March 15, 2007

Unquestioning media report

Software exports from Mysore-based IT units is expected to cross Rs.600 crores in 2006-07, according to a STPI (software technology parks in India) official quoted in The Hindu. The same newspaper, citing another official, had put the figure at Rs.1000 crores three months earlier.

Going by today’s (March 15) report in The Hindu, STPI, Bangalore, director, Mr Parthasarathy pegs the figure at Rs.650 crores,(give or take away Rs.50 crores) when the final tally is announced in mid-April. He reckons Mysore’s future in the software sector to be “very bright”; and would have us believe that in terms of IT growth path the city was “on track”.

But there seems to have been some official back-tracking in their projection of exports figure for the current fiscal year. In December last we had the same newspaper publish a report that the software exports from the city was expected to touch Rs.1000 crores in 2006-07 (that is, by March 31, 2007). The earlier Hindu report, quoting STPI director, Bangalore-Hyderabad, Mr B V Naidu, had said Mysore was poised to maintain a 100 percent growth rate for the next few years.

So the projection made in December got scaled down by as much as 40 percent in a matter of three months, and still it is maintained by our officials that Mysore’s future is ‘very bright’ and its IT sector growth is right ‘on track’. Maybe officials are entitled to make statements; and the media, obliged to report them faithfully.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

IT fetching bucket loads of money, officials lining their packets with rupees, the software-code sweat shop workers calling themselves as software engineers grinning all the way to the banks, real estate speculators thanking the software sweat shop workers for their generosity etc.. Who cares for the poor whose suffer from the inflated prices of essential commodities as a consequence of the above bonanza, and above all at what cost to the ecosystem ? What happens to Mysore when the outsourcing dries out (which will sure happen as other countries compete)? Some one with a clout should be asking these questions.