Jobs at Indian IT firms

A. Sheshabalaya

Yale Global

August 30, 2005

Ironically, accepting India's centrality in the white-collar jobs debate, as well as the inevitability of its rise as a technology power, may provide some new choices for embattled American IT workers....

For both the US and Europe, the greatest risk is not only a de-skilling of their future workforce should high-school children become discouraged from studying IT in colleges. Also dangerous is the potential hollowing-out of their skills pyramid if IT workers drop out from the workforce – especially in the hard-hit middle layers from which IT managers and analysts of the future would be drawn.

And here lies one opportunity: India's fast-growing IT industry will face a massive shortage of managerial and marketing skills while dealing with Western customers....

To further encourage their IT workers to ride the wave of the future, Western governments need to dismantle definitions (and perceptions) about "our" companies and "theirs." In a globalized world economy, seeking to protect workers in demarcated territories may be possible only if international corporations were stripped of their own territorial origins, especially as giants like GE and IBM begin to have larger high-value workforces in India than elsewhere.

Jobs boost from Indian IT boom

The Age (Australia)

June 6, 2006

Five years ago, American firms were wooing India's computer science graduates with lucrative job offers and the chance to live in America. Now, the tables are turned.

Leading Indian IT services provider, Infosys, is to spend $US100 million ($A133 million) over the next year to hire and train 25,000 overseas workers and college graduates, targeting in particular those from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University.

Indian IT services and software companies are also opening offices around the world and recruiting local staff - labour shortages in India are forcing the offshoring companies to, well, go offshore for their workers - often right back to the countries whose workers they previously put on the job lines.

Foreign nationals flock to Indian multinationals

Business Standard

May 23, 2006

The aura associated with working for multinational companies is increasingly diminishing, with more and more foreign nationals opting to work with domestic IT majors.

The domestic companies are gaining popularity in the global employment markets, mainly due to technological advancement and blurring of geographical boundaries.

Room at the top, space below too

A. Sheshabalaya, 

Rising Elephant
March 2004

Crucially, in spite of the impressive pace of development over the past two decades, India remains a poor country with a billion people and massive room for retaining its cost advantages . Not only are there huge population groups but entire provinces within the country, which have yet to access the benefits from relocation, but who, because of India's federal democracy, can still influence policy and throw out governments - both state and national. In other words, there is little likelihood that rising standards of living in India will place any significant upward pressure on wages, and force a search for 'cheaper' alternatives, at least for the foreseeable future.

India to lead BPO for 30 years: US firm

PTI

June 6, 2006

Powered by its continuing dominance in providing low-cost IT skills, the great Indian BPO story continues unplugged despite the emergence of new competitors like China, Philippines and Indonesia....

According to a latest study on global outsourcing market, India will maintain its low-cost IT skills leverage in the offshore outsourcing market for at least another 30 years.

Global outsourcing advisory and research firm Everest said in its "2006 Global Sourcing Market Update" that the concerns related to sharp wage inflation and skill shortages leading to an adverse impact on India's offshore cost advantage were grossly exaggerated....

The move to two-tier cities within the country and opening of delivery centres outside India is also helping the IT service providers to lever their costs.

Small town attractions

Express Computer

April 24, 2006

The growth of the IT industry in the country is witnessing a changing landscape, literally. Most big and small players are no longer limiting their expansion plans to a select few IT hubs, but making inroads into tier II and tier III cities.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner ?

A. Sheshabalaya, 

Rising Elephant
March 2004

Still, the real paradigm shift goes beyond competition on overseas markets between Indian newcomers and their long-established global competitors. The meaning of the Indian attack is seen in otherwise-arrogant international IT firms adapting their own delivery models to build a huge Indian presence, and doing this in the face of massive political opposition at home.

India becomes the focal point for growth as IBM fights to stay on top

New York Times

June 4,  2006

The world's biggest computer services company could not have chosen a more appropriate setting to lay out its strategy for staying on top....

The meetings are more than an exercise in public and investor relations. They are an acknowledgment of India's crucial role in IBM's strategy, providing its fastest growing market and a crucial base for delivering services to much of the world.
"A significant part of any large project that we do worldwide is today being delivered out of here," said Shanker Annaswamy, IBM India's managing director and country head.

India Makes Impact

Computer Business Review

April 20, 2006

Offshore delivery has become a requirement for infrastructure-management services vendors pitching for business in the US according to Perot Systems Inc, which expects a similar trend to emerge in the more mature European markets in the next year.

Wipro's Azim Premji: "The Old Boys' Club Is on the Way Out"

Leadership and Change, Wharton Paper

April 19, 2006

Customers are now driven by trying to optimize value. The old boys' club of closed tennis court relationships is on the way out. I'm not saying it doesn't play a part in getting new business, but that is increasingly being questioned in terms of the price that you pay for it.

Response to Financial Times
November 2004

Myths are useful to explain the present by resorting to collective memories from the past, even one as unpleasant as the ‘license raj. It is foolish to try to extrapolate myths to the future, without a serious look at the present. This is where Mr. Joshi runs seriously off track. He misses seeing the massive difference in accelerating the liftoff of a low-cost economy through the high-value services sector, and doing so on a global scale... (Indeed) new blue-collar jobs will inevitably follow India’s globally-competent services sector, and do so from a position of strength. In auto components, for example, India’s business process service strengths are enabling it to acquire a significant lead over traditional car manufacturing hubs. Toyota’s new Indian gearbox plant has become central to its plans to manufacture vehicles, for the first time using components sourced wholly from outside Japan.’.... Mr. Joshi should wait and see, as a new 'blue-white' area of lean, flexible and small batch production emerges out of India, to complement China's bulk manufacturers in the continuing shakeout of the world economy. Such activity will be on a global scale, AND be employment intensive.

India gains on China

International Herald Tribune
June 1, 2006

India is closing in on the economic growth rates of more than 10 percent that China has enjoyed, according to government data released Wednesday, showing a 9.3 percent expansion in the first quarter.
Together, the unexpected successes in manufacturing and now in agriculture suggest that more than a decade of economic liberalization is beginning to spread beyond the cloistered domains of malls and corporate parks.

'Made in India' phones set to tap global markets
Reuters
May 26, 2006

India, already the world's fastest growing wireless services market, is set to become a handset manufacturing and export hub as giants such as Nokia and LG churn out millions of phones to tap voracious demand....

"The scale of production that India will attain in two years will give it a similar edge as China has in many other industries."

Indian factories prepare for growth

BBC News

May 24, 2006

"Chennai is known as the Detroit of India," chuckles H. S. Lheem, managing director of Hyundai India....

"Chennai has a well educated workforce, not just in the white collar sector, but in the blue collar sector as well."...

Manufacturing is proving to be the next big growth industry for India.

New  Politics of Results

A. Sheshabalaya, 

Rising Elephant
March 2004

While the BJP's defeat will result in some fine-tuning of policy, the new Congress-led coalition will have to deliver. Otherwise, its promise to tackle poverty more aggressively will turn out to be empty, its days will be numbered, and the door opened for a return of the BJP - - but with the same mandate. More than Hindutva, or the Anglophone cosmopolitanism of New Delhi's salons, India's voters -- rich, poor and middle-class, urban and rural - - clearly want (the benefits of) more economic growth, not less.

India gains on China

International Herald Tribune
June 1, 2006

"It is plain as daylight to me that we can pursue our goals for social justice and equality only if we have high growth," Chidambaram said.

The Politics of India's Drugs Business

A. Sheshabalaya, 

Rising Elephant
March 2004

For international pharmaceutical companies, the most ominous long-term development is the growing (and potentially sophisticated) assault by Indian drug firms on Western markets. After the success of the AIDS drugs-for-Africa campaign, few doubt any longer that Indian firms have the political savvy for playing hardball. In America, for instance, it cannot be ruled out that Indian drug firms leverage their low-cost advantage to address a growing concern, namely the escalating costs of health care.

How drug patenting fails the world's poor

International Herald Tribune

May 21, 2006

World Health Organization delegates meeting in Geneva this week will be discussing a new report that will dramatically increase pressure on pharmaceutical companies, governments and even on the organization itself to do far more to develop and provide medicines for the world's poor countries....

A thriving generic-drug industry in India has helped bring the cost of the standard three-drug treatment for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, down to about $150 a year. That was possible because for many years India did not have pharmaceutical patents, and poor countries invoked World Trade Organization exceptions allowing them to bypass patent laws and import such generics in the event of a national emergency.

But since January of last year, India has begun enforcing medicine patents to be fully compliant with WTO rules. Pharmaceutical manufacturers are now applying for patents for newer AIDS drugs in India, which makes generic production impossible. Newer AIDS drugs that many patients require are unavailable or prohibitively expensive in the developing world.

Lipitor case: Austria backs Ranbaxy

Rediff.com

April 25, 2006

In a boost to India's biggest drugmaker Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd, an Austrian panel has ruled in the company's favour in a patent litigation against Pfizer involving cholesterol lowering drug 'Lipitor' in that country....

Singh said Ranbaxy anticipated the ruling to have a positive impact on healthcare costs, by providing a high quality, generic alternative at affordable prices.

A. Sheshabalaya, 
Gurusonline
May 2005

The next Big Thing will be infrastructure.

'Infrastructure firms to triple investors' wealth'

Business Standard

May 19, 2006

Fuelled by investments to the tune of US$ 308 billion in the infrastructure sector over the next 6 years, shares of companies in the sector could offer returns of 300 per cent by 2010 to investors, a report by financial services firm Edelweiss said.

Go beyond 'exercises': US Admiral

PTI

May 11, 2006

The Indian and United States Navies should go beyond "exercises" and look to expanding the relationship to enhance inter-operability for providing security, US Pacific Fleet commander Admiral Gary Roughead has said.

Indo-US naval exercise off Sri Lanka coast
Indian Express
February 21, 2006

What was planned as a simple passage exercise between aircraft carrier INS Viraat and the American USS Ronald Reagan supercarrier three days ago off Sri Lanka spontaneously became a full-fledged, joint-maritime war game. A detailed operational report on this “surprising level of Indo-US inter-operability between the two Navies at short notice” will shortly be given to the Defence Ministry....
The two carrier groups spontaneously executed dissimilar air combat manoeuvres with F/A-18 Super Hornets and Sea Harriers, visit board search and seizure (VBSS) missions, cross-deck helicopter missions with Sea Hawks and Sea Kings and probably most significantly, over-the-horizon targeting (OTHT). Not in the original plan, these drills usually take months of planning.

Rising Elephant
March 2004

Rather than resist such trends, the US has been urged to endorse India's efforts. One suggestion in a US paper was to help India's space effort through "a role in future NASA lunar research missions and in some Mars missions" as well as promoting multilateral satellites for Indian launchers"

U.S. Piggyback on India's Mission to Orbit the Moon 

Los Angeles Times

May 10, 2006

American outsourcing to India is approaching a new frontier: outer space.

The two nations' space agencies signed an agreement Tuesday in India's high-tech hub of Bangalore to fly two U.S. lunar mapping instruments on India's unmanned mission to orbit the moon, scheduled for 2008....

Because sending a U.S. spacecraft to the moon again remains a possibility only in the distant future, NASA is taking advantage of India's invitation to piggyback on its space exploration

The real threat to the US dollar 
A. Sheshabalaya, 

Rising Elephant
March 2004

There is another, more alarming statistic: America's $3 trillion debt (more than the purchasing power GDP of India) is going to become untenable. The bulk of this debt is held by Asians, who will inevitably see alternative opportunities emerging, in India and China, as indeed already has the American investment community.

Alongside such a process, giant economies like India and China, may as discussed, eventually force the global exchange rate system towards closer parity between the longer-term purchasing power of their currencies and the US dollar. Such a long-term trend has already begun (the American government has, after all, been pressing China to revalue, and India's rupee has steadily strengthened). Although some blips cannot be ruled out in the medium-term, it will inevitably have consequences for America's predominant position in the global economy. This would parallel Great Britain's eclipse by America itself after it abandoned the gold standard in September 1931.

Singh urges less money for financing U.S. debt

International Herald Tribune

May 5, 2006

India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh, urged Asian nations on Friday to divert their vast savings and trade surpluses from foreign currency holdings and into regional development projects...

Many analysts interpreted Singh's speech as a push for regional self-reliance and an end to Asian financing of U.S. consumer spending.
"It's stunning," said Clyde Prestowitz Jr., president of the Economic Strategy Institute in Washington. "It's the harbinger of the end of the dollar and of American hegemony."

Rising Elephant
March 2004

Indeed, given the increasingly-shaky nature of Pakistan, the likelihood of another volley of distractions by that perennially near-failing State (already by 1999 bailed out 17 times by the IMF ) will accompany the 'thawing of the snows' for some years. India's steady ascension will however bring home one fact to even the most recalcitrant experts. The Pakistani experiment, like that of east Germany built around a 'separated' but exclusivistic national identity, is condemned to self-limitation.

'Failed state' tag riles Pakistan

BBC News

May 3, 2006

The government of Pakistan has rubbished a survey which ranked it in the world's top 10 "failed states"...

The study - compiled by the US Foreign Policy magazine and the US-based Fund for Peace think-tank - showed Pakistan moving from 34th to ninth in the table.