By IANS
New Delhi : IT industry lobby Nasscom's benchmark competence test for final year undergraduate students who aspire to be a part of the IT-BPO (business process outsourcing) industry will be extended to India's northeastern states to tap the huge human resource pool of the region.
Minister for Development of the Northeastern Region (DoNER) Mani Shnakar Aiyar signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Nasscom president Kiran Karnik here Tuesday.
According to the MoU, Nasscom will conduct the Nasscom Assessment of Competence (NAC) test in the eight northeastern states between Sep 7, 2007 and Jan 8, 2008.
Around 20,000 students are expected to appear in the test.
"If we can combine good governance and economic development through IT in the northeast, it will help the region develop fast," Aiyar said, adding that fast growth of the northeast is the single most important factor that will help India break the double-digit barrier in its growth rate.
Speaking about the huge human resource pool available in the region, the minister said, "The northeast lags behind the rest of India in all aspects except for two: a high degree of literacy and a large number of English speaking people – just what the IT industry needs."
He said that the NAC test would not only help youngsters in the northeast get better employment, but would also help the people of the region have their own start-up ventures.
"I have strong convictions that this initiative will lead to the IT industry having more people from the northeast like the hospitality sector."
He said the region's key development planning body, the North Eastern Council (NEC), would hold a meeting on IT, ITeS and telecommunications sector at Kohima July 24-25.
Explaining the concept of the NAC, Karnik said that it was launched as an industry standard assessment and certification programme to ensure the transformation of trainable workforce into an employable workforce, hence creating a robust pipeline of talent for the BPO sector.
Nasscom launched the NAC pilot-testing phase in August 2005 and have tested nearly 6,000 candidates across various ITeS/BPO companies.
The NAC test was initiated in Rajasthan in 2006 with about 2,500 students appearing in it. A job fair was held in association with the department of information technology and communications and the Rajasthan government after the scores were released in March.
"We believe that at some stage later, people from the region (northeast) can become employment creators rather than employment-seekers. Also, it will help the IT industry start operations there," Karnik said.