Merit was key to Bangalore's IT success, says California don

Noted Economist & University of California Business Management Economic Programme Director Prof Nirvikar Singh argued that Bangalore’s role in the Indian IT industry’s success was no carbon copy of Silicon Valley.
While the success of Indian entrepreneurs in the world’s high-tech capital of Silicon Valley was different with skilled IT professionals becoming “multimillionaires through enterprise and innovation”, Prof Singh said their subsequent engagement with policy debates in India and bringing their own capital and ideas also played a role in India’s IT success.

The success in IT & ITeS sectors here also brought significant changes in confidence and attitudes of Indian professionals, even as growth of the software industry “involved building direct relationships with business customers, development of management expertise” and attention to processes to ensure quality in software exports, he said.  Speaking on ‘Rediscovering India: From Wounded Civilisation to Emerging Giant”, organised jointly by ‘Sage Publications” and Madras School of Economics (MSE) here, Prof Singh said that as a spillover, the telecommunication policy reform here “was driven by the needs of India’s own IT industry.”

Though India’s IT & ITeS industries success was widely attributed to post-Independence development strategy that focused on modernisation and growth through industrialisation, Prof Singh said, software development was never seen as an “independent activity in IT”.