Category: Opinion

The last time, I read Sufia Tippu’s article, I resolved never to read her article again (atleast first thing in the morning). I made the mistake again today. I cannot imagine how negative this author can be. The latest in her pessimistic repository of articles can be found here – titled “With Chip hopes fading, India looks to system manufacturing.”

In this article, she writes so hopelessly negative about the inability of India to have a semiconductor fab. It used to be, at one point in time, that India did not have a fab because of the ginormous amount of ultra clean water and air that is needed for a fab. We have come so far now, that all these hurdles can be tackled using technology, and is feasible. She now turns to unavailability of capital, for this industry to ever come up in India. Why cannot she think, that we will overcome this too, soon? Why is it, that we should look only for the tallwoods and the sandalwoods for venture capital?

And oh by the way, she makes a slew of negative statements, and claims that these are from observers (close to the industry)? Who are these observers? Pray tell me. If they are so top-secret, that they cannot reveal themselves, I do not want to trust their views either. Or, hmm, is she making up these statements, and pointing the blame on ‘observers’.

Whatever said and done, the author has one thing to her credit. She has made a very placid writer like me to write caustic posts like this one and the previous.

I read this EE times article today morning, titled “Indian IT returns to roots”.

• The article starts talking about India winning independence in 1947. And how the nationalist government in 1970 threw out multinationals like Coca-cola. It then states that CMC was setup to manage the mainframes in the country. Then companies like WIPRO and DCM sprung up.

• It then states that TI came to India in 1984, and the government spent 3 years deliberating whether to give it a 64 kbit/second telecom line. I heard it totally different from Wally Rhines, the then chief of TI, who helped setup TI India. In a recent international conference (VLSI India) keynote, he said, through a wonderful twist of fate, they got the connection in a jiffy. Not sure whom to believe here. But that is a different story. It then says that, it has changed now, and a big software company recently obtained a 90 Mbits/second telecon line.

• The article then suddenly does a dive, and says that, not all of India is that fortunate, and that 2/3rds of India still live in villages, and Prof Jhunjhunwala of IIT Madras fame, giving a brilliantly negative statement –

“There are 700 million people who still have no access to any kind of IT automation. We have a few startups here and there, but nothing much has come up by way of any disruptive technology that could change life for the huge rural population in India”

• And the article ends with a luke warm statement from Mr. B.K.Naidu, of SemIndia fame, trying to make an advertisement to his line of work –

“Earlier, when we used to speak of IT products, it was always in the context of what we could do for outsourcing partners, but the scenario is changing. The domestic market is attracting manufacturers as well as design companies. There is an ecosystem that is being created, and if we could get the hardware manufacturing piece right, it would complete the entire food chain.”

I dont see the point in this article at all. Why is there such a negativism in the media? What is the point? Is the author trying to undersell India? (I do notice that she is Indian). And to think, I read this article first thing in the morning, it left me bitterly disappointed.

PS1: The sad part about this is, the article itself seems to be factually inaccurate too.

PS2: I have rewritten this portion of my post three times. I cannot really find the right words to express my disappointment. It always ends with a few expletives for either the author or EETIMES, which I am refraining from publishing.