IT jobs will double to 3.2 m in four years - Nandan Nilekani

Employment generation by IT and ITES sectors will double to 3.2 million within the next four to five years, feels Mr Nandan M. Nilekani, Co-Chairman, Infosys Technologies Ltd.

Delivering the 12th Prof. Y. Nayudamma Memorial Lecture, on ‘Information Technology for Development’, at the R.M.K. Engineering College, Kavaraipettai, on Wednesday, Mr Nilekani observed that it took the industry 30 years to reach the present level of employment of 1.6 million. “What has happened in the last 30 years, will now happen in the next four to five years,” he said.

Mr Nilekani also received Nayudamma Award for the Year 2007 from Dr Anil Kakodkar, Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission and Secretary, Department of Atomic Energy, Government of India.

He said that IT worked well when it came to projects of one entity on a national scale, such as railway reservation or the National Stock Exchange. However, when it came to integrating applications at multiple regions, “it is a different ballgame”.

“Every city and every State is determining its own applications. A large number of projects, but we are not really able to replicate and scale them up across the country. And therefore clearly the challenge is how do we take elsewhere projects that are run in one State or one city and replicate,” Mr Nilekani said. He also stressed the need for introducing a national identification number for all citizens and presented it to the audience as a major project involving the IT industry.

“Unlike in the US, where everybody has a social security number, we do not have one number to identify our citizens,” he said.

In India, there are different numbers to identify a citizen — such as passport number, PAN number, TIN and ration card BPL number.

“So, one of the big challenges of the next decade is how to create a national way of systematically assigning an identification number to everyone. Because once you do that, you can do that for many things. Today, thousands of crores of subsidies are being given to the poor, but they are not reaching the poor people, because there is no way to directly reach benefits to the poor. The national identification number will actually enable the govt to directly target benefits to the poor

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