Tamil Nadu has the talent; was the pioneer; created infrastructure like the Tidel Park and created an IT department in the government much before other States could see the potential of the sector. Yet it is not the leader, said Tamil Nadu Finance Minister Palanivel Thiaga Rajan. “At the city level, Bengaluru and Hyderabad seem to have better ecosystems that draw talent and our ecosystem has not been that good,” he said.
“However, this is our time to use this transition, the new S curve formation in things like FinTech, IoT, applications to large scale governance problems and reclaim our spot not just in Chennai but across Tamil Nadu because it is out talent, and we want to become the best ecosystem for innovation, for technology and for providing the right kind of careers and opportunities for wealth creation for our youngsters,” he said.
There are ecosystems that survived many S curves and many transitions. Silicon Valley in the US proved resilient enough even today though it started to lose sheen and migrate out to other parts of the US. However, it is still the Centre of Gravity of Innovation, he said while speaking at Umagine Chennai 2023 on Friday.
Growth driver
The greatest wealth creation comes out of technology, which for the foreseeable future will be one of the drivers of growth. Like any other industry, human capital matters a lot but there are large areas and federations like the European Union labours fungible. Even if you create great talent, you may find that it may go to some other place if you don’t have the other variables right,
For example, during the Covid lockdown it was found that Bengaluru was much more staffed by Tamil specialists in IT because people had to apply for passes to cross the state borders. Tamil Nadu has the highest gross enrollment ratio; large number of engineering seats and creating all the talent and it was going to different places, he said.
The State has the best young talented workforce, but still needs a lot more to do and make the talented youngsters more employable, he added.