It reboot

It reboot

Changing global economy puts India on notice. India's blue chip IT sector is experiencing rough weather.
Faced with a tightening visa regime in the US and increasing industry-wide automation, top IT companies are taking drastic measures. This includes cutting staff strength, slowing down new hiring, initiating mass re-training programmes. All of this comes on the heels of a McKinsey report that almost half of India's 37 lakh IT services workforce will become irrelevant over the next three to four years. Wipro's move to sack around 500 employees and Cognizant's decision to reduce its employee count by 5% highlight the carnage in India's IT sector.
There's no denying the global economy is undergoing a significant change. Cutting-edge technology and automation are ushering in a digital revolution the likes of which humankind has never experienced before. In such a scenario, only those countries that are able to successfully skill their workforces for the future will be able to ride the digital wave.
True, India is known for its IT prowess. But the new digital economy demands IT innovators, not mere service providers. Ominously, Capgemini India head Srinivas Kandula recently said that a majority of the workforce can't imbibe the skills required for increasing use of digital technologies. This is a reflection of the poor quality of education in this country that is based on rote learning, or at best steady execution of already existing algorithms, rather than conceptual and innovative thinking. While other societies are rapidly ageing India has its demographics, tilted towards youth, going for it. However, to harness this multitude of raw human talent and make it productive, India requires an educational revolution. The first step towards this would be dismantling the oppressive licence raj that still exists in this sector even as it has become history in India's product markets.