PERM suspension could be an opportunity if India plays right: Priyank Kharge

The US government has suspended eight major technology companies, including Infosys, TCS, Wipro and HCLTech, from participating in the Permanent Labor Certification (PERM) program, a key pathway for employer-sponsored green cards. The move could cast doubt on future job prospects for Indian tech workers and raise costs for Indian companies.

In an interview with The Hindu, he discusses the potential implications of the suspension, the state’s AI skills plan, its approach to sustainable data centers and plans to build a deep technology ecosystem focused on solving real-world problems.

What are the implications of PERM certification changes for Indian tech workers and companies?

This will cloud the prospects for future applicants. This could increase costs for Indian companies. Depending on the industry, attrition could also become an issue.

However, if India plays its cards right and sends the right signals, investment will come to talent rather than talent having to move to where the investment is. Bengaluru is a magnet because of the concentration of investment that attracts talent from across Karnataka and India.

But is there enough AI talent to handle the high-value jobs that may come to India?

Bengaluru ranks fifth globally in AI skill sets as an ecosystem. And we are constantly improving. Whether it’s cross-sector AI or any other frontier technology, we’re ready for it.

And as a government, we have talked to everyone — Antropic, OpenAI, Google, Sarvam… We are ready, we have the appetite and we are putting in place the required policies.

Q: What is Karnataka AI plan?

We want to have a strong skills base and that will only be achieved by heavy STEM education and filling the gaps in higher education. Because the rates are not up to the industry standard.

We talk to the industry, find out what they want and fill the gap by paying 40% of the cost. So whether we are coming up with AI labs, AI university or AI incubators, we are focusing on building skills and trying to create more added value through IP. I am trying to ensure that more people are requalified and employable.

I want to have the most employable human resource in the world. If you do, investment will follow.

Does Karnataka have specific targets for AI skills and employment?

We have an appetite. Approximately 40% of all workers in engineering research and development are here. We probably have the most employable graduates in India now. About 43% of all technology investments have come to Karnataka in the last nine months. People are coming and investing in Karnataka because we have the right ecosystem of human resources and policies.

The government is also ready to learn, unlearn and learn again. We scrapped our data center policy and came up with a sustainable data center policy. We canceled our IT policy and came up with a new policy. We came up with AI University because we have our ear to the ground.

You talked about using Bhashini in the service of citizens. Which government services are considered for this purpose?

We are agnostics. We talk to everyone, no matter what company or geography you come from. If you’re going to help solve a government problem, we’re ready to see you. And that’s why we made the first government initiative. No state in India has such a scheme.

We want to ensure that government not only becomes your first client, but also your partner in the process, and more importantly, that the positive disruption these people bring to their vertical can be replicated across government departments.

But do you think there is some risk in using many of these technologies for civil service?

It won’t be to scale. We will test it in a regulatory sandbox environment.

Why does Karnataka’s Sustainable Data Center Policy encourage the use of treated water and green electricity instead of making it mandatory?

Data centers come with a lot of environmental burdens, but it’s not insurmountable. That’s why we came up with a sustainable data center policy that rewards water and energy efficiency. We will do everything to ensure that their impact on the environment is as small as possible.

Wouldn’t it be more effective to introduce mandatory use of green electricity and treated water for data centers?

We are already a green electricity surplus country. We are the second largest in solar radiation. I think 65% of all energy is renewable and we’re working to increase that further. By default, it should be green across sectors, not just data centers. The Department of Information Technology takes great care to be sustainable.

We asked companies to donate computers rather than throw them away so that we can reuse them in rural schools and government offices. In these places, computing is limited to data entry and basic browsing. We recently redistributed about 4,000 computers across the state.

Will Karnataka mandate data centers to report water and electricity usage to the government?

Ultimately, data centers will be required to provide this data as part of the compliance process.

Is there interest from data center operators in the cluster outside Bengaluru?

Many data center operators have spoken to us. It is very easy to say yes to everything, every hyperscaler. But Karnataka is not interested in a race to the bottom.

What more can we expect from deep tech startups from the government?

For the next 10 years, we will focus only on deep tech. This time we are looking for private sector partnerships for incubators, accelerators, co-investments with government, pilots within government and so on.

People talk to us, we experiment with them and see how we will be able to solve real life problems. The idea of ​​deep tech is to add value.

I don’t care about the appreciation game or the unicorn game. I wonder if the innovation solves the problem that is plaguing the government. Can I deliver better results with a specific deep technology innovation?

For example, we work with some space technology companies. They may be space technologies, but their technologies also find applications in disaster management, agriculture, horticulture or oceanography. We are eager to absorb all, especially deep technologies that can scale and solve real life problems.