Young Generation: An asset for India – Shri Sachin Pilot, Corporate Affairs Minister

Sachin Pilot is Minister of State in the Ministry of Communications and IT

In any company whether Indian or foreign, the lines are getting blurred as more and more foreign companies which have set up shop in India. Over the last decade foreign companies have tried to make themselves as Indian as possible to appeal to the large domestic market that we have and individuals like you who are working in these companies have done a commendable job in getting foreign companies to come here and establish themselves.

What is more remarkable now is that entrepreneurs and enterprises from within India have gathered enough strength, determination. And I think the resources were available in past perhaps but not to the extent of how much they are today. But what has taken companies and individuals across the political borders has been the fact that the kind of self confidence we have within our own system and economy is the reflection of kinds of investments and acquisitions Indian companies are making overseas.

20-25 years ago the Indian private sector did not lack the knowledge and knowhow of managing a business. It is because we have an inbuilt sense of self-respect, pride, confidence within our own economy, our own market and our own systems now that we are able to explore and conquer other frontiers outside of India. Over the last few years many Indian companies have made a mark in different continents, many individuals have embarked upon a long journey to establish themselves as corporate in lands far away from India. It takes a lot of effort and I think the government has been supportive of the fact that as multinational companies and large corporations are looking at India as 1/6^th of Human kind resides in the land of India, it is a huge market for all companies, a lucrative market to sell their goods and services. India must also reach out; we must not remain captive to the domain of foreign corporation and companies. Indian companies have ventured out.

In the Information Technology area, there are many Indian companies, may be more than half a dozen which are Indian companies that are setting the global benchmark. Many IT companies around the world,whether in Europe or America,are pitching themselves against Indian IT companies. It could be in southern part of India or eastern part of India and other parts of India, but these companies have become global standard companies setting benchmark for other IT companies to follow. But what makes people from cross age group, different ethnicity, religion, language to come together and work towards a common objective? Clearly it is the idea of the product you make or the service you sell but more importantly it is the kind of team work, understanding, kind of drive and ambition which a group of young people can bring to the table which nobody can.

I know for a fact that when I meet young people across our country, young students, professionals, farmers or self employed individuals, they have in their eyes a dream and an aspiration for a better life for themselves, they don’t have patience to pray to God to provide a better life to their children and grandchildren. They want a better life for themselves in next 2 years or 3 years and they are willing to work for it. No country has made progress without its young people who have the determination, skill sets, the talent, the hard work, a sense of sacrifice to contribute to their family and society. If you have these ingredients there is no reason why this country should remain second to anyone in the next few years. A lot of things have come together at the same time, we have a benefit of being a young country, it is an opportunity but also a challenge. The exposure and the knowledge that we have now, wasnot available to people 20 years ago. There was no medium to communicate.

I always say this whenever I get a chance to speak that if we had the mobile telephones, broadband internet connections, the English speaking capability which the Indian have today, the difference lies that today we can make a better presentation which people make in London, Brussels or anywhere in the world. That is because we have the confidence and the pride of being an Indian, our cultural history and nation which was lacking 30 years ago. Indians were making the best engineers and doctors but they were lacking in soft skills, they did not have what it took to get up and share their ideas and innovation. Today a 21 year old young Indian, who is well educated, can talk to anybody. I think we have to deploy our energy to create that young generation of Indians. We have to give them a platform to acquire skills, an opportunity to retrain them to not just compete with the people in India but to compete at a global platform as the lines between the countries have been blurred.

So when Indian companies reach out to the world, for sustainable growth they will require managers, young managers, the core team and the head that gives the vision and the direction. The actual execution lies in the hand of middle management and the young people who are working 15-18 hours every day to make the company’s dreams to become a reality so that challenge lies on your shoulders. I am happy to see that there is now a realisation and it is not enough just to be satisfied with what you have achieved, you have to aspire for larger targets, bigger goals and quite frankly the country expects it of you. It is not the case that every government has a magic wand or any society can really drive the country from the front end and pull its country along, it has to be the private sector, and it has to be the young people.

The IT sector in which I am working, we have exported 78 billion worth of software services in last one year but the demand in this industry in India today is 45 billion dollars. In less than 10 years it will become 500 billion dollars, that will be more than the oil import bill of this country and we will have to import these electronic goods worth billion dollars if we don’t start manufacturing here. We have to start manufacturing, we have a to create an ecosystem where the raw material, talent pool, the manufacturing , engineering and production capabilities of companies and individuals will come together because we have the capability to meet the global  standards on both quality and price points. If we are able to do that, our manufacturing will then gain momentum and that’s the direction in which my department, IT ministry is working.

2/3^rd of our country is doing agriculture contributing 17% of our GDP that cannot sustain us for long. We have to shift a huge part of our agrarian work force on to the shop floor or to the factories and industries and give them skills so that they can add value to the economy. That is when we will create global giants and Indian companies will expand themselves to become global companies. I am waiting for a Google or a Microsoft to come out of India. It will, sooner or later. The ideas are there, we have the R &D facilities, we have such brilliant human talent but we need the support for capacity capability building from government and from everyone.

Let me just end by saying that people talk that India is young and it is changing , I say to them that this large work force today is paying us dividends but if we do not give them the right education or right skills, in a decade it will become a huge burden for us. Young people who are under qualified, underconfident, not employed to their capacity is a much bigger challenge than we can imagine today. So we have to focus on our basic education. We make half a million engineers every year, studies say the less that 25% of them are employable when they get out of college. So companies hire them and retrain them to make them effective. Quality of education, ability to explore new ideas and working on them selflessly, we are not just working for ourselves but for our family too and to make India proud and we all come from different backgrounds make up India. We have survived for 1000 years because of our identity and our culture and we will survive in future too.

The above article is an excerpt from the speech delivered by Mr. Sachin Pilot, Minister of State in the Ministry of Communications and IT at AIMA’s 39th National Management Convention which was held in September 2012.