India needs to excel in IT services sector to beat China

Mysore, June 27 (UNI) IT major Infosys Technologies Chief Operating Officer Kris Gopalakrishnan today opined that India was likely to lose out to China in the IT services sector if it did not take immediate measures to improve quality of education in the country.

Delivering the keynote address through video conferencing at the two-day Industry-Academia meet, he said China excelled in manufacturing and services sector and it was high time Indian engineering and technical institutions enhanced quality of education to meet the current industry trends. It should also provide good infrastructure for research and development.

Mr Gopalakrishnan, also Chairman of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), said ''Technical institutions in the country should function as finishing schools. Industries should be able to absorb students passing out of these institutes directly without providing further training.'' Faculty should also be improved to keep pace with the trend,'' he added.

Calling for private participation in the education system, particularly higher education, he pointed out that this system had turned out to be a grand success in neighbouring Tamil Nadu and asked Karnataka to follow suit.

On the social aspect, he said Infosys had instituted 37 scholarships for nearly 200 engineering students and each one of them was paid Rs 25,000 per month. It had also made efforts to take computer education to the grass roots level.

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