The Ongoing IT Revolution and Security Implications for Pakistan

Ref pennathur #: 4

{The IT dominance that India has achieved on the world stage (not in terms of quantity but in terms of sheer influence) is not a result of recent initiatives. Contrary to what your correspondent believes (AND PLEASE SAC-WHAT`S YOUR NAME?-the Indian government has played a role in making this happen. The 1950s saw India invest in educational infrastructure - not just the IITs but at least a hundred other institutions - older colleges like the Colleges ofEngg. in Pune, Madras etc., and the Regional Engg. Colleges in many States (including the one in Srinagar which has produced several top-notch professors who teach in the US today), a network of research institutions. That is paying off today.}

In a recent conversation with a friend at MicroSoft (with decades of research experience at Burroughs and IBM), he expressed serious concern at the lack of research publications even from the IITs. He should know because he himself is a graduate of IIT-Bombay and is widely read. Thus, we have successfully turned our research institutions into factories making coding drones.

The first list of institutions banned from having contacts with the US after the 1998 nuclear tests included Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Indian Institute of Science and Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics. I didn`t see a single IIT or engineering college in that. Tells you whom the US fears when it comes to defense-related research. Oh, don`t forget the computational needs of simulation of nuclear explosions or missile flight characteristics. So, I am somewhat correct in my assessment that our IITs have been reduced to turning out drones. The few with marketing skills turn out to be the founders of Silicon Valley companies. (You really don`t think that Vinod Dham designed the Pentium chip by himself, do you? Or that Guru Deshpande designs networking chips today?)

{I have recently moved from India into a top-ranked business school in the US. I have several Chinese, Japanese, Korean and European classmates apart from the Americans. The awe that you command as an Indian - one from the land of IR dominance - is simply experienced to be believed. Wherever I have been - the Social Security Office, the Motor LICENSE Bureau, shopping malls - I find that being an Indian means a new respectability. The Indian presence in academia in the US is simply awesome. Of the faculty of the top 50 business schools between them - 8-10% are Indian or of Indian origin.}

You will eat reality cookies as you leave academia and move into the real world. I suggest Montgomery, Alabama, and Jackson, Mississippi, for starters. Even Toronto. Or, London, England. Did you hear about the neo-Nazi attack on foreigners in Germany? Yout fancy MBA is not going to help you when you are attacked by skinheads in suburban London.

So long as you have a high income, stay in lily-white suburbs and commute into the cities, you are going to find life great. Wait till your kids get called names in school and come home crying.

The population of Indian scientists working in the hard sciences and engineering departments of US universities has been pretty high since the 1960s. If anybody has come far, it is the mainland Chinese who only came her in droves in the mid 1980s and they beat your pants off in abstract mathematics.

{The Indian in the US is typically the best educated immigrant available (among the 1 million Indian Americans school dropouts are unknown, 75% hold a college degree and 55% hold graduate degrees)}

And the US-raised kids of these successful people drop out. First generation Indians succeed because the cost of failure is tremendous -- you get to go back to India, you don`t collect the green card. The next generation starts looking at options other than medicine or engineering much to the dismay of their parents. Who knows what happens to the third generation?

Don`t pat yourself too hard on the back; you might break your arm.

PS. I shall save time for those who are displeased by this post. The predictable response is: here is a failure who blames the US for his failings and who is bitter. I have no intention of disclosing my persona to unknowns and shall not respond with my resume or current position.

Let us be clear what this IT revolution is all about: it is about writing yet another payroll program and changing the heading CPF (Contributory Provident Fund in India) to Social Security Deductions in the US. Oh, yeah; putting it on the web.

Don`t tell me that I trivialize issues; one of my programmers already told me that some 10 years back. I merely reduce things to irreducible minima and they turn out to be trivia.

Re: fairdinkum

``By making such statements, you are only reinforcing sac’s view.``

The key word in my post was ``helping``...India doesn`t initiate the destructive moves Pakistan makes, Pakistan does. But if you`re foolish enough to have a self-destructive existence vis-a-vis India, we ain`t gonna stop you. Example? India can get away with not signing the CTBT for a while...Pakistan really cannot afford the opportunity cost of not signing it....but India is happy to wait and watch Pakistan lose the benefits.

I was in Pakistan last month and spent some time looking into the IT scene there (visited training institutes, technology park at Islamabad, chatted with some folks involved with IT in public and private sector). I think the Indian IT boom is definitely having a beneficial affect in Pakistan - bright youth now see a channel for advancement, marketing is being developed, and the current government (unelected though it is) is providing strong leadership in strengthening the IT infrastructure. The path has pitfalls - bureaucratization (the reason the IT sector took off in India was because for a long time Indian bureaucrats had no clue on how to control it), political unrest, and so forth. In IT, when the tide rises, all boats - Indian and Pakistani as well as in other parts of the world - rise with it. We need to change some of our old habits and get new ones - moving away from competition with India to cooperation, limiting public sector role to that of an enabler rather than a player in IT, and so forth.

Uh oh, here we go again. India is the threat, blah, blah, blah by Sac stuck in his cubicle oblivious to the outside world where indians and pakistanis get along as individual humans and not as representatives of their governments. Learn to think Pakistan, Pakistan and not != India. If India were to improve her economic situation, peace is vital. No sane outside investor would be interested in war-mongering nation (unless it is a superpower and can reduce dialogs into monologs).

Why do I get the feeling that Chowk is interested in articles that provoke a strong reaction than, may be, articles of substance. This one here by my nemesis is all hot air with the usual hyperbole for effect-India is not a powerhouse on anything. It may have a greater recognition than the West in IT, but it is still one of the poorest countries in the world. The Americans know it more for the bride burnings and floods and cyclones and filmstar-kidnapping bandits than for IT. Most of the IT is ``low-wage`` body-shopping.

As Jay said (he should publish a red book if only for my sake), most internet interactions are about sex, games and getting attention. It figures..

RE RSaxena

Despite your very generous offer of helping to lead their economy to the gutters, I don`t think they`ll take us up on it. They have such homegrown talent on that front. Even the fat lady from Madras or Laloo will have a few lessons to learn from them.

Wake up guys. Why must everything you do be a us versus them affair? If you`re a country, what are your national priorities and interests vis avis the economy? You can`t define yourselves versus a neighbor. It must be what you`re for, not what you`re against.

Actually, the ``war this and war that`` mentality is more than sickening...it is self-defeating.

[``But most importantly it has been won without any help from the Indian government. Indian contribution to the IT revolution has happened despite the Indian government.``]

how can YOU say that ? if india is making strides in IT today it is because of the HUGE investments successive indian governments have made in education. education in india has all along been so subsidised that any middle class parent can afford to provide their children a professional education. Even in times of extreme economic hardships, this educational subsidy had been zealously protected by every government, despite the severe strains on the treasury.

seen all those indians that are successful today ? i`m sure EVERY ONE of them might had been a beneficiary of this subsidy at some point or other during their education. most importantly, the government has never demanded anything in return from anybody so educated. even when there are concerns about the ``brain drain``, there was not even a hush from anybody in power about forcing people to stay back.

[``Pakistan has a window of opportunity of not more than two years to get its IT strategy in place.``]

as for IT skills are concerned, you guys are no less capable. what better tetimony you need than the classic ``Brain`` computer virus?. this is perhaps the earliest PC virus and definitely it was the first one to use the `Stealth technique` to hide itself. though never confirmed, there is NO second opinion that this virus originated in Pakistan. Fondly called ``Pakistani`` or ``PakistaniBrain``, it still remains one of the widely analyzed viruses in PC history and no book on computer virus is complete without a study of ``Brain``. in fact, it became so popular among the virus writers that many started using it as a ``template`` for virus development, forcing the original creators to include a (mock ?) copyright notice on the virus itself on a subsequent version!

however, a few bright spots here and there may make you feel good, but won`t get you anywhere. you need an accessible robust education system that blends the intellectual potential with systematic knowledge which ensures a steady generation of quality skills. point is, may be you need a sound education strategy in place that drives the IT revolution rather than a vague ``IT strategy``.

Good Lord! Does everything have to be couched in terms of war? I assure you India`s exploding IT industry was not started to settle scores with Pakistan.

``How can we bring Pakistan to its knees?``

``Hmm...let us start some premier institutions and many second tier technology institutes...that`ll teach `em in a couple of decades.``

*shakes her head *

I dont want to get into an India-Pakistan match over who is better and who is not ....

I just want to congratulate Dareecha people and their energetic representative from San Jose for

promoting IT in Pakistan ....

Well done Ms Sarwari ....

-Pakistan Zindabad

-Quaid e Azam Zindabad

-Ataturk Zindabad

-Jiye Bhutto

-Imran Khan for PM

Re: Sac

An apt article!

Two years is too little! The bureaucrats and the so called elites of Pakistan will never allow it! Education, the sine qua non of an IT boom in Pakistan, is a threat to their rule and has to be denied! :)

Five to ten years tops and then the only place you can find Pakistan will be in an outdated atlas of the world!

Ciao!

RE: Ferozk#26

Et tu, Brute!

One day, a Desi IT specialist, let`s say, Gymno, finds a little frog which is telling him:``Kiss me, I am a princess``. Gymno puts him into his pocket. Having arrived at work, the frog is asking him: ``Kiss me, I am a princess``. No reaction from Gymno again. In the evening he goes to the pub and shows the frog to his friends. The frog is using that occasion and says to Gymno: ``Kiss me, I am a bewitched princess``. No reaction from him. So, his friends are asking him:``Why don`t you kiss the frog?`` Well, Gymno is saying, I have no time for a girl friend, but a talking frog is kinda cute``.

RE: ylh

You said ``I dont want to get into an India-Pakistan match over who is better and who is not ....``

Good. Let`s see if you can keep it that way!!!

JIYE IT!

INTERNET ZINDABAD!

BILL GATES FOR GOD!

An excellently written article that paints the unfortunaltely bleak picture that surrounds our approach to entering and rising in the IT field.

Lets get out there and show the world that we too have the expertise and the know-how to build an IT empire.

How we can go about that really baffles me;but somebody out there please step up and help us save our nation from ruin. Anybody please!!!

Ameer.

You have hit the spot!!!

Pakistan needs to really get going on the IT path. It has some brilliant people who are sophisticated enough to have a healthy competition with Indian IT brains.

Imagine the powerhouse if India and Pakistan could get together on leading an IT revolution in South Asia. Will we rule the world or will we rule the world!!!

Digital Divide between India and Pakistan

http://www.mcconnellinternational.com/ereadiness/EReadinessReport.htm

Many developing countries could be condemned to economic stagnation because of a lack of investment in high-technology infrastructure.

Among the countries not yet prepared to catch up with the computer revolution are China, Russia, Indonesia, Pakistan and South Africa.

India and Malaysia serve as two examples of countries that have been particularly forward-looking in the realm of information technology legislation. Both are notable for the comprehensiveness of recently enacted legal frameworks designed to create predictability about information security.

Asia’s Human Capital resources are strong. In addition to three economies rated blue, four are

amber, showing that sufficiently skilled workforces are in place to drive E-Business forward. South Korea,for example, takes pride in its “gold card” immigration policy, designed to make immigration as easy and smooth a process as possible for the recruiting of high-tech experts, particularly software engineers from India.



Despite its progress in these areas, Connectivity in Asia remains an important issue. Eight of the ten economies are red. India, for example, even with its reputation as a software powerhouse, has one of the lowest tele-densities in the world, standing currently at approximately 1.5 lines per 100 persons. PC penetration is considerably lower, at approximately 0.2 per 100.