The global Information Technology sector is in for some churning with major implications for India, which demonstrated its might, earned huge income via software exports and drew in lakhs of youths into its fold in the past three decades. Reports about layoff or job losses are streaming in. This also means a steady depression in the high-flying sector in the post-Covid period – this, after this sector managed to ably beat the Covid phase with an abrupt switch-over to the Work from Home (WfH) mode.
While WfH is continuing majorly with several IT firms, companies like Infosys have stopped the practice, calling back the staff to their offices. In recent years, the IT sector growth was pushed also by the linking of mobile phones to a whole set of IT services. This caused a boom in hyper-activity in the software sector. Cities like Bengaluru benefited hugely from this, though most IT offices in the southern city remained closed for the 2019-21 term. Impacted by global recessionary trends, the fall in the IT market is resulting in job losses of the order of over 2.2 lakh in the post-Covid phase. Over 50 lakh educated techies are employed in the Indian IT sector, while large numbers of Indian youths, male and female, are manning IT offices across the world, principally in the US.
Exports from the Indian IT sector was expected to touch $350 billion in the next five years, with the lead being maintained by the states of Karnataka, followed by Maharashtra and Telangana. As per last year’s figures, Karnataka’s software exports were of $58 billion or Rs 2 lakh crore, while that of Maharashtra Rs 1 lakh crore and of Telangana (Hyderabad) Rs 70,000 crore. Note the fact that Telangana state’s annual budget now is just three times this figure –its IT sector growth having started from zero in 1995. The gain for India from the IT sector, which started building its might from small beginnings in the mid-1980s, is also that it changed the profile of India in the comity of nations of it being a tech-giant, in the Information Technology sector. It is not just that a large workforce from India pushed the global IT sector growth but also that Indians started occupying lead positions in US-based software companies. The latest news is of Facebook’s parent company Meta appointing an Indian woman techie as its new India head. Salaries for top IT techies are unimaginable and comparable with the best in the management fields. Fact also is that a large number of techies in lower levels are exploited with low salaries, in India as well as in the US through contract employment.
