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A recent study by employability assessment company Aspiring Minds has alarmed the country regarding the future of IT aspirants in India. The study finds that only 4.77% candidates can write the correct logic for a program, which is a minimum requirement for any programming job.

The study further claims that 95% of engineers in the country are not fit to take up software development jobs. The assessment was based on Automata, a machine learning-based assessment of software development skills, which recorded the responses of over 36,000 engineering students from IT related courses of over 500 colleges.

And what the study unfolded was highly disturbing. More than 60% candidates cannot write code that compiles, only 1.4% can write functionally correct and efficient code.

“Lack of programming skills is adversely impacting the IT and data science ecosystem in India. The world is moving towards introducing programming to three-year-old! India needs to catch up,” said Varun Aggarwal, CTO and Co-Founder, Aspiring Minds.

What’s more alarming is that a survey conducted by the same company in 2016 in partnership with fresher jobs portal Myamcat.com revealed that the most in-demand job role, based on the number of applications received, was software developers. 38% of the pie of job applications were in the field of software developers/web architects.

Now the real question is that if the budding go-getters of IT jobs are not theoretically sound, how will they kindle innovation and strengthen the spine of India’s software sector?

While TV Mohandas Pai, former Chief Financial Officer of IT giant Infosys, has rubbished the study by Aspiring Minds, a report like this might further degrade the employability of Indian software engineers in the IT industry. Times have become tougher with the tightening visa regimes in the US and other countries like Australia and Singapore.

engineers: 95% engineers in India unfit for software development jobs: Report – total rubbish, stupid study https://t.co/rdcWZWuzLs — Mohandas Pai (@TVMohandasPai) April 20, 2017

Pai’s stance was further backed by renowned Indian entrepreneur Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, who currently heads biotechnology company Biocon as the Chairman and Managing Director. Shaw was seen to be in full agreement with Pai and she openly expressed her confidence in Indian IT aspirants.

I agree @TVMohandasPai I don't know where they get this inference from. In fact blue collar workers of the future are coders https://t.co/becNBevTsp — Kiran Mazumdar Shaw (@kiranshaw) April 21, 2017

Of course, a positive comment on this issue from industry stalwarts can bring a sigh of relief to the nation. But one cannot ignore the fact that Indian IT firms are struggling to make a mark in the global software market, owing to the rapid digital transformation to achieve automated processes. This huge gap between the industry requirement and the skills provided by most engineering colleges cannot go unnoticed. After all, IT professionals are the by-products of the education system that empowers them.