BLURB:
Goa's IT Professionals made a very strong case for building an IT sector around the existing companies instead of pursuing the dream of getting on large group to invest in the State
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Who should the information technology policy benefit? Big players who are expected to invest in the State, but rarely do so? Smaller home-grown players who have set up shop in the State and are now large enough in numbers to make their voice heard? Or both? There is no clarity. Goa-based software company owners grouped under Goa Information Technology Professionals (GITP) have thrown down the gauntlet and are ready for a fight. In an email to Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar GITP has demanded that the present IT director be sacked for several failures. The basic demand is that they be included in the decision making process. GITP has, for some strange reason, been denied a seat at the drafting table. While the inclusion of NASSCOM was welcomed the failure of the government to include GITP means demands from local IT companies will not be heard, which is a huge setback for them.
The IT policy is still in the making. It is a make-in-Goa project that has refused to get off the drawing board and the sector is suffering for it. Goa is often referred to as the state that missed the IT bus. Now it looks like, in desperation to get on to the second bus, it runs the risk of boarding the wrong one. The State has had no success in drawing IT companies to invest in the State. The reasons for this are many. At the heart is lack of a clear policy. Several false starts and aggressive lobbying by Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Andhra Pradesh. The fact that Goa was ranked 19th for ease of doing business in the country has not helped. The dream of building an IT park has remained on paper and private players who were in a position to make it happen were discouraged by opposition on the ground. In the meanwhile, smaller companies have mushroomed in nooks and corners of the State without any support from the government. These companies have reached critical mass and are now asserting themselves.
IT professionals have a right to ask, what's in it for us? More importantly, by dispatching an email to the Chief Minister outlining a 'we first' demand, GITP has made a very strong case for building an IT sector around the existing companies instead of pursuing the dream of getting on large group to invest in the State, an approach that has failed on several occasions, the exit of Lava being the latest in a long list of setbacks. While sacking of the IT director might not be the solution, the government, and Parsekar in particular, must give GITP a fair hearing. Representatives of the grouping must be included in the drafting committee. More importantly, the government must re-examine its basic premise for growing the IT sector by bringing a big player and consider building it around the existing group of companies and start-ups. If this seems too revolutionary, it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a segment in the policy that caters to local IT units without disturbing the overall plan, if one exists.
