Source: ET Bureau
Prodded the lockdown, India’s large IT firms have ensured as many as 85% of their employees are working from home, even while continuing to support global clients.
India’s IT industry is expected to start working from offices only in phases, with the initial focus on delivering mission critical projects and contract work that cannot be serviced from home due to client confidentiality agreements.
As the sector looks to counter the impact of the Covid-19 virus outbreak and the resultant ongoing nationwide lockdown, industry lobby group National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) has advised members to restart operations in phases to cut the risk of infections spreading further.
Prodded the lockdown, India’s large IT firms have ensured as many as 85% of their employees are working from home, even while continuing to support global clients.
“While the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has indicated 50% (could go back to offices albeit with restrictions), the industry will be opening up in a phased manner with the first phase much lower than 50%,” said U B Pravin Rao, the newly appointed chairman of Nasscom.
On Wednesday, the home ministry put out an advisory that companies in the IT and IT enabled services space could operate with half of their workforce from offices from April 20, in a bid to revive business activity. It also allowed manufacturing of IT and IT repairs services to restart.
Meanwhile, the department of telecom has extended the work from home facility for IT and ITeS units till May 31st. It had earlier provided the exemption till end of April.
Common Service Centres (CSC) operating in rural areas have also been allowed to resume operations.
“Our plan is to go in a staggered manner. We want to adhere to all local regulations,” said B M Bhanumurthy, chief operating officer of Wipro.
The Indian IT industry employs over 4.3 million, and Nasscom has advised that 10-15% of staff return to offices till April 30, 30% by May 15 and 50% by June 30.
Even as most of the workforce gradually shifted to work from home, the rest were operating from offices, but they faced challenges including passes to commute to work.
Nasscom said it was working with state governments and the industry to ensure that work under contracts that cannot be moved beyond office premises will be delivered smoothly, with strict health safety measures in place at offices and during commutes to work.
“But, it remains to be seen how the government goes about issuing instructions for movement of these people to offices,” said Ashish Agarwal, senior director and head of Public Policy at Nasscom.
The government’s move to permit IT manufacturing has been welcomed, although the industry may not operate at optimum capacity since the bulk of mobile phone manufacturing takes place in Noida and Chennai, some pockets of which are hotspots of Covid-19 infections.
George Paul, CEO of the Manufacturers’ Association for Information Technology (MAIT), said the move was welcome since IT products such as laptops, smartphones and other connectivity tools are in demand in the current situation.
Paul added that the industry body would seek clarity on whether factories near the hotspots could restart, saying that the units operated in industrial zones such as Greater Noida and Sriperumbudur, which are far away from city centres.
Nitin Kunkolienker, President-MAIT, added that if the government had not allowed manufacturing to restart, imports would have catered to the pent up demand for IT products, estimated at $2.5 billion per month. India’s biggest competitor in electronics manufacturing has already restarted production at its factories.
The government has also allowed digital kiosks or CSCs to be operational, but only in rural areas, which is around 2,24,000 out of 3,70,000 centres.
ET reported on Wednesday that the Ministry of Electronics and IT had written to the home ministry to allow CSCs to function. Out of 2,24,000 CSCs at the Panchayat level, 1,90,000 can undertake payments through the Aadhaar platform.
“The exemption for CSC at Panchayat level would support citizens to do banking transactions through these 1,90,000 CSCs. This will benefit JanDhan account holders and other beneficiaries reviving government support through DBT. We would also need support from local bank branches to provide cash to CSCs to enable them to take up such transactions,” said Dinesh Tyagi, CEO of CSC e-governance Services.
