When Mr Jawahar Lal said those words on India's Independence day's evening, he would be having very little idea as his words will come true, again after almost 50 Years of Independence.

We caught the world sleeping yet another times, when we saw India growing into a major IT Power of this world. Starting with providing support and doing low-level work, now India has pushed itself ahead and has placed herself at a place from where it can drive the trends in Software Industry. Last entire decade has ample prove to it. Ringing Nasdaq bell from India, not once but more than a couple of times, transformation from "cheap" labour to quality work, and getting a number of critical core business projects into India are few of them. All the software majors of this world, feel themselves proud in opening their development centre at Bangalore. Indian software giants, are now aiming at 100 billion dollar. And the buzz word is, we have just started moving. While the world thought of India as land of elephants and snake charmers, we mesmerized them something better. We still have snake charmers, but we also have software engineers too, with a different charm. :-)

 

But despite all these positives, we have to keep our feet on ground. We have to make sure, with so many developing countries pushing hard to take over India's position, we do not end up committing the same error which other countries did, in evaluating India. We have already removed Tax Holidays to these Software companies. Some of the outsourced companies faced problem of data theft. The ever increasing salary of Indian executives have also been concern to these software companies. And with all these deterrents growing up in India, imagine any of the country with cheap labour, providing good business atmosphere to these software companies. These corporate houses, which mean only business, will definitely find its way to a destination where, they can save few bucks.

And one such country, that may push India, I can foresee is Pakistan. With the growing better infrastructure in cities like Islamabad, and with a pool of talent they have (remember, the first computer Virus was created by a Pakistani!!) it won't be a surprise if we find them someday, giving us tough fight. All they require is a stable democratic political set up, and re-building image of the country. To the woes of Pakistanis, they have to deal up this hard fact, of being citizen of a country in grip of extremism "emergency". Thankfully for India, this global image of Pakistan, is a deterrent for the corporate giants. But the day, they manage to get out of this image, they will be right there. Fighting for the projects with we Indians. So lets wake up. Before they catch us napping. Lets not commit the same mistake, that the world did with respect to India. Lets not only think Pakistan as land of extremists, but lets keep a watch on the development of that nation as well.And its not just Pakistan. Its about any other country from which we can get competition. Lets not be complacent about our unique position in this software industry. Lets keep our eyes open, and feet firmly on ground. Then only we can catch this world, sleeping :-)