India’s ‘intellectual capital’, is it really intellectual??

I recently read a blog that spoke about “India’s IT industry that uses over-skilled workers”. Here’s a link to it: http://thekingofdreamers.blogspot.com/

1) This is my take on India’s IT/BPO industry. There’s no question about the fact that the Indian economy is booming right now. The IT Services and the BPO industry contributes quite heftily to India’s GDP, irrespective of whether it is products based or services based. So no point complaining about it.

2) The over-skilled workers/engineers that ‘dreamer’ is talking about, I think is a pure over-statement. I agree with the fact that engineers at various companies like Sathyam, Wipro and various other companies get to do work that is pretty easy to do, that doesn’t kindle the brains of the ‘smart’ engineers India produces. But, what else can they do. It’s not true that, these ‘engineers’ work in IT Services companies because these are the only jobs available. Some of the world’s biggest product-based companies including Intel, Texas Instruments, Motorola and AMD, are looking to hire a lot of people into their Indian design centers, but find it extremely difficult to do so. There are just not enough people who are good enough.

It is probably true that, these engineers at software companies across the country are quite over-skilled for the work they do. But they don’t have enough skills to work in the ‘next-level’ of roles. The basic problem that India has, is not about the IT/BPO industry, but engineering education in India. Apart from the 7 or 8 IIT’s, and few good engineering colleges here and there, most of the other engineering colleges provide quite low level of skill sets which are quite useless, and cannot be used anywhere else but in the IT services sector. This has to change. Engineering education should become more ‘current’, ‘useful’, ‘challenging’ and not something that anyone and everyone can get without too much effort.

3) India’s true ‘intellectual capital’ lies in our ‘managerial talent’. These IT/BPO companies that are doing well employ some of the ‘smartest’ managers you can find. These guys are responsible for bringing in business from the US/ Europe and various other parts of the world .There’s no question about the fact that India’s managerial talent is quite solid and these guys need to be given credit to what they have done to the Indian economy.


So, here’s my point. 80% of the ‘engineers’ doing work that is “too easy” for them, are just not good enough (at least with their current skill sets) to do anything better. Engineering education in India should become “more challenging”, “more practical” and “more sensible”. Till then we’ll have to rely on our “managers” who’ll have to keep bringing in more money into the country. Of course, the other solution to this problem is that the “real smart engineers from the IITs and some other good engineering colleges” who tend to work abroad, have to comeback to serve their own country.