The impending crunch of middle level professionals in the IT sector as prophesied by Nasscom appears well within the realm of possibility. Nasscom has predicted that India will face a shortage of 0.5 million skilled blue-collar workers by 2010 if measures are not taken to create the necessary additional workforce by then.

Given that Nasscom has sought to substantiate its predictions with facts and figures it has marshalled , one cannot – and should not – overlook the impending gravity of the situation that threatens to slow down, if not cripple, the fast growing IT sector three years hence.

The country has 1,400 engineering colleges which collectively produce over three lakh engineers annually. Besides, other technical institutes churn out over a lakh diploma holders.   If one were to add these two figures, the country will have produced an additional 12 lakh engineers by 2010.

Even considering that a major chunk of these engineers opt for employment in the IT sector, ideally speaking, we should not have any problem in meeting the future requirement. But the problem lies elsewhere. Nasscom rightly feels the scarcity will stem from the quality of engineers rather than their quantity. It fears that a major share of engineers thus produced may not have adequate competence to cater to the IT sector’s growing requirement.

It is appreciable that the government is planning to set up seven more IIMs and three new IITs in the next five years at an investment of Rs 5,000 crore. Besides, plans are also afoot to set up 20 more NITs to meet the growing manpower requirement of the industry aimed at supporting the globalisation of Indian industry.

As a short term measure, colleges need to be liberated from bureaucratic hurdles and be empowered to alter their curriculum to make them industry-friendly. Because, engineers today are lacking in learning things that the industry needs and this results in high costs.

It would also be in the fitness of things to encourage top class foreign universities and institutions to set up collaborative institutions in the country through public and private partnerships and offer degrees and diplomas of same quality and standards of education as in their own countries. Simply put, India needs to improve the quality of its young technical personnel if it should avert the worst case scenario of a slowdown in IT sector growth.