A couple of weeks ago, out of the blue, I received a phone call from F C Kohli, former deputy chairman of Tata Consultancy Services. His opening remark must definitely have been at the top of the ‘Things F C Kohli Is Most Unlikely To Say’ List not too long ago. “We’ve got to do something about hardware!” he began. Quite a shock, coming from a man revered as the Father of the Indian software industry. Indeed, it was Kohli’s TCS that set India on the road to software glory. Of course there are those who argue that back in the beginning, had TCS embarked on a product path rather than walking down services street, we might have been whistling an even more lucrative tune today. Then again, we might have been left just whistling.

Anyway, on the phone, Kohli was certainly not whistling Dixie. His call was a prelude to the conference “Powering Indian Hardware & Networking Towards $62 Billion,” organised by MAIT, the apex body of the hardware industry in India. The $62 billion refers to the level of revenues the Indian hardware industry could reach by 2010, according to a MAIT-Ernst & Young study.

That’s just eight years away. The reality in 2001-02, ironically, is that we have witnessed an 11 percent decline in PC shipments over the previous year—an announcement that MAIT wisely chose to postpone till a day after the conference. To reach the projections, we’d need to grow over twelve times the current size. No matter. Listening to the speakers—F C Kohli delivered the keynote—it seems that there are no unknowns in the game. We know all the problems and obstacles, and happily, have solutions for most of them too.

But here’s the kicker: someone has to now go out and implement those solutions. And did I say no unknowns? There’s one big one: shifty government policy and shifting government officials (switch epithets, if you prefer). Over the years the government has given the hardware industry short shrift to the extent that one gets the feeling that it wishes to wipe out manufacturing in the country. For instance, Wipro ePeripherals gives an example of how, because of wonky levies, it pays Rs 500 more to the government for every printer it manufactures in India, as compared to every printer it imports! While software has been quite the darling of policy makers because of its early forex earnings, the hardware industry, as one manufacturer lamented, has been literally “tortured” all these years.

The government, on its part, says it’s still ‘learning’ the nuances of this complex industry. Nice thought, but it’s a learning that’s leading us nowhere, for, hardly is the education halfway through, when the next set of clueless officials swaggers onto the carousel and the music has to start over. Adding to the confusion is the lack of a uniform policy across the country. Oftentimes, what the Centre giveth, the states taketh away. So you may have duty concessions announced at the Union Budget, and then, increases in other taxes and retrograde levies like octroi at the state level, sometimes varying even from city to city.

Our software success is a matter of great pride, and there can be no detracting from it. But looking at it another way, despite the short term riches that have accrued from software exports, we have so far been indirectly contributing far more to the development of other countries than to that of our own. Only if computerisation happens in a massive way within the country, can we too enjoy the same productivity gains that the countries we export our software services to now take for granted.

Will this ever happen? Perhaps more than for any other industry, the government has a massive role to play here. Apart from a single-minded, unified policy promoting computer hardware manufacture whole hog, with all the concessions, incentives, infrastructure development, blah, blah, that go with it, the government at the same time needs to catalyse deployment through sponsored and mandatory hardware purchase and computerisation in every sphere of governance and public life.

We need look no further than China to realise how achievable and successful this could be. The Chinese government has allocated $5 billion as IT spend. Under the “Golden Projects”, the entire government machinery is being ported online. Almost 3 percent of the country’s GDP goes into education, and the government has decreed that all high schools and most primary schools will be connected to the Internet by 2005. One can only imagine the boost all this will give the Chinese IT industry, while at the same time taking the entire country onto a higher plane.

In India we most certainly need Indian-designed and manufactured hardware products with Indian language interfaces and relevant local applications and content. We have been singing hosannas to the cause of Indian language computing for years now, but with little unified effect. Now, hopefully, MAIT’s newly instituted Consortium on Innovation and Language Technology (COILTech) will tie things together in this sphere.

Perhaps the answer for India will lie in totally ‘disruptive’ innovation, wherein we come up with architecture different than that of the PC, or computing devices with an entirely new form factor. Sasken’s Internet access device Aparate, the Simputer, Skorydov’s PC Slate, etc, are early examples of this innovation. For more of these to surface, we need far more investment in R&D and many many more microelectronics engineers in this country. And if the government-funded Media Lab Asia can distance itself from controversy and get its act together, India may well find itself at the helm of the next wave of computing.

At the conference, Mr Kohli ended his address by upping the stakes, with a prediction that the Indian IT industry at the end of 10 years would in fact touch $200 billion—split equally between hardware and software. Well, if the industry is to take him up on that, then there sure is a helluva lot we’ve all got to do about hardware.

- Val Souza, Editor
valsouza@expresscomputeronline.com