Today at every corner of the world you will find the presence of Indian’s attached with IT related professions. I don’t think yet people put serious thought to realize, why a particular community, people from a particular country becoming so successful and so much appreciated in this newly evolved professional domain. There are some quickly concluded theories like cheap labor, a big pool of educated young population who some how can communicate in English. But all these theories have limitations, these factors are present in many other countries too and these advantages didn’t emerge in India in recents days, but prior to IT industry, in any other industry or in any other profession such concentration of Indian’s were not visible any time before.
There is definitely a demand supply equation of business, which has worked out, but those factors were always there, whenever any other industry evolved with a new technological discovery at any age.
There is something definitely much more than these, and if you watch carefully most of the IT professionals came out, from a particular and very similar section of Indian middle class families. This is my effort to find out that Indian spark which made us so successful in this cutting edge technology.
Habit of thinking and imagination: As in India we have an huge population with limited resources, almost everyday, we spend some considerable amount of time for waiting for a resource or standing in a queue. The only thing you can do that time is thinking which force and build a natural habit and tendency of thinking and get absorbed in thoughts to any Indian. This is very important skill for the technology of imaginations.
Habit of accepting the unexpected and keep solving the problem: To the middle class Indian society, there are infrastructural resources available, but you can’t count on them. For example if you enter your home and switch on the light you may see it didn’t bright up. So the next thing you will do check the fan. If its also not working, you try to remember, when coming did you see light from other neighborhood houses, if yes check the other rooms, then try to understand if its fuse burn out, which one and then fix it by yourself, pushing all other evening schedule back of your mind. It is just a fictitious example, but problem solving like this, we are compelled to do every step in our life. We can take very few things as granted. The habit of non panic and accepting unexpected and keep working to solve it, this habit is a so much required one, in this industry.
Patience is a quality with which you are tortured in every part of your life in India : This was first brought into my attention by one of my friend’s wife, she was a teacher in India and now teaches chemistry in one school in America. As a comparison, she said American kids are more restless by nature than Indian, they can’t simply sit at a place quietly even if they don’t have anything to do. Definitely Indian kids have an advantage in the process of nurturing the quality of patience compare to many other country, some how its not a demand of the present keep you busy continuously or your very nature and habit keep you on the tow. And the quality of patience is very important when you work in IT industry.
Happily accept a problem when you do have only partial skill and knowledge to execute it but the zeal and ability to keep working and learning you will find in every domain of our life. This aspect once enhanced by one of my very good friend Arunava Dasgupta, my BE college junior, with whom I spend some nice time in Italy and Bombay during my Fiat days, he can speak very good Italian. Once he was flying back from Italy to India, met one Italian businessman on flight. The Italian businessman first thought, he is from IT industry and Dasgupta corrected him, then during their conversation this discussion came up why Indian’s are so successful in IT. The businessman told a small story from his life. He spends a good amount of time at New Delhi. And he brought one of his favorite scooters from Italy to New Delhi for his personal use during his stay over there. And after some time it gave some mechanical trouble. He took it to a local Delhi based mechanic, the mechanic looked it carefully, then he told that Italian guy, honestly, I have never seen a scooter like this in my lifetime, and I am sure I won’t get any spare part of it in the local market. But if you can trust me I’ll open it and examine, if any part needs to be replaced, I’ll fabricate that part and try to fix it. The scooter was not worth to take back to Italy and use, so the Italian business man took a chance with him and finally he fixed it. Then he said, if I would have faced similar situation in Italy, no mechanic will take risk and interested to put his effort, if they don’t know anything of that model of the vehicle. He explained, because of this natural attitude of experiment and learning while working makes Indians very successful in this industry. I fully agree to this point. This field evolves so fast, there is no skill set in this profession which you can count for more than 1-2 years. And by nature any project you take up in this field whether it is some business problem solving or developing a new piece of software, you will have skill and knowledge only for some part of it. So you have to have the zeal and intuition to take the right project trusting your adaptation and learning capability. And in the process of execution you have to keep filling up the knowledge and skill which you are lacking. And you should have ability to close yourself to the right source of information by biting around the bushes. This natural tendency, developed back in home, definitely giving Indian’s an edge in IT industry.
There must be some other factors too in our Indian society, culture and value system, which has its contribution. But I am fully convinced something closely stringed with our socio-cultural environment of growing up, has given us the seed, the fruit of which we are harvesting world wide in the IT industry for some time. As a proof I can mention, I haven’t seen much Indians raised in other country have any contribution to this polarization. It is the Indian’s grown and spend most part of their educational life in India shows their distinctive presence in this newly emerged profession.
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