Sustainability Challenges in the Indian IT Industry

Abstract

The IT sector can be divided in four categories, IT services, IT enabled services, Software products and Hardware. The Indian IT sector is dominated by large domestic companies such as Wipro and Infosys as well as by large, established multinational companies like Microsoft. In the last ten years, the IT industry in India has grown at an average rate of 30%. One of the main reasons which can explain this significant growth of the IT industry in India is Indian human resources. According to the IT minister of Karnataka, the IT sector in the Karnataka State employed 5.54 lakh people in 2008- 2009, that is to say 34,000 people more than in 2007-2008. In terms of value, the most important player in the Indian software market is Microsoft Corporation which accounts for 11.8% of the market. Currently, India ranks 101 out of 146 countries on the 2005 Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI), which ranks countries based on such measures as health, governance, technology, and international cooperation and evaluates the likelihood that a country will be able to preserve valuable environmental resources effectively over the period of several decades. Although this is slightly better than China's ranking, India faces increasing stress to its air and water, its future energy and resource use is uncertain, and its agricultural productivity is at risk. The IT sector in India, and in every region of the world, faces many challenges with respect to sustainability. From an environmental aspect, topics such as carbon footprints, CO2 emissions, water consumption, energy consumption, waste management, green purchasing and green value chain are all hot topics. In regards to hardware, sustainability aspects should focus on all stages of usage such as raw materials, the manufacturing of components, assembly, the usage, related equipment use, service and maintenance and the refurbishment and disposal. With software, the development and testing, deployment, operation and license reuse need to be acknowledged. Key players in India in the IT sector include companies such as Dell, Wipro Technologies Ltd., Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, HP and IBM. All of these companies have taken steps to help reduce their effects on the environment. Infosys Technologies Ltd in particular has taken the lead in many of its green initiatives. Because of this, the research for this report has focused in on Infosys’s sustainability efforts.