: For the past two decades, the IT industry was a source of celebratory stories, with IT being the choice of most graduates. But, of late, it’s not all rosy. Falling revenues, pink slips and other challenges thrown up by the global economy have impacted the industry.
Technopark this week conducted a seminar on the ‘Future of the IT industry,’ organised by Prathidhwani, a socio-cultural organisation of Technopark employees. Industry experts and employees voiced their concerns and the possible way forward.
The seminar advocated the need for IT industry to move up in the value chain and stressed on imaginative government intervention. It also voiced the need to form employees’ collectives to address their issues.
Commenting on the controversial layoffs at Tata Consultancy Services, K.N. Harilal of the Centre for Development Studies said the company’s action was not wrong individually, but collectively, it was wrong.
“Race to Bottom must be stopped by government interventions and social minimums should be upheld. China is upgrading in all aspects and there is a collective effort guided by the government Bad trends in IT industry should be discussed publicly and there is a need to make society aware of all these issues. There should be a research centre in Technopark, which would help companies move up in value chain,” said Mr. Harilal.
Satish Babu, Director of International Centre for Free and Open Source Software, said the Indian product industry should go up, in order to move up in value chain. “There needs to be a good ecosystem for start-ups in India, start-ups also need to manage their expectations. Triple bottom lines of Financial, People and Environment need to be considered while viewing an industry,” he said.
Joseph.C. Mathew, former IT adviser to the Kerala government, said IT employees should form a collective for their rights and traditional trade unions would not work in the industry.
“Asset-based model than labour-based model is being talked about now. IT engineers are large in supply, so the demand is less. The government should intervene in these issues.”
