S Srikanth
Bengaluru, NFAPost: The pace of urbanization in India will moderate with talent, jobs and incomes moving to smaller cities resulting in accelerated infrastructure development of smaller cities due to the pandemic.
This was disclosed by Dr Ajay Prabhu, president- technology services, Quest Global in a virtual presentation at the Bengaluru Tech Summit 2020 on Saturday.
He said big cities will see reduction in commute time due to moderate and lesser vehicular traffic as a result of the pandemic even in the post-Covid era. He said stress on city infrastructure will reduce considerably but will see more companies and start-ups making their entry into the city.
Talent and wealth will stay in smaller towns and cities but infrastructure development will be spread with the Smart City project getting a much-needed fillip, he said.
Dr Prabhu said cities like Bengaluru will witness better quality of living due to reduction in emissions and carbon footprints. Bengaluru could also witness focused and better infrastructure development in the post-Covid era.
He appreciated the heroics of the IT support staff in moving 4.5 million knowledge workers to safer remote locations overnight including working from their homes in a matter of 20 days. He said the knowledge workers of the IT sector were helped by the technologies and the secured networks.
He said 40% of the workforce which is in Bengaluru enjoyed good support from the government, police, delivery boys and the medical staff when the workers moved to work remotely. Industry body Nasscom played an instrumental role in this initiative, he said.
Dr Prabhu said societies moved from agrarian era to the industrial era and jumped to the services era. But, now in the post-pandemic era, society could move to the experience era where secular trend of reducing hard work will continue even more vigourously.
He said ease of working in the tech sector will be helped by no commute or congregation of the workforce.He said automation and digital revolution will accelerate and work will move easily to where talent is available at the best cost. He said outsourcing and offshoring models of doing business will increase further in the future.
Many of the legacy industrial laws and regulations could get removed or reduced for knowledge workers. Talking about the challenges, he said companies will need to ensure a robust IT Cyber Security system within their network, communicate enough with the staff to keep the workforce together besides faster adoption of digital technologies.
