-my-father-is’ phrase), the number of jobs are only likely to get slashed. Most of the Indian middle class is now synonymous with the IT industry without which, ironically our existence would be in jeopardy.

After all, like the common joke that goes around, IT EMPLOYEES- STRESSED, DEPRESSED YET WELL DRESSED.