A lot has been said and written about Bangalore, and its iconic status as the “IT capital of India.” With its clear and chronological account — on both the ICT revolution and why it converged upon Bangalore — India's Silicon Plateau gives a fresh ‘byte' of perspective. Throughout his narrative, Mascarenhas maintains that Bangalore's reputation of being a technopolis preceded the “IT outsourcing boom”, which, he says, rode on the back of a “scientific base” established by public sector research and educational institutes in the city.
Mascarenhas does not limit his study to Bangalore, or even the ICT industry success story. He attempts to chart its growth at the national level, offering a historical and political perspective to what triggered the upswing. Apart from marking the milestones in the ICT road map, he seeks to analyse and contextualise the various policy statements on the subject. He goes on to explain why and how India in general, and Bangalore in particular, was able to acquire a competitive edge in an industry, which, he says, is at the core of the technology-led “new economy.”
State's role
Significantly, the author steers clear of a GDP-driven analysis of development, wherein all the successes on the economic and industrial fronts are attributed primarily to the liberation of the economy, a process that was set off in 1991. Instead, the emphasis is on the policies of successive governments, both at the Central and State levels. The book also traces the state's role in building the pillars of what has come to be known as the “knowledge economy”. Mascarenhas looks at the computer hardware and software policies right from the 1970s, when the industry relied entirely on multi-national corporations, such as IBM and ICL, which supplied computers built overseas, and the subsequent measures to protect and promote an indigenous computer industry.
In the realm of ICT, India worked for self-reliance — the spirit that was behind the ‘Green' and ‘White' revolutions of the earlier decades — and this led to the exit of IBM in 1978, when the government insisted on the company adhering to the principle of local equity participation. This boosted the sagging fortunes of the ECIL and also gave the Indian programmers working for IBM an opportunity to be assigned to the CMC, set up to undertake maintenance of a wide range of imported computers. This “experience over different platforms and of diverse legacies proved invaluable in the business.”
IT hub
The book devotes a substantial section to deliberating on why Bangalore was able to score over other industrial centres in IT development. The availability of multi-level, ‘science-and-technology infrastructure in the public sector — national laboratories, research institutes and higher education institutes — is identified as a critical factor. The proximity of C-DOT's hardware unit, the ISRO space centre, and C-DAC's tech park (to name a few central research institutes) created an “exciting IT cluster”, says Mascarenhas.
While discussing the catalytic role the Indian Institute of Science and other research and defence institutions in creating a pool of highly talented and skilled personnel for the industry to draw from, he attempts to unravel the “social and technological diversity and heterogeneity” of the region that proved an attraction for the people all round. He reflects, albeit briefly, also on the “drastic consequences” of this phenomenal growth — the crumbling infrastructure, for instance.
Taking the narrative a little beyond the industrial perspective of ICT, the author speaks about e-governance, the Unique Identity Number project (which is expected to streamline the implementation of welfare schemes), the Electronic Voting Machine, and the ubiquitous digital divide — all of which go to make the larger ‘ICT and India' story.
