India will need 163 years to catch up with China if it stopped in its tracks today!

For all the growth in the Indian IT sector, we really do face a tremendous shortage of good and abundant manpower. And then we have jokers like Arjun Singh and Manmohan Singh who would rather have quotas and reduce the meritocracy (as opposed to give more subsidies to poor students) and then increase the seats to further reduce the standard and quality of teaching in the name of equity!

However, I have one serious issue with this study.. they take the future path to be linear.. which I think is not a correct way to do. At the very least, such studies do not include all the factors that may play into the whole game. One thing that we have not realized is that it is far easier to increase capacities by using the market forces as opposed to Government sanction. The more need the top Universities elsewhere see of educating the Indians.. the faster they will move in. Also, a very large pool of talent is being educated and trained outside India of Indians… who do have it in their hearts to move back. Given the growth that one is seeing in India.. it can be a feasible option for many. In the many technology companies that I have worked in – consulting ones though – the number of Indians far outweighs the Far Eastern Asians combined! Nevertheless, the numbers within the Indian borders IS a very serious issue for the long term competitive success of Indian IT sector!

Top Indian scientist has admitted publicly that it will take 163 years to match China’s science and technology workforce of 850,000.

Gangan Pratap, Chief Scientist, Center for Mathematical Modelling and Computer Simulation made a startling revelation that if Beijing were to freeze the 850,000 strong scientific workforces, India, which produces 4,500 science doctorates annually would be at par with China only in 2170 AD. reported The Telegraph.

The Indian science and technology workforce is only 115,000, which is roughly one-eight of China. Significantly, both countries are nuclear-armed and are the two most-populated countries in the world.

Commenting on Prathap’s revelation, C. N. Rao, chief scientific adviser to India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, told the English daily, "We are lagging very far behind China. The biggest problem India will face in the next decade or so is a human resource crunch in science and technology."

At present, China’s scientific workforce is a staggering 850,000, it produces 40,000 fresh doctorates each year, its per capita scientific research spending is $12.15 and its share of global research publications is five per cent. In India the corresponding figures are 115,000, 4500, $3.53 and 1.9 per cent respectively.

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