IS IT EVERYWHERE?

Yes, I would say that IT is not everywhere. Obviously, I am talking about IT – Information Technology. If IT is missing anywhere, then it is in our own country – India. Our government is one of the most laid-back governments in the world. Although we are one of the biggest exporters of software services in the world, we lag behind in the usage of IT in our own country. Most of the government web sites are just there – bare-bone web sites, which contain introductory information. Most of the government organizations are still running at the mercy of mice. I, myself, have been to a lot of government organizations. They are in such a dilapidated state that you would pity yourself for being there and having seen them. If you are an IT guy, then one obvious question - are we really an IT country? - would pop-up in your mind. For me, the answer is both YES and NO. The answer is YES, in the sense that we are a good exporter of low-end IT services. And, the answer is NO, in the sense that we don’t use IT even as much as we deliver to the rest of the world. But, why don’t we use IT the way we should have? Well, I don’t have the complete answer to my, perhaps, rhetorical question. But, certainly, I can say that our government is not so keen enough to use IT because of various reasons – slippage of power to manoeuvre things every now and then, lack of adequate funds to invest in IT, which might not be even used by old, and not-so-keen-to-learn government employees, lack of paying heed to the much-required IT solutions, lack of knowledge that how IT can transform things and can make life easy for all of us, et al.

I really feel that it is high time we, as a nation, should raise the bar of quality in everything we do. We, definitely, need to use IT in many better ways. Almost all of the government organizations need to be properly “wired”. The IT Systems are not properly automated. They are still manually controlled and run. As of now, for the government, the IT Systems are fast-computing-clerks. The governments’ various IT Systems need to “talk” to each other, cohesively. (No wonder, if SAP is smiling now!!!) A much-sought-after solution would be one that is able to link a citizen’s passport, visas, credit history, driving license, ration card, educational background, criminal history, if any, professional work experience, tax filed, PAN card number, and the like information all together. This kind of solution would give a clear picture of each and every citizen of this country. Let’s think for a while that how useful this kind of solution would be. Obviously, this would be beneficial to the government and to the “clean” individual concerned and not to a “scrupulous” citizen because “things” would be very hard to hide from the government and the police alike.

The whole propaganda of “India Shining” is solely based on the zealotry of a few service-exporting zealots, who are doing the real work of taking this country to the international arena. These service-exporting zealots are the true drivers of the Indian economy. Minus their contributions, and you will get India of the 1980s. Don’t forget that these service-exporting zealots are self-made people. The Indian government didn’t create them. They evolved on their own, but, yes, once they started off pretty well, they did get some kinds of tax rebates from the government.

The software-services export figure is something like this:
In the first quarter of 2006, the country's software exports stand at US $23 billion. According to the McKinsey report, India's software exports are expected to cross the US $60-billion mark by 2010. Whereas, according to the Harvard Business Review, India has lagged tremendously behind other countries in Health Information Technology (HIT) adoption. Large corporate hospitals in India spend under 1% of their operating budget on IT, while spending is closer to 3% in the West. Barring a few preliminary attempts to computerize basic hospital administrative and some clinical functions, there has been little appreciation or impetus given to Health Information Technology (HIT) adoption. Moreover, the Indian government IT spending is forecast to grow from US $1.4 billion in 2005 to US $2.9 billion in 2009 with a growth rate of 19.6%. This means that the Indian government spends less than 0.5% of India's GDP on IT. This speaks a lot about our present condition and where we are heading to, and at what pace!

After contemplating so many strengths and weaknesses of ours, and the way the rest of the world is embracing IT – we have a substantial contribution in making them to do so - I think, IT is there in most of the places of the world, but here. We need to embrace our work and expertise by using IT ourselves. Only then, we can proudly say – IT is everywhere.