In all fairness, one of the few sectors where India made a stellar reputation in recent decades is the field of Information Technology – an endeavour that private entities like the Tata Consultancy Services started in Bombay and was taken forward by electronics engineers in Pune and Bengaluru in later years. A reason for its success which is the contribution of 7.7 per cent of the GDP – was that politicians and India’s corrupt creed could not meddle with its affairs. The sector was free to fend for itself. Curiously, the first shot was fired on it now from the RSS, the ideological powerhouse for the ruling BJP. A cover story on its publication, Panchajanya has accused IT major Infosys of encouraging anti-national tendencies. More curiously, the article says it has no evidence to prove this allegation.
The straight reference in the article was to the way the system developed by Infosys for the filing of Income Tax returns – a contract it took up in 2019 – developed glitches; and to similar glitches in the systems for GST collections and the like. A question posed to Infosys was whether it would do such a “shoddy” job for a foreign client. Clearly, the attack was harsh. It is still time for India to put all its goodwill and nurture a field that has, over four decades, kept the nation’s profile high and earned for the nation huge sums in foreign exchange via software export – which was of the order of USD 100 billion before the Covid pandemic set in. While much of these exports go to the US and domestic sales too are to the tune of USD 400 billion, there is more to explore in these times of uptick prompted also by the era of mobile phone-linked technologies.
This is the time for India to zealously safeguard the IT sector’s reputation. Panchajanya has done the reverse – and without any evidence to cite. Had it been any other journal, it could have been pardoned. But the RSS link accords the journal a special responsibility to safeguard the reputation of India’s principal pride in the export sector and one that gives direct employment to millions of youths. At the same time, it is also incumbent on the IT sector giants to put their house in order and, among other things, end the kind of exploitation they do on educated youths by extracting excessive working hours and unreasonably low pay packages to most of the staff. By giving huge salaries to some, a hype is created; and the rest are left underpaid. This breeds inequality.
