The shackles have finally come off the technology industry.

The Modi government has framed new guidelines that will allow the Big Boys of the tech world and the scatter dust of business process outsourcing (BPO) firms in the country to introduce the concept of Work from Anywhere — opening up the scope for creating technology sector jobs in the remotest corners of the country.

The industry had been badgering the government to remove a host of technology-related and procedural restrictions that corralled its ambitions to break out of the confining environment of Tier-1 cities, which had severely limited outreach possibilities and their ability to pare costs.

When the Covid pandemic ripped through the Indian economy in March, technology companies had to scramble to get their employees to work from home. More than 3.5 million desktops moved out of offices and into homes almost overnight.

But there were problems that the industry had to wrestle with.

The first step was to declare the tech industry as an essential service. The government then relaxed rules relating to special economic zones and software technology parks so that people could work from home.

But firms ran smack into one problem over the bank guarantees they needed to pay for each data centre that they operated, roughly Rs 1 crore per centre. If workers started working from home, there was just no way that the companies could pay a bank guarantee for every remote worker.

Finally, there were data security issues that barred companies from allowing workers from accessing data centres over virtual private networks.

The government relaxed all these restrictions — but for three months at a time — in the hope that the workers would drift back to work sites as the pandemic eased.

The new guidelines sweep aside all those restrictions permanently, fulfilling a major demand from industry where leaps in technology solutions and innovations make it possible for both geeks and low-end call centre executives to work from the remotest corners in a glitch-free environment.

“This is truly long term, progressive thinking by the government which will make our technology industry much more competitive. Working from anywhere has become the new reality,” tweeted Rishad Premji, chairman of Wipro Ltd and a former Nasscom chairman.

“This breakthrough announcement will see jobs going to people more than people going to work. We envisage the rise of a work-from-office and work-from-home hybrid operating model and an intelligent workforce blend of full-time employees and gig workers,” said Keshav Murugesh, chief executive officer of the WNS Group, and also a former Nasscom chairman who actively pushed for these changes.

“A much-needed reform for the IT industry,” tweeted C.P. Gurnani, CEO and managing director of Tech Mahindra. “This ‘new normal’ will not only allow greater flexibility & agility but will also boost productivity and tech innovation,” he said.

Big changes

The biggest relief for industry is that they will not have to stump up bank guarantees for “any facility or dispensation under these guidelines”.

None of the OSP centres will require registration certificates and they will be able to carry big data traffic over the virtual private network (VPN). In the first months after the lockdown, the government had permitted the firms to use VPN with static internet protocol (IP) addresses. This was later relaxed to VPN with dynamic IP address.

The Centre has now allowed companies to step up the game by allowing OSPs to collect, convert, carry and exchange data received on PSTN/PLMN/ISDN and share them over virtual private networks.

Most data traffic flows over public switched telephone network (PSTN) which is a combination of telephone networks, including telephone lines, fibre optic cables, switching centres, cellular networks, satellites and cable systems.

A public land mobile network (PLMN) is any wireless communications system intended for use by terrestrial subscribers in vehicles or on foot. Such a system can stand alone, but often it is interconnected with a fixed system such as the PSTN.

An Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) is a set of communication standards for simultaneous digital transmission of voice, video, data, and other network services over the traditional circuits of the public switched telephone network.

Says Murugesh of WNS: “The biggest advantage of this policy change is that it will open the doors for us to tap into a new talent pool such as the young workforce and retired people with domain knowledge who want to work for a few hours remotely.”

“Also, the 110 million strong potential workforce of women with secondary degrees can find employment. They can devote 3-4 hours per day but currently don’t participate in the workforce. In the long run, this flexible model can lead to the inclusion of a vast untapped workforce across the country, including tier-2/3 cities,” he added.

He reckons that serious Indian states will now change their IT policies to “enable more tech infrastructure upgrades, last-mile fiber deployment, cyber safety and policing, employment generation, diversity of workforce, creation of new Centers of Excellence (CoEs) and differentiation”.