ICT Leverage of Indian Business in World Economy

Dr. RAVI PRATAP SINGH Dr. ANAND SENGUPTA Professors of Commerce & FacultyBusi Admn. D.D.U. Gorakhpur University Gorakhpur, INDIA

rp_singh20@yahoo.co.in

rudraanand61_gkp@yahoo.co.in

The Current Worldwide Depression

Exposed the inherent weaknesses of our policies and structures which are quite lop-sided, disintegrated, biased and imbalanced. Jolted the economies of the world, the rich ones in particular. A prosperous country like the USA (managed in best possible way by the so called worlds best managers, technocrats and professionals from Harward, MIT, Stanford, Kellogs and so on & so forth) has been unable to overcome it through its own economic policies and perforced to resort to threatening attitude frequently towards the other trading nations like Japan, China, Iran, South Korea, India, etc. for itsown economic interests anyhow. Most of the Europe also has become severe victim of this depression. Our own economy has also been a victim of this downturn. N R Narayana Murthythe mother of all recessions. ICT has a catalytic role to play in systemic revival. Their labour intensive and export-orientated character quite inspiring for other sectors.

The Objective
To analyze the major relevant developments in the information and communication technology. Their direct and indirect (through its linkage with other sectors of the economy) implications on creativity in economic entities in a recession-prone world economy. A new Model of performing organization (through a Creativity-Conformity Grid) with support of matching technology mediation of strategic TQM and vehicle of creativity.

The Prevalent Attitude

Science cannot be an exclusively intellectual pursuit, but must be relevant economically and socially. The hope among some senior scientists and officialsIndia can short-cut the established path of industrial development and move straight to a knowledge economy. The agricultural revolution threw up civilisational leaders like India, Egypt and China. The industrial revolution threw up at least Britain and United States.

Will the information revolution throw up a new leader or leaders, and will India be among
them?

 Three Aspects of Opportunity

(1) (2) The industries like information technology and telecommunications are areas where India and Indians have shown a surprising amount of skill and creativity. As jobs become more and more fungible across borders, India's large base of skilled manpower is finally going to be an advantage. But these 'soft jobs' are subject to heavy fluctuations and uncertainties at present. An explosion has occurred in the Indian enterprise in the closing years of the 20th century. Middle-class has woken-up to the entrepreneurial dream and the new, mindwarerelated businesses that they are starting are not as dependent on the efficiency of the government as the old businesses are. Which brings us to the only stumbling block to what could be India's century is bad governance. --Tony Joseph, (2000, p.8) Ex-Editor, Business World

(3)

ECONOMIC DOWNTURN AND THE INDIAN ICT

NASSCOM-McKinsey (2005)
The IT software and services industry is now Indias top exporter, and provides direct employment to over 1.6 million people (and, indirectly, to 4 times that number). Catalyzed the growth of commercial real estate, automobile, catering, hospitality and mortgage banking industries. Contributing to better governance and efficiency, even as it has transformed the image of India abroad. The industry making a significant positive impact on the Indian economy and the people of this country.

World Bank on Knowledge-Based Industries in India

to improve its competitiveness in the knowledge economy, India must strengthen the economic and institutional regime expand access for all to education that meets the needs of the market and encourages critical thinking improve the efficiency of public R&D increase private R&D encourage university-industry linkages build a dynamic information infrastructure create a shared vision between government, private sector and civil society on ways to move forward. (http://go.worldbank.org/YX6ZVPWUT0, November 21, 2006)

India has an opportunity under materialization for leapfrogging from its backward and dualistic structure into the state of the art technologies. It is true that the developed world is well wired whereas India is way behind in putting up infrastructure. But the coming future lies in wireless technology, which is cheaper and easier to implement. PC penetration in developed markets far exceeds that in India. But India will not need PC; now cheap thin systems will suffice. The world has left India far behind in manufacturing but India has always had a strong tradition in services that is gaining more importance now. --Bhattacharjee, Dwijottam (2000), India's 21st Century, BusinessWorld, 17 Jan.

DEVELOPMENTAL IMPLICATIONS OF IT
Earlier computers were procedure oriented sophisticated calculating machines. Present day computers have been and also are being developed on the lines of working of an intelligent human mind. Object-oriented programming (OOP), artificial intelligence, neural networks, knowledge systems, expert systems, etc. have become a reality now. On the pattern of biological cloning indications of development of mechanical babies much more intelligent, subtle and sophisticated than robots are emerging. As these intelligent systems (both hardware and software) are expected to work on the lines of intelligent human mind more intelligent and sincere human beings would be needed to operate these systems. Need for more developed human beings having sufficient exposure to computers and automated systems at various levels of management. But it needn't be a society populated by robots. We will enhance our mental abilities with external processing power. A human development programme has to concentrate on such enhancement of mental abilities in three contexts: demands of the information technology demands of quality demands and challenges of the environment.

IT AND CHALLENGING ISSUES

Issues like efficiency (including both profitability and productivity) quality of services Competitiveness (being directly controlled by automated machines) social obligation, growth, adaptation, etc. have become equally relevant to all businesses small or large, rural or urban, Indian and foreign.

The Challenges
A weak physical production structure with a direct jump of the Indian economy to the services is sure to cap the demand for knowledge, information and financial services and limit their growth. A large part of the financial services sector non-productive or under-productive due to their strategic, structural, procedural and technological weaknesses.

The dualistic nature of the economy.

Ongoing stagflation with depression and liquidity crunch in some sectors (mostly industries dominated by the ICT & financial companies including banks) and inflation in the agro-based & commercialized sectors.

QUALITY CONSCIOUSNESS
The emergence of TQM in combination with strategy orientation has opened many new vistas of human and organizational development like TCM, TPM, total quality training, performance management etc. IT and automated or computerized machines have made the use of better measures of performance and statistical quality control in respect of even minute processes possible. The ICT is the backbone for total management of enterprise resources and processes. The technological and structural issues are intertwined. They include quality consciousness, electronic technologies, competitiveness, BPR, BPO, strategyorientation etc. The strategic TQM(SRQM) paradigm covers incrementalist perspective the radical and explosive measures of lean, automated, flexible and agile manufacturing systems, ERP and innovative capabilities.

CREATIVITY VS CONFORMITY
Conformance ensures current productivity whereas creativity improves the chances of long-term survival and growth and enhances future productivity. Conformity supports current performance and that too conditioned to the existing value system within the organization. Creativity goes beyond the existing value system (creative people prefer autonomy over conformance and work to rule). A creative organization in the short run may have to bear transitional, initial investment and R&D costs. As compared to the traditional industries the knowledge intensive industries have to be more creative to ensure competitive advantage. But traditional industries are also fast getting converted into knowledge intensive industries to take advantage of intelligent machines and sophisticated technology. Creativity requires autonomy and is a pre-requisite for speed in any system. On the other side, conformity requires norms and standards and is a pre-requisite for systemic discipline. But, speed and disciplineboth are an essential pre-requisite for progress of any system.

CONCLUSION
Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam (2007) on computer vs brain: Most of the computers of the future and accessories will be micro sized, wearable and will have wireless communication with each other. Moderately priced PCs capable of performing about a billion calculations per second within next 10 years. It is predicted that by 2019, the computational ability of an ordinary PC would be around 1000 times that of the human brain. My view is definitely the creativity of the human mind will always be superior to the most powerful computers in the horizon. Creativity has to be business of IBM and other knowledge organizations. By the end of this century, there would be strong trend towards convergence of human thinking with the world of machine intelligence that the human species initially created. Despite all advancements and investments in IT, their utilization by the new economy has been quite wasteful and misdirected leading to the prolonged depression in the world economy. Its labor intensive character and capabilities for mass welfare and development remain largely unutilized so far. Instead its advantages seem to have been disproportionately cornered by the corporate economy and consumerist rich sections leading to economic dualism and poor utilization of and wastage of excess capacities in the economy.

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