Have a vision for 2020, an action plan for 2010

A transformation with clearly defined milestones and commitments to the industry and the public is needed to fulfill our tryst with global destiny

Ganesh Natarajan

Pune has truly arrived – on the global map of IT and business process outsourcing. Thanks to the efforts of the chieftains of manufacturing and IT and the support of the powers that be in the government, at city as well as state level, the city has become one of the most talked about destinations for the knowledge industry. And as one worthy American President once said, “you aint seen nothing yet!”

With the right vision and robust implementation, the best is yet to come. The industry after lagging behind superstar destinations like Bangalore, Cyberabad and Gurgaon for a decade has discovered its true destiny in the last few years. Exports revenues clocked in excess of a billion dollars last year and every player worth the name from IBM, Symantec and Accenture to Wipro, Infosys and Satyam and WNS, Zensar and HSBC have set up or doubled their capacity in the city. The morphing of a provincial regional town to a bustling multicultural city with education, entertainment and cultural diversity that compares with the best in the world is nearly complete and with the manufacturing industry now keeping pace with IT, this city can look forward to many years of stupendous growth.

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If that’s the good news, urban planners would do well to look at the issues that plague the city as well, not just to continue the growth story but even to sustain the success that we have already attained. The three major ills are infrastructure, education and vision. The clogging of roads, the pathetic state of public transportation and the delays at the airport are well publicised, but are we fooling ourselves that we are a major education centre? The quality of much of the engineering and fine arts output is so appalling that for companies like Zensar over 60 per cent of the fresh talent and 80 per cent of the lateral hiring has to come from outside the city and even the state. A major overhaul of curriculum, content and pedagogy and rapid replication of the industry-academia partnerships that institutions like Vishwakarma , Symbiosis and Sinhagad have embraced, is essential to provide the talent pool the industry needs.

And what about a better vision than the often repeated McKinsey plan that we hear in various circles? A corporation that has taken forever to do the widening of Nagar Road and talks of elevated road systems along the entire length Mula-Mutha river without a clear calendar for implementation would do well to remember the words of management expert Joel Barker: “Vision without action is just a dream, action without vision just passes the time and its only vision with action that changes the world.” The knowledge sector has the ability to quadruple by the end of the decade and the Bajajs,Tatas and Kalyanis will ensure that the manufacturing sector matches this scorching pace. A vision for 2020 and an action plan for 2010 with clearly defined milestones and commitments to the industry and the public will be a major step in ensuring that all the good work done so far does not get frittered away. Pune needs a transformation if it has to fulfill its tryst with a global destiny that is there for the taking

(The author is Chairman of NASSCOM’s Innovation Forum and Deputy CMD of Zensar Technologies Ltd)