Slashdot Mirror
India's Digital Village
sirdude writes "Business Week has a pretty comprehensive story on the impact of projects such as Bhoomi, which are slowly but surely bridging the digital divide in rural India. With entrepreneurial initiatives such as e-choupal, Simputer, and a multitude of other privately-funded projects also beginning to take root, the rural Indian (who comprises about 70% of India's population), is slowly inching his way into the information age. The rest of the third world is watching & waiting, and taking detailed notes :)" And the parts about computerized land records may remind anyone who's read it of Hernando De Soto's The Mystery of Capital .
So I have a question here. What good is all of this technology they are getting if they don't know how to use it? India is a prime example of technology for technology's sake, without a hint of knowledge to go along with it.
Case and point. I work for large multinational corporation with offices in India, which also happens to own a large percentage of India's largest manufacturing company. I work in a relatively small office of about 100 hardware and software engineers developing niche hardware. Right after the recession dug its heels into the economy, our management decided it would be a good idea to offshore a lot of the work we were doing. We started importing (on L-1 visas, of course) dozens of Indians to be trained how to do our jobs. Here's what we found: Indians are very boastful of their capabilities and are very eager to prove themselves, but they don't know squat. They have a particular arrogance about them that is not only annoying, but completely unprofessional - even going so far as to telling us we're doing our jobs wrong, but then failing miserably when they try to do things their own way.
The rest of the world is shoving all of this technology down India's throat before they're ready, and as a result, they are going to end up being slaves in their own country to those countries that put that technology there. It's a technological coup, so to speak.
Indians have a lot to learn if they want to catch up to today in terms of technology. They need to pay particular attention to business and engineering practice and process if they're going ot have any hope of succeeding. They could also stand to learn some people skills.