Human Capital: Easy access to Broadband may help

Human capital, a common asset among China India and Bangladesh, how can we turn this asset into revenue generation machine?
A friend of mine brings my attention to a Silicon India Article “Free broadband within 2 yrs”. The report writes that. “The Indian government plans to offer all citizens of India free, high-speed connectivity by 2009, through the state owned telecom service providers BSNL and MTNL” I ask myself why do government plans to give such free service when it can collect tons of revenue issuing licenses and selling bandwidth.

Immediately I visited BTTB http://www.bttb.gov.bd/ and scanned through their pages to get myself educated regarding their approach towards providing internet connectivity. “BTTB is entrusted with all the tasks related to the submarine cable in the national and international level”. Yeah, this makes sense, while Indian government is planning on free broadband connectivity at a speed of 2 MB per second, BTTB is making more then 50 lacs (5 Million) taka for the same bandwidth available in 41 districts for “Leased Internet Access” per port. A smart move indeed! However Educational institutions will get 50% discount listed in their website “Rates”.

I should be fare when I compare an apple to (not an) apple. As Indians are multilingual they adopted English along with Hindi to break the language barrier. Not to mention that as a nation they pay more attention towards their education. That education helped the overwhelming manpower resources to capitalize the internet revolution. Hence translate in the bottom-line of their earning. Now India become the wholesale nation of outsourcing and IT support. To satisfy the basic rule of economics, a nation has to do what it can do most cost effectively compared to the countries around the world. Thereby to secure India’s position in the global outsourcing market and to empower the innovation of the next generation of Indians, India has to provide its citizen easy access to the Internet community. What are the alternatives of guaranteed internet access other than providing it free? Free, as it is like air and the sky, accessible to every citizen.

In Bangladesh, we have one thing in abundance, people, too many of them. We do not have natural resources for this highly dense country; however, we can turn our population into natural resources. I am not proposing anything radical or outrageous here. We have example in our next door. Look at China; they turn their people in to natural resources. China is the foundry of (almost everything or anything) the globe. They import all the natural recourses such as iron ore and turned into a finish product like steel. Today they are one of the world’s biggest producers of steel; not to mention one of the world’s biggest consumers of metal as well to make other finished product. If you just compare the product made in China in shopping malls and hardware markets around Bangladesh for last 10-15 years; you will be amazed by the improvement they made ensuring the quality of any specific product. Along with the quality, they are climbing the value chain. Demanding more buck for their quality products.

Look at India; they are getting highest return on investment per IT professional. Outsourcing and data entry are just becoming cash cow for India. In economic sense, I would compare them with the service provided by our Garment Industry. Garment industry receives an order, processes it and sends it back to the originating country which needed the service. Similarly any back office, payroll, IT service request from the developed world like USA, UK send to India. Indian IT professionals analyze and solve the problem. Send the requested service with a resolution. Only difference is that IT professional receives a big buck for their services. Well they deserve it; they prudently invested on human resources development and this human capital delivers high margin products. We at times, quick to conclude that, the expatriate Indians and the private business are the one who contributed to India’s leadership in IT industry.

Exploration, planning, development and production are the four steps to make a product. India’s IT industry is now in production mode and I am sure the expatriates and the private sector are the main driving force in this stage of production. However the exploration, planning and development phases are done prudently by the consortium of government, dedicated technocrats, visionary and influential leaders of various cadre including professionals, educators and political leaders. The IITs, technical colleges and institutes and comprehensive academics curricula practiced by the Universities and Schools around India contributed to the development phase. Government helped them not by forcing; but by eliminating road blocks from their path of progression. The continuation of the government encouragement is in action as of today. All telecom operators in India have to contribute 5% of their revenue to a special fund call “Universal Service Obligation Fund” (USOF). USOF will pay for the free broadband connectivity at a speed of 2MB per second across the country.

Everyday is slowing us down because we are not adapting technologies to develop human capital. There is a lot more to write about human capital development. I look forward to write some more thoughts about this issue. However, If you are still reading then, consider we are surfing the exploration phase. Please join me, put your ideas about the planning phase. The biggest challenge is the language barrier. We have done enough damage by removing English from the everyday education. We have to get out of the mean idea of learning only one language. Human being has innate capability of learning multiple languages. Look at any European country. There will never be a perfect time. Everyday is a good day to start. Lets say ~10-20% population has some exposure to English to communicate and surf Internet. We could start with our limited capacity of English. Start demanding more English, more access to Internet, free access to broadband. Do this wherever you study, wherever you work, wherever you pass time. Put your idea into a plan. Those plans will push us to the next phase of development, the development of human capital in Bangladesh.