The emergence of computers that function based on the now-well-known binary number comprising the numericals 0 and 1, enabling representation of any number or rows of symbols as a binary numeric, closely followed by advances in the field of digital technology mark a saga that words cannot express to match the amazing journey of what is now familiar to the literati as Information Communication Technology (ICT). India had been basking for long in the glory of the land’s ancient scholar Aryabhatta (476-550) introducing the number zero in his work titled Aryabhatiya. The world took note of the land’s genius Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920) several centuries later mainly for writing a number of theorems that baffled mathematicians in the Western countries, who are trying to find proof for many of those theorems to this day. The land’s other mathematicians of the calibre of C. Radhakrishna Rao also have carved a niche for themselves globally during the second half of the last century. The field of computer software, to say the obvious, has once again earned the distinction of IT- hub of the world.

Creating the virtual army of human resources in the land and  abroad churning out solutions to you-name-it-they-resolve-it problems bugging the players in the vast  fields of industry, trade and commerce owe in no small measure to their teachers from school level all the way to University level. The teachers, however, remain unsung and unhonoured even as their students are commanding wages in unprecedented amounts.

India’s professionals in the field of computer software owe a debt of gratitude, first to their teachers who imparted the basics and next to their employers for not flinching in the matter of enviable pay packets. While a virtual metamorphosis was witnessed by engineering graduates landed well-paid jobs in numbers never imagined just a few years back, voices were heard in some well-informed circles that IT-Bubble as it were would burst sooner than later. Their virtual prophetic forecast has just begun to be a reality, given the ICT work-force receiving pink slips in large numbers from their employers, citing the reason of reduced revenues. As if to add insult to injury, the present administration in the US has adopted  the policy of preferring Americans only for employment. Nearly two lakh jobs are expected to be slashed in the IT sector in the next two years.

Thanks to a timely survey conducted by the Bengaluru-based Centre for Investment Education and Learning (CIEL) among mid to senior-level professionals in 50 IT companies, all is not lost as more than 50 percent of the laid-off employees will be re-skilled and transferred to other opportunities. The bubble bursts all the time, but the resilient human resources shall create new bubbles of improved stability.  The idiom “A quitter never wins; a winner never quits” shall be their guiding principle.