IT hub in ferment as exits signal reboot

Suresh Dharur in Hyderabad

Techies in India are at the crossroads, staring at an uncertain future. Thousands of young engineers who benefited from the Information Technology boom in the late 1990s are now facing retrenchment as the industry struggles to cope with the slowdown. Hyderabad, a key IT hub in the country hosting top global technology companies, is now facing the heat with several techies being rendered jobless overnight.

“In this year alone, over 25,000 people have been retrenched illegally in Hyderabad. Over the last three years, more than one lakh employees lost their jobs,” says Kiran Chandra, founder member, Forum of IT Professionals (ForIT). The employees are protected under the law of the land and no one can be fired without due process of law. But, the governments are turning a blind eye to the problem, he says.

The retrenched IT employees have been organizing protest rallies in the city while some have moved the Telangana Labour Commissioner’s Office and even the High Court to seek justice. “One fine morning, I was asked to leave the company. I could no longer afford to pay heavy rent and so moved to a smaller home. I am forced to sell my wife’s jewellery,” says Ravi Dharmavarapu who recently moved the High Court, challenging his termination from Tech Mahindra. His colleague Raghav Reddy, who also moved the court, lamented that while the MNCs conduct many rounds of screening to recruit a candidate but they do not follow any procedure while removing employees.

Srilakshmi, a software engineer with a leading IT company, joined back last month after availing maternity leave, but the next day, she was asked to quit on grounds of under-performance.

Several retrenched employees have been demanding government intervention since the IT companies were clearly violating the Industrial Disputes Act, the Shops and Establishments Act, the Gratuity Act and the Payment of Wages Act. Many of them were handed out pink slips by their employers without following proper procedures.

“After postponing a medical procedure for over nine months due to work pressure, I had finally decided to apply for a sick leave to get the surgery done. While I was still on the approved leave, I received a termination letter without assigning any reason,” says D Ravi Kumar, a former employee of an IT firm with over 10 years of work experience.

“We demand that the state government come out with a white paper on retrenchments in the IT sector. There is no job creation in Telangana IT sector. The government is giving all goodies to the IT companies but they are not bothered about the welfare of employees,” says Chandra.

The ForIT has demanded strict implementation of  labour laws to ensure justice to the workers. “There are 1,600 petitions pending before the Labour Commissioner.  We are being asked to go to Labour Court,” says another IT worker who lost his job in Tech Mahindra.

“If the spate of retrenchments continues and the governments continue to look the other way, we will have big social unrest,” warns Chaitanya who was asked by his company to sign a stamp paper on ‘separation agreement’ that he will not contest the final settlement. It is said that the companies like Infosys, Tech Mahindra, Wipro and TCS have let go of more than 30,000 employees between April and June this year. In a majority of cases, the employees were terminated through coercion. “We demand that the Labour Department takes it up seriously and initiates action against such companies," says Chandra.

Experts argue that the emergence of new technologies and applications is bound to create disruption in the industry, making several existing jobs irrelevant. Upgrading one’s skills and improvement in qualification are the only solution, they say. A look at the retrenchment trend reveals that employees with more than 10 years of experience, stuck in roles that are fast becoming redundant, are being terminated.

However, new ones are opening up, particularly in the areas of artificial intelligence, data analytics and automation. The NASSCOM, the apex body of the software and services industry, has identified nearly eight new technology areas where new jobs are being added.

“Re-skilling is extremely important to stay relevant in the industry. Nearly 50% of those currently employed in the IT industry need to be retrained,” says Srikanth Srinivasan, regional director, NASSCOM.

According to NASSCOM, virtual reality, big data analytics, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, cloud computing, robotic process automation and social and mobile and 3-D printing are the eight emerging technologies where at least 55 new job roles will open up.