If India plays its cards right, suspension of PERM may be an opportunity: Priyank Kharge

Karnataka's IT-BT Minister discusses the potential implications of the suspension, the State's AI skilling roadmap, its approach to sustainable data centres and plans to build a deep-tech ecosystem focused on solving real-world problems.

The US government has suspended eight major technology companies, including Infosys, TCS, Wipro and HCLTech, from the Permanent Labour Certification (PERM) programme, a key pathway for employer-sponsored green cards. The move could make future employment prospects uncertain for Indian tech workers and raise costs for Indian companies.

IT-BT Minister Priyank Kharge, however, sees an opportunity to attract investments by strengthening the State's talent pool.

In an interview with The Hindu, he discusses the potential implications of the suspension, the State's AI skilling roadmap, its approach to sustainable data centres and plans to build a deep-tech ecosystem focused on solving real-world problems.

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

It makes the prospects for future applicants uncertain. This could increase costs for Indian companies. Attrition could also become a concern, depending on the sector.

However, if India plays its cards right and sends the right signals, investments will come to the talent rather than talent having to move to where investments are. Bengaluru is a magnet because investments are concentrated here, drawing talent from across Karnataka and India.

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

Bengaluru is number five globally in AI skillsets as an ecosystem. And we are improving constantly. Whether it is AI across sectors or any other frontier technology, we are up for it.

And as a government, we have been talking to everybody -- Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Sarvam... We are ready, we have the appetite, and we are bringing in the required policies.

Q: What is Karnataka's AI roadmap?

We want to have a strong foundation of skills, and that will only come through heavy STEM education and filling the gaps in higher education. Because the courses don't match the industry standard.

We are talking to the industry, figuring out what they want, and filling in the gap by paying 40% of the costs. So whether it's coming up with AI labs, AI university or AI incubators, our focus is on building skillsets and trying to create more value-add through IPs. I'm trying to ensure more people re-skilled and employable.

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

Does Karnataka have specific targets for AI skilling and employment?

We have the appetite. Around 40% of the entire engineering research and development workforce is here. We probably have the most employable graduates in India right now. Around 43% of all tech 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 too is ready to learn, unlearn and relearn. We scrapped our data centre policy, and came up with a sustainable data centre policy. We scrapped our IT policy and came up with a new policy. We came up with the AI University because we have our ear to the ground.

You have spoken about using Bhashini in citizen services. Which government services are being considered for this?

We are agnostic. We are talking to everybody irrespective of which company or which geography you are from. If you are going to help solve a government problem, we are ready to look at you. And that's why we have done the government-first initiative. No state in India has such a scheme.

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

But do you think there's a certain risk in using many of these technologies for citizen service?

It will not be on scale. We will test it out in a regulatory sandbox environment.

Why does Karnataka's sustainable data centre policy incentivise the use of treated water and green electricity instead of making them mandatory?

Data centres come with a lot of environmental baggage, but it is not unsolvable. That's why we've come up with the sustainable data centre policy, which rewards water and power usage effectiveness. We will do everything possible to ensure that their environment impact is as little as possible.

Wouldn't making the use of green electricity and treated water mandatory for data centres be more effective?

We are already a green electricity surplus State. We are the second-biggest in solar. I think 65% of all energy is renewable, and we are working to increase that further. By default, it should be green across sectors, not just data centres. The Department of Information Technology is being extremely mindful of being sustainable.

We asked companies to donate computers rather than junk them so we could reuse them in rural schools and government offices. In these places, computing is limited to data entry and basic browsing. We recently redistributed around 4,000 computers statewide.

Will Karnataka mandate data centres to report their water and electricity consumption to the government?

Eventually data centres will have to furnish that data as part of the compliance process.

Is there interest from data centre operators in cluster beyond Bengaluru?

Many data centre operators have been talking to us. It's very easy to say yes to everything, to every hyperscaler. But Karnataka is not interested in a race to the bottom.

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

For the next 10 years, we are concentrating on deep tech only. This time, we are seeking partnerships from the private sector for incubators, accelerators, co-investment with the government, pilots within the government and so on.

People are talking to us, we are experimenting with them, and we are seeing how we will be able to solve real-life problems. The idea of deep tech is to add value.

I'm not interested in the valuation game or unicorn game. I'm interested in seeing whether an innovation solves a problem plaguing the government? Can I deliver better using a particular deep tech innovation?

For example, we are working with some space tech companies. They may be space tech, but their technology will have applications downstream too for disaster management, agriculture, horticulture or oceanography. We have the appetite to absorb all, especially deep tech that can scale and solve real life problems.