
Why IT Happened in Southern India, an Unorthodox Explanation - raghus
http://blogs.zoho.com/general/why-it-happened-in-southern-india-an-unorthodox-explanation
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randomwalker
As an Indian person with the same background as the author, I think this is
only "unorthodox" in the sense that most Americans might not be aware of it.
In India, this is the commonly accepted explanation. I'm glad someone wrote it
up.

"The government getting the hell out of the way" has in fact been responsible
for all of the progress that India has made in the last two decades, starting
with the economic liberalization of 1991 precipitated by an IMF bailout of the
country's economy, marking the end of a sorry period of socialism (1947-91).
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_liberalisation_in_Indi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_liberalisation_in_India)

In the late 90s, the telecommunications sector was deregulated somewhat, and
this accelerated in the early 2000s. As you probably know, this led to an
explosive growth in cellphone penetration, which benefited the economy greatly
and had a very significant effect on alleviating poverty.
[http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/02_06/b3769124....](http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/02_06/b3769124.htm)
[http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_39/b4051058....](http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_39/b4051058.htm)

IMO, India is a textbook example of the ills of regulation, protectionism and
resistance to globalization. It is sad that the lessons are not being learnt
(by other developing countries).

~~~
badri
I share your sentiments. One nasty side effect of this is the drastic decline
in the quality of engineers graduating out every year.

~~~
sridharvembu
Badri, I have a more radical argument: quality of education is _irrelevant_
for the most part. Ultimately the real task of education (i.e imparting
knowledge) is borne by the employer or done as a by-product (sometimes an
accidental by-product) of a job. What the system achieved was a little bit of
IQ filtering, a whole lot of placebo ("building confidence"), and an employer
willing to offer a job to these graduates because they were "qualified". What
most employers didn't realize was that most candidates became qualified
_because_ they were placed on a job!

If what I say above is true, we could dispense with the college and deliver
the placebo faster and cheaper. Based on that premise, we performed the
experiment at Zoho: we recruit directly out of high schools, and train people
ourselves. I am happy to report that _it works_ \- which lends more evidence
to the college-as-placebo hypothesis.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
I do agree with you but there may be an unwanted consequence of this. (Please
forgive me if what I'm going to say is completely clueless. I know next to
nothing about India)

There is this widely reported emphasis of process and quality assurance
methods in indian offshoring companies. To my ears this sounds incredibly
bureaucratic and unnecessesary when you work with competent people.

Could it be that this overly convoluted QA process is required simply because
individual engineers are not educated well enough, or rather because they
never had the time to experiment for themselves, deepen their knowledge and
develop their own interests and creativity?

Or is this a perception problem created by the big indian IT companies who see
that whole QA methodology stuff as a way to appear reliable in the eyes of
western executives?

~~~
shrikant
Two main reasons for this, as I see it (having worked in a such a setting for
about a year before getting the hell out):

1 (internal reason). Large Indian offshoring companies (TCS, Infosys, Wipro,
HCL et al) have a HUGE workforce, and recruit fresh engineering under-grads in
massive numbers. All the bureaucracy becomes somewhat necessary in order to
manage undertakings of such magnitude

2 (external reason). Work-quality-wise, there isn't much difference between
contracting work out to a TCS vs Infosys vs Wipro vs whatever else - hence
this immense pressure on such companies to cultivate and tout such aspects
about themselves. And let's face it, when you're farming out grunt work to
code-monkeys, you kind of expect a 'monkey see, monkey do' attitude..

------
sonink
Entirely different explanation:

1\. India sets up the first few research organizations in Bangalore. - IISc,
DRDO, HAL - decision being entirely strategic to keep them away from Pak.
nukes.

2\. Some engineers think too much on the long lunches afforded by most govt.
sector instituitions and see an opportunity in exporting software. One of
these guys is narayan murthy.

3\. Infosys is born and soon Patni, TCS and Wipro - each drawing from talent
pool of DRDO, IISc and HAL. Obviously most start in Bangalore.

4\. Engineers from across the country flock to these new high paying jobs.
Some again extend their lunches too long.

~~~
boundlessdreamz
You must be joking right? Without private engineering colleges there would not
have been enough engineers for all these companies to operate. That is the
point of the article. There were always enough people graduating/working who
could form a nucleus of a company, but not enough people to grow it

~~~
eterno
Typically engineers gravitate to the point of work. Its only the initial
germination which matters.

There are more engineers in Bangalore from outside, than locals. Probably same
is true for silicon valley.

