CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu is the first State in India to frame an IT policy as early as in 1997 and introduce a need-based computer education in educational institutions in a big way, said Poongothai Aldai Aruna, Minister for Information Technology, while addressing the two-day NASSCOM HR Summit 2009 with the theme ‘Balancing the board: Cost and competencies’, a flagship event, here on Tuesday.
“With a high literacy rate in down south, the State has the best work ethics and a talented workforce with the required technical skills in the field of information technology.’’
She also said that Chief Minister M Karunanidhi had been lending a great support to the industry as a whole by introducing the concept of single window clearance system as also the fast track system to help the business community to set up shops in the State without any hassles.
PWC Davidar, Secretary, Information Technology, Government of Tamil Nadu, said, “After the economic downturn, things are slowly improving and normality is returning. The State Government is working on the e-governance programme to cover individual departments and as many as 64 services are likely to be delivered by this financial year.’’
“There is a need to move beyond Chennai and set up shops in tier-2 cities like Tiruchy, Coimbatore, Tirunelveli and Madurai as good talents are also available there,’’ he said.
Som Mittal, President, NASSCOM, whose report was read out by Lakshmi Narayanan, Vice-Chairman, Cognizant Technology, said that even robots had to be given the pink slips, all because of the economic downturn.
Jerry Rao, Chairman, NASSCOM Foundation, whose speech was read out, said that the Corporate Social Responsibility always depended on the core values of philanthropy andsustainable development.
‘Downturn impacted job market’
Only during turbulent times, an industry can differentiate the best from the rest, said Kris Gopalakrishnan, CEO and MD, Infosys Technologies.
Speaking on the ‘Changing role of leadership in crisis: From transactional to transformational’ at the NASSCOM Summit, he said that the focus had now shifted to tier-II cities, all because of the pool of talents available there. The company had already established its units in tier-II cities like Mysore, Mangalore, Kochi, Bhubaneswar and Chandigarh.
“There are global careers for 20 lakh people in India and the unprecedented economic downturn has impacted the job scene and the companies are renegotiating their contracts.’’
Later, on the sidelines of the summit, Gopalakrishnan said that his company had been hiring people and giving them training for a longer period as a clear picture on the economic front would emerge in all probability by the middle of next year.
Harsh Manglik, Chairman & Geography Managing Director, Accenture India, said that the time had come to make our people long runners and not sprinters to meet the economic challenges as leadership required vision, courage and ability to to use the emotional intelligence.
Rajesh Nambiar, VP and General Manager, Global Delivery, IBM, spoke on the ups and downs his company had faced in its long history as a global player and how it had reinvented itself to the future task of growth and sustained development, besides building a Smarter Planet 2009.