Dr. Srinavasan Ramani, well known during my days (80s and 90s) in the Bombay/Mumbai software export industry as director of National Centre for Software Technology, http://www.cdacmumbai.in/, has been inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame (2014 inductee), http://www.internethalloffame.org/inductees/srinivasan-ramani. Perhaps he is the first Indian to be given that honour (BTW the Internet Hall of Fame started in 2012).
Recently Dr. Ramani also wrote an article in The Hindu, An opportunity seized but not fulfilled, http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/an-opportunity-seized-but-not-fulfilled/article5951657.ece, which has some references to IT and agriculture.
An extract from the article:
A friend and I recently looked back a few decades, talking about how technology and professional education have created a new economic sector. I recalled how during a visit to an agricultural research institute (it must have been the late-1990s) an official there mentioned that the commercial value of sorghum grown in India was $2 billion a year.
Those days, the Santa Cruz Export Promotion Zone near Mumbai was the star in India’s software exports. Sharing a hundred acres of land with gem and jewellery manufacturers, and employing 50,000 to 60,000 employees, the software units in SEEPZ earned around $2 billion a year. Look at the difference in productivity.
Of course, it is not the dollar value that predominates. Sorghum cultivation sustained hundreds of millions of people, and gave them employment. But the point is the growing importance of software and services export in the Indian economy, from what is commonly called the Information Technology (IT) and IT Enabled Services (ITES) sector.
--- end extract ---
Two comments of mine appear on the article's web page. They appear under the name of Ravi S. as the new comments system in The Hindu truncated Iyer from my name :). Further the comments system collapsed my line breaks and so for better readability, I have introduced appropriate line-breaks in the reproduced comments of mine below:
Congratulations to Dr. S. Ramani for being inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame. Perhaps he is the first Indian to be given that honour.
As somebody who spent most of his software career in SEEPZ, Bombay (mentioned in the article) from 1984 to 2002, I tend to agree with the point about difference in productivity but also with the vital point about the vast number of people sustained by agriculture in India, (as against the comparatively tiny set of Indian IT professionals in the 90s). Perhaps now is the right time for Indian IT to contribute in a big way to Indian sectors of agriculture, IT enabled education (both primary, secondary and higher education) etc. which can benefit vast numbers of people in our country.
--- end first comment ---
A couple of other comments misunderstood Dr. Ramani's comparison to be a slight to Indian agriculture. I responded to them as follows:
@sameer and Ravi Natarajan
I don't think Dr. Ramani is denying the immense contribution of agricultural scientists as well as Indian farmers to the Indian people at large including Indian IT professionals. All Indians must be grateful to the Indian agricultural community as they provide the 1.25 billion of us food and contribute to clothing as well.
But it cannot be denied that aspirations of Indian youngsters today including rural Indian youngsters and children of farmers is to lead a far more comfortable life than their parents. Given current standards of productivity in Indian agricultural sector taken as a whole, as well as huge supply of people in the agricultural sector, agriculture is typically not a profession of choice of such Indian youngsters. So we need to improve productivity of Indian agriculture (using IT?) and also provide other avenues like IT where India has made a name for itself in the global economy. It is not agriculture vs. IT - but both agriculture and IT.
--- end second comment ---
I was very pleased to receive a response from Dr. Srinivasan Ramani to a mail I sent him on the above. Further, he kindly permitted me to share the following part of his response on my blog:
Thank you for email and for the clarifications you have given to say that no slight is intended to agriculture. I am 100% aligned with you. It is just that we never thought the day would come when IT & ITES would account for more than food grains.
--- end Dr. Ramani response extract ---
Dr. Ramani, of course, means food grains in terms of monetary value (today). BTW Dr. Ramani is one of the pioneers of the Indian Computer Science and Information Technology (CS & IT) field and so would have seen the days (seventies or perhaps even earlier) when India was almost nowhere in CS & IT.
Later I noticed that Dr. Ramani has added the following comment on the article web page:
I hasten to add that the comparison was not at all meant to say anything negative about agriculture. Above all, agriculture gives employment to over 500 million Indians. Today, jobs matter to people more than anything else. The comparison was mainly motivated by the shock I got when I realized that IT & ITES have grown quite big. Let us not pit one sector against another. That would be like asking "Does your daughter need rotis? [Ravi: Roti is an Indian bread, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roti] Or does she need to go to school?" We need good agriculture as well as good IT & ITES to create jobs and wealth for the country.
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A correspondent added over email:
You can take the comparison further and see what software services companies do and what software product companies do. In India, average productivity (yearly revenue divided by staff strength) in the IT industry is somewhere between $30,000-$50,000 per year. Of course, fresh recruits cannot earn until they are trained and have some experience so companies that grow fast (and recruit, say, 40,000-50,000 fresh graduates each year) will have lower productivity than those who do not. But that can be taken into account.
Service companies outside India (e.g. Accenture etc.) have a productivity of around $120,000 a year. They offer their clients a 'blended' rate by combining lower cost Indian workers with higher cost workers from the West. Indian companies find that difficult to do because their initial advantage is the low cost they offer.
Now compare that with software product companies like Microsoft where the average earning(s) are somewhere from $300,000 - $400,000. However, they operate in a high risk market (1 in 10 product companies fail) and grow by acquisition (Microsoft acquired PowerPoint by buying a small company called Foresight).
Recently Dr. Ramani also wrote an article in The Hindu, An opportunity seized but not fulfilled, http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/an-opportunity-seized-but-not-fulfilled/article5951657.ece, which has some references to IT and agriculture.
An extract from the article:
A friend and I recently looked back a few decades, talking about how technology and professional education have created a new economic sector. I recalled how during a visit to an agricultural research institute (it must have been the late-1990s) an official there mentioned that the commercial value of sorghum grown in India was $2 billion a year.
Those days, the Santa Cruz Export Promotion Zone near Mumbai was the star in India’s software exports. Sharing a hundred acres of land with gem and jewellery manufacturers, and employing 50,000 to 60,000 employees, the software units in SEEPZ earned around $2 billion a year. Look at the difference in productivity.
Of course, it is not the dollar value that predominates. Sorghum cultivation sustained hundreds of millions of people, and gave them employment. But the point is the growing importance of software and services export in the Indian economy, from what is commonly called the Information Technology (IT) and IT Enabled Services (ITES) sector.
--- end extract ---
Two comments of mine appear on the article's web page. They appear under the name of Ravi S. as the new comments system in The Hindu truncated Iyer from my name :). Further the comments system collapsed my line breaks and so for better readability, I have introduced appropriate line-breaks in the reproduced comments of mine below:
Congratulations to Dr. S. Ramani for being inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame. Perhaps he is the first Indian to be given that honour.
As somebody who spent most of his software career in SEEPZ, Bombay (mentioned in the article) from 1984 to 2002, I tend to agree with the point about difference in productivity but also with the vital point about the vast number of people sustained by agriculture in India, (as against the comparatively tiny set of Indian IT professionals in the 90s). Perhaps now is the right time for Indian IT to contribute in a big way to Indian sectors of agriculture, IT enabled education (both primary, secondary and higher education) etc. which can benefit vast numbers of people in our country.
--- end first comment ---
A couple of other comments misunderstood Dr. Ramani's comparison to be a slight to Indian agriculture. I responded to them as follows:
@sameer and Ravi Natarajan
I don't think Dr. Ramani is denying the immense contribution of agricultural scientists as well as Indian farmers to the Indian people at large including Indian IT professionals. All Indians must be grateful to the Indian agricultural community as they provide the 1.25 billion of us food and contribute to clothing as well.
But it cannot be denied that aspirations of Indian youngsters today including rural Indian youngsters and children of farmers is to lead a far more comfortable life than their parents. Given current standards of productivity in Indian agricultural sector taken as a whole, as well as huge supply of people in the agricultural sector, agriculture is typically not a profession of choice of such Indian youngsters. So we need to improve productivity of Indian agriculture (using IT?) and also provide other avenues like IT where India has made a name for itself in the global economy. It is not agriculture vs. IT - but both agriculture and IT.
--- end second comment ---
I was very pleased to receive a response from Dr. Srinivasan Ramani to a mail I sent him on the above. Further, he kindly permitted me to share the following part of his response on my blog:
Thank you for email and for the clarifications you have given to say that no slight is intended to agriculture. I am 100% aligned with you. It is just that we never thought the day would come when IT & ITES would account for more than food grains.
--- end Dr. Ramani response extract ---
Dr. Ramani, of course, means food grains in terms of monetary value (today). BTW Dr. Ramani is one of the pioneers of the Indian Computer Science and Information Technology (CS & IT) field and so would have seen the days (seventies or perhaps even earlier) when India was almost nowhere in CS & IT.
Later I noticed that Dr. Ramani has added the following comment on the article web page:
I hasten to add that the comparison was not at all meant to say anything negative about agriculture. Above all, agriculture gives employment to over 500 million Indians. Today, jobs matter to people more than anything else. The comparison was mainly motivated by the shock I got when I realized that IT & ITES have grown quite big. Let us not pit one sector against another. That would be like asking "Does your daughter need rotis? [Ravi: Roti is an Indian bread, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roti] Or does she need to go to school?" We need good agriculture as well as good IT & ITES to create jobs and wealth for the country.
-------
A correspondent added over email:
You can take the comparison further and see what software services companies do and what software product companies do. In India, average productivity (yearly revenue divided by staff strength) in the IT industry is somewhere between $30,000-$50,000 per year. Of course, fresh recruits cannot earn until they are trained and have some experience so companies that grow fast (and recruit, say, 40,000-50,000 fresh graduates each year) will have lower productivity than those who do not. But that can be taken into account.
Service companies outside India (e.g. Accenture etc.) have a productivity of around $120,000 a year. They offer their clients a 'blended' rate by combining lower cost Indian workers with higher cost workers from the West. Indian companies find that difficult to do because their initial advantage is the low cost they offer.
Now compare that with software product companies like Microsoft where the average earning(s) are somewhere from $300,000 - $400,000. However, they operate in a high risk market (1 in 10 product companies fail) and grow by acquisition (Microsoft acquired PowerPoint by buying a small company called Foresight).
