I think EU have a few cards up their sleeves ... it's too early to predict what's going to happen with them in the next few decades.
^ such as what? they're so wound up within themselves. first there's got to be a general levelling that needs to happen between the east & west within europe. That's a 20 30 year process and that too if it doesn't unravel.
NO Chota, you can’t summarise as yet and leave your story half-baked.
First you have to give us the proportionate figures (i.e. the figures quoted by you/total population) and then give us a similar table. Also it would be interesting to see how Pakistan rates in such a proportional comparison.
Just to refresh your economically booming country’s progress, here is a report (mind it, it talks of Pakistan and not India):
SBP rings alarm bell on burgeoning poverty
Says poverty rose from 20pc to 33pc in 15 years
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Chota: *
But they're in the top 5 for another notable trouble area for india:
..... etc
[/QUOTE]
Source please.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Some1: *
Very well said. It is amazing that India has reached this stage inspite of the fact that Indian politics is still a cesspool of Laloos, Rabris and Mayawatis.
[/QUOTE]
Sad, but true. :-( but :-). The thing is that IT being a new sector, it took off before Government could draft any rules to govern its spread, etc. Heard the saying, if you give a desert to a government to manage, you will soon face shortage of sand :D
10 Great Reasons
Looks good!
Ten great reasons to invest in India
-
YOU NEVER HAD IT SO GOOD:
[thumb=D]Great%20India%201.JPG[/thumb]
India is the 4th largest economy, in terms of purchasing power parity. Tenth most industrialised economy.
Strong macro-economic performance.
Political stability and broad consensus on reforms. Liberal and transparent foreign investment regime.
Well developed banking system. Vibrant capital market. National Stock Exchange third largest, Bombay Stock Exchange fifth largest in terms of number of trades.
Strong and independent judicial system.
Among the highest rates of returns on investment. Profitability of US investments in India: 19.33% in 2000 (according to US Department of Commerce). -
INCREDIBLE SKILLS ON OFFER:
[thumb=D]Great%20India%203.JPG[/thumb]
Strong pool of scientific and technical manpower. Prowess of IITs, IIMs well known.
255 Fortune 500 companies getting services.
2nd largest English-speaking population.
Abundant, high-quality, cost-effective, competitive manpower. Over 100,000 IT professionals added each year.
India rated as the most attractive destination for offshore business processing by global consultancy A T Kearney.
IT Industry $14 billion; growing at 50% p.a.
Exports $12 billion; 2008 exports target: $60 billion, to be 35% of India’s total exports.
Job creation: a million direct & 2-3 million indirect -
HIGHLY COMPETITIVE ENTREPRENEURSHIP:
Prevalence of foreign technology licensing - Rank 1 in the world.
Availability of scientist and engineers - Rank 2.
Quality of management schools - Rank 9.
Firm level innovation - Rank 12.
Firm level technology absorption - Rank 16.
Company spending on R&D - Rank 32. (Source: Global Competitiveness Report, 2003)
India amongst the leading entrepreneurial hotbeds globally. (Red Herring clubs India with Israel)
-
GREAT MACRO-ECONOMIC SHOW:
[thumb=D]Great%20India%204.JPG[/thumb]
India among world’s fastest growing economies.
(Graph on top left shows Indian GDP growth since 1996-97).
Average GDP (gross domestic product) growth of 5.4% during the 9th Five-Year Plan (1997-2002).
Exports registered growth of over 19% in 2002-03.
Foreign exchange reserves at an all-time high of over $90 billion.
Increase in forex during the fiscal year in 2002-03: $20 billion.
India’s economic growth is sustained.
The nation’s GDP is expected to grow by over 7.0 % this year -
EASY INDUSTRIAL LICENSING POLICY:
[thumb=D]Great%20India%205.JPG[/thumb]
Under the Industries (Development & Regulation) Act, 1951, industrial license is needed only for items:
Falling under the list of compulsory licensing. Reserved for small-scale sector. If location attracts restriction.
All industries exempt from industrial licensing required to file an Industrial Entrepreneur Memorandum.
No approval is required; Only notification need.
Industries retained under compulsory licensing under the Industrial (D&R) Act, 1951:
Distillation and brewing of alcoholic drinks.
Cigars and cigarettes of tobacco and manufactured tobacco substitutes.
Electronic aerospace and defence equipment.
Industrial explosives; Hazardous chemicals
-
MAJOR FINANCIAL SECTOR REFORMS:
[thumb=D]Great%20India%206.JPG[/thumb]
Setting up of the Competition Commission; Amendments to Companies Act, Fiscal Responsibilities, and Securitisation Act for creditors’ security.
Board for Industrial & Financial Reconstruction to be repealed. Computerisation of Customs interface.
Stable tax regime. Only 3 rates of indirect tax. Trade facilitation measures introduced.
Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999 provides a liberal regime; forex procedures eased.
Stocks can be sold on the without prior approval.
Profits, dividends and capital investment can be repatriated.
Royalties can be paid by wholly owned arms to parent companies. -
TRADE POLICY RATIONALISATION:
Trade policy liberalised. Most items on Open General License.
Policies fully compatible with WTO.
Functioning of the Director General Foreign Trade (DGFT) computerized:
All 33 locations are Web-enabled.
70% of the total transactions of exporters/importers are Web-enabled.
Transaction time has reduced to just 6 hours.
On-line banking fully integrated
- A PROACTIVE FDI POLICY:
[thumb=D]Great%20India%207.JPG[/thumb]
FDI under ‘Automatic Route,’ except in areas:
Attracting compulsory licensing; or for acquisition of shares in an existing company.
Sectors not open to FDI. (Gambling, lottery, et cetera.)
Investor can bring automatic route cases for Foreign Investment Promotion Board approval.
Foreign technology collaborations freely allowed under automatic and government approval routes.
India FDI Outlook
India rated best destination for outsourcing and 6th most attractive destination for FDI, according to AT Kearney.
Global competitive report ranks India at first place in terms of prevalence of foreign technology licensing.
Among top 10 tourist destinations. Major destination for foreign venture capital funds. Pie chart, left bottom, shows country-wise FDI inflows
- GREAT INFRASTRUCTURE, AND A HELPING HAND:
$12 billion Highways Development Programme. Over 13,000 Kms of Highways being developed.
The Electricity Act, 2003 in place to facilitate reforms in power sector. Permits trading in electricity, captive generation freed from prior approval.
Upgradation of airports at New Delhi and Mumbai.
‘Sagar Mala,’ a major programme aimed at developing ports and shipping sector at an estimated investment of $22 billion.
Major advances in telecommunications sector. Bandwidths of terabit available. Sharp decline in telecommunications costs.
Foreign Investment Implementation Authority helps solve foreign investors’ problems. It meets periodically with investors to sort out operational difficulties and facilitates implementation.
An Empowered Sub-Committee of the National Development Council set up on creating an investor friendly climate and removing regulatory barriers to investments.
Modernisation of legislations on intellectual property. All IPR Laws are TRIPS compliant. Intellectual Property Appellate Tribunal functional.
Simplification and re-engineering of work procedures.
More information on www.ipindia.com
- BOOMING SECTORS & OPPORTUNITIES GALORE:
[thumb=D]Great%20India%2010.JPG[/thumb]
Roads: Capacity enhancement of highways. 7000 kms of National Highways being offered during the current year. Many more opportunities in the States. Opportunities for equipment manufacturers. technical support.
Urban Infrastructure: Development of townships for the rapidly growing, increasingly affluent urban middle class. City level infrastructure. roads, bridges, IT Parks, sanitation and water supply, etc. Consultancy in urban planning.
Ports: Government of India’s initiative of developing ports – ‘Sagar Mala’ with an investment of $22 billion. Development of Ports. Shipping. Upgradation and operation of cruise terminal. Operation of Dry Port at Mumbai.
Power: Addition of 100,000 MW required over the next 10 years. Installed capacity 106,000 MW. Hydro-electric initiative to develop 50,000 MW. Detailed project reports to be prepared to facilitate private investment.
Telecommunications: Cellular phones increasing @ 1.5 million every month. To increase by 20 million this year. Figure to rise to 100 million in the next 3-4 years. Telephone connections to rise to 75 million by 2005 and 175 million by 2010. Investment Opportunities. Setting up manufacturing base. Value-added services
Yeh yeh yeh...I'm indian...but I be damned if i ever buy Indian :D
Nice slideshow, except fo rthe first picture... Who is that guy in glasses in point no. 8?
^ Looks like an agrez.
Intel President Paul Otellini says India can emerge as the leader in globaI IT economy.
Businesses stay here for quality
All businesses come to India for cost cutting, but they stay here for quality. …
India answers the call of prosperity
(Filed: 08/11/2003)
An economic star rises in the East as more Western firms seek quality staff at a low cost, says Dominic White
Gaurav Malik, 24, is flirting on the phone with a secretary from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. Tapping his mouse to book her boss’s post-lunch BT conference call, he then bids her a charming goodbye.
Replacing the receiver with a flush, she has no idea that Gaurav is 4,000 miles away in Noida, New Delhi, where it is 6pm on Monday evening.
Swirling around in his chair and loosening his headset, Gaurav casually reveals that he’s been working for 11 hours already. He drove to college at 7am to attend lectures for his postgraduate business law course, then came straight to work at 11am.
In three hours’ time, he’ll drive the crumbling roads 15 miles home to his mother, his three elder brothers, their wives and their three infant children.
Gaurav is just one of the legions of young Indians manning cubbyholes in call centres across pockets of Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad, servicing scores of British companies such as Barclays, HSBC, BA, Prudential, and Norwich Union.
Despite the furious protests of UK unions, and growing pressure in the US for preventative legislation on websites such as hireamericancitizens.org, the caravan of Western companies on a passage to India is growing.
Growing still faster is the number of English speaking graduates on the subcontinent. There are 2m every year, many of whom are happy to take call centre jobs.
With an average starting salary of 7,000 Rupees (£100) a month, they may earn a quarter of their UK counterparts’ wages, but that is five times the national average in India.
“I see myself as a manager here within two years,” says Gaurav, whose car, designer glasses and gold ring show just how far your income can go when, like most Indians in their 20s, you live at home with your mum. His brothers graduated before the call centre boom arrived three years ago and so followed in their late father’s footsteps by setting up their own ventures.
“At that time this kind of work was not an option for them,” he says. “But it’s great that these kind of businesses are now flourishing in India. It’s giving people the opportunity for a new way of life.” India’s 1.3m new mobile phone subscribers each month are a testament to that.
Poverty remains endemic in India, but the feelgood factor among its burgeoning middle class - and the under 25s who make up half of the one billion population - is tangible. Twelve years since it started kicking off its statist and protectionist shackles, India is booming.
The Sensex stock market index has risen almost 60pc this year. This week it burst through the 5000 barrier to a 43-month high as the Reserve Bank of India, encouraged by a good monsoon, upped its forecast for economic growth to between 6.5pc and 7pc.
“I think double digit growth within the next decade is a distinct possibility,” says Ashok Lahiri, the government’s chief economic adviser. If he is right, India could become the turtle to China’s hare in terms of foreign investment, thanks to its English speaking traditions, democracy, entrepreneurial spirit and strong higher education.
Ian Rippin, the 35-year-old site director of BT’s Noida call centre, is in tacit agreement. “They learn things like a sponge, and their enthusiasm is infectious,” he says of his 500 staff. “All businesses come here for cost, but they stay here for quality.”
Given how overqualified Gaurav and most of his colleagues are for this kind of work, it’s little surprise that many get bored quickly. A report by Dimension Data this week claimed that turnover rates of call centre staff in India have reached 60pc annually, twice the level in the UK.
However, the skills pool is vast, and there are plenty of new faces eager to replace the leavers. “We have only advertised jobs three times in the last two years,” says Summit Bhattacharya, executive vice president of strategic planning for HCL Technologies, the Indian outsourcing company that runs the BT building at Noida. “We had more than 20,000 responses to 150 places.”
If the facilities at BT’s 53,000 sq ft operation are anything to go by, the attractions of working in a call centre, compared to a shop or hotel - the normal alternatives - are obvious.
The centre is virtually identical to 30 other “next generation contact centres” that BT is developing in the UK, and another one it is building in Bangalore, far beyond the reach of the Communication Workers Union.
With its state-of-the-art equipment, funky desk lighting, free canteen, gymnasium, library, and ATM, it puts most UK call centres to shame. Seated in pastel-hued booths, 20-somethings chat happily to each other, then, the second a call comes in, answer the phone in impeccable English.
“That stuff about us making them watch Eastenders to copy Dirty Den’s accent is absolute nonsense,” says Rippin. While some other companies, particularly those based in the US, encourage their Indian staff to mimic their domestic twang, BT goes in for a different type of voice training.
It is called, in rather Orwellian fashion, “voice and accent neutralisation”. “When I was training I was told to adopt a neutral accent, like the BBC news presenters,” says Gaurav, whose mother tongue is Hindi, but who learned English from kindergarten and thus needs little coaching.
Teleconomy, a UK consultancy, showed that more than three quarters of British callers using Indian call centres couldn’t tell whether their call was being handled in Britain or India. Nearly half thought their operative had an Irish, Welsh or English accent.
Little wonder that Sir Keith Whitson, chief executive of HSBC, believes his Indian call centre staff are superior to those in the UK. The next test will be to see whether he thinks the same could also be true of his highly-paid equity analysts.
Rivals Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan have already set up small operations in Bangalore and Mumbai. Kiran Karnik, president of India’s powerful National Association of Software and Service Companies, believes many more will follow. “The professional classes of England are about to face some severe competition,” he says.
"If you look ahead five years, the ageing demographic profile of Western economies means they will be short of skills. Those economies will have the choice of either importing people or exporting jobs, and whether you like it or not, importing people causes social problems.
“The challenge is to create jobs. It’s like the old coal miner paradigm in the UK. You have since moved very successfully from a manufacturing to a service economy. Now your challenge is to keep moving.”
India’s biggest challenge is obvious to see the moment you step outside the BT call centre in Noida. On the choking dual-carriageway cars, rickshaws, pushbikes, trucks and motorbikes fight for space as they swerve under a broken streetlight to avoid a stray cow grazing idly next to the central reservation.
If India fails to invest in transport and power, and thus maintains its well-deserved reputation as the land of bureaucracy, its remarkable economic growth will be stunted.
Ashok Lahiri, the country’s most powerful economist, acknowledges this. He claims however, that India’s red-tape culture is as much a legacy of the British Empire as its language, education system and working practices.
The latter is helping the Indian economy to take jobs from Britain, but also gives an edge to British companies against their non-English speaking rivals.
“There is a famous joke that an Englishman was very offended when an Indian told him he needed a visa to come to India,” says Lahiri. "So the Indian asked why he needed a visa to go to England.
“‘Because any Indian coming to London would want to stay,’ said the Englishman. ‘But any Englishman docking in Calcutta would want to go back home straight away.’ And the Indian said: ‘Well, we had a chap called John Bull in here once, we gave him a business visa… and he stayed for 200 years’.”
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by lastknightess: *
Yeh yeh yeh...I'm indian...but I be damned if i ever buy Indian :D
[/QUOTE]
Chances are that if you use software you already have. Also coming soon, Indian made Rover cars, parts made in India for GM, etc etc.
Unfortunately the good stuff are not sold much here...
here’s the eleventh reason :smokin: :smokin2:
As suggested by Baba G. Here is the 11th reason. (site requires registeration)
By Megan K. Stack, Times Staff Writer
SEDOT YAM, Israel — For young Israelis wedged between war and adulthood, it’s a chance to escape the struggle of their homeland — and to be unapologetically young for the first and last time.
Once mandatory army service is behind them, they flock overseas for a year, maybe two. Many head for Bolivia, Peru or Thailand. A few venture to Australia or New Zealand. But mostly, former soldiers go to India. On a journey that promises spiritual renewal and usually includes trips of the hallucinogenic sort, Israelis tramp off to the subcontinent in droves — about 30,000 a year, so many it’s become a generational cliche.
“Orit, for example. She hasn’t been to India.” That’s how author Gadi Taub opened a recent magazine piece about twenty-something Israelis. "She doesn’t have to go to India, she says. ‘Let others go. I understand what it’s all about without going there.’ "
To understand why so many young Israelis flock to India — and why they dope themselves into a daze upon arrival — is to understand something about the peculiar mix of pressures and existential questions that bear down on the Jewish state. The rite has its dark side — every year, hundreds of the Israeli tourists overdose on drugs and have to be rescued from India.
The India phenomenon was born as Israel wrestled through its invasion of Lebanon and the outbreak of the first Palestinian intifada in the 1980s. The trend has grown stronger during the current, 3-year-old Palestinian uprising, a wrenching and controversial war that has cast the Jewish state into ceaseless bloodshed and ideological uncertainty.
“The vital center, the ideological center, has collapsed, and people have started questioning,” Taub said on a recent afternoon, perched at a sidewalk cafe in Tel Aviv. Before him, a stream of young, listless Israelis slinked along trendy Shenkin Street, clad in glittering halter tops and slumped jeans.
“There is this strange mood in Israel now,” he said, “this intense anxiety coupled by a dreamlike apathy.”
Young Israelis used to go to America or to Europe to study, intern and build careers. These days, though, they lose themselves in the developing world. Instead of self-improvement, many are looking for debauchery, escapism or some sort of New Age-style spiritual renewal.
In India, time doesn’t mean very much, said Omri Frish. A reserve soldier and social worker, Frish recently joined Israeli officials for a government tour of India’s popular drug hangouts. India, he decided, is “the antithesis of Israel, which is totalitarian.”
Trekkers wander from village to village, and local entrepreneurs advertise their hostels and restaurants in Hebrew. There’s liquid acid and opium, Ecstasy and lots of hashish.
Most of the Israeli tourists are young ex-soldiers like one 23-year-old woman who worked for two years after the army to sock away enough money for her ticket to the subcontinent.
“India hit me — boom. Right in the face,” said the lanky, tanned woman with intense blue eyes, bone-blond hair and a pierced nose.
“I’d completely forgotten about politics, about what was happening in Israel. It was amazing, absolutely amazing, to be all day long with friends and not do anything,” she said. “We smoked ourselves silly morning and night. There weren’t any limits or boundaries.”
The woman, who did not want her name used, was camping on a beach when she felt the fear swell. She didn’t sleep for two weeks.
“I started seeing faces in the clouds, in the bushes and on the sand, everywhere,” she said. “I became very nervous. I thought I was going to drown. I was crying hysterically.”
Even now, after months of medical and psychiatric treatment, she can’t be sure of the sequence of events. Somebody called her parents, who called the Israeli government. Some friends got her back to Bombay, where an Israeli social worker and a former Israeli pilot accompanied her on a plane bound for Tel Aviv. In her head, the young woman was hearing the voices of her parents and siblings — she thought they were there too.
“I must have tuned out, because it seemed perfectly normal,” she said.
Upon return, she was tormented by delusions. She kept looking over her shoulder. She was terrified of Arabs, certain she was being stalked, obsessed with security.
The post-army India meltdown has become so common that the government is crafting a policy to respond. Weary of organizing teams to scoop the wayward soldiers out of backwoods hospitals, Israel is negotiating with the Indian government to install treatment outposts in popular hiking regions to keep an eye on the travelers.
“We Israelis have a militarized mentality,” said Frish, who spearheaded the project. “That means you don’t leave your injured countrymen in the field.”
It sounds extreme, but this is a country that chartered a plane to ferry its citizens out of Bolivia when the government collapsed; a nation willing to release hundreds of Arab prisoners in trade for a lone Israeli captive who may or may not be alive.
To Israel, the thousands of young veterans who arrive home in need of psychological treatment are deemed a problem worthy of organized response.
“Drugs have a special influence on kids who are under the enormous pressure of Israel, with weight on their backs from terrorist attacks and economic pressures,” says Isaac Herzog, a Labor lawmaker and former antidrug czar. “They tour the world, and they come back — we call it scratched, totally scratched.”
Like many of her fractured peers, the 23-year-old ex-soldier washed up in a sort of New Age treatment center called Kfar Izun, Hebrew for “Equilibrium Village.” A quiet cluster of ramshackle cabins on a remote Mediterranean beach, this is the only psychiatric hospital in Israel devoted to helping overdosed trekkers find their way back to themselves.
It looks like a summer camp for wayward young adults who roam the grounds, barefoot and scruffy. “Trust in trance,” one of the men has painted on the side of his cabin, alongside an oversized yin and yang. Pet dogs wander over the sea grass. The young patients go to group and individual therapy, yoga and crafts classes. They pay $1,500 a month, subsidized by Israel’s socialist health-care system.
“It was born of frustration,” said Frish, who founded the treatment village with a few army buddies. “These are not junkies. They’re top-notch Israelis, reading the most serious literature. They’re wonderful people.”
Look what happens to Israeli youth, he said. Straight out of high school, they go immediately into the army, men and women alike. By the time they are allowed to make their own choices, they are in their early 20s, they have tasted war and fear, and have grappled with hard questions of conscience.
“They’ve been through so much they feel invincible and desensitized to danger,” Frish said. “They’ve already lived through so much that they have to go much further to get a rush.”
Frish says he helped pluck a young man from India who was babbling that God had ordered him to make peace on earth, but that he didn’t know how. Another former soldier had become paranoid, convinced that his father had been killed in last year’s attacks on Israeli targets in Mombasa, Kenya, but that nobody wanted to tell him.
They see ghosts. They believe they are inside a movie. They are tormented by blood-smeared memories and thoughts of their families.
“A lot of things float up in psychosis,” Frish said. “It’s a spiritual breakdown, an emergency. Your parameters for examining reality just go off.”
If you ask Taub, the writer, the India overdoses are a symptom of “Israel’s first post-romantic generation.” As a group, he pointed out, the generation of Israelis now in their post-military years is more Americanized, more urban and more heavily bathed in secular pleasures like shopping malls and rap music.
It is also a group that fought for the Jewish state at a time when the support of their countrymen is far from unanimous. Israel is at war with itself over Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s strategy in dealing with the Palestinians.
Many fear, and say so ever more openly, that harsh measures imposed on the Palestinians in the name of stifling terrorism will only end up stoking the hatred.
“Suddenly what the army is used for is not so clear,” Taub said. “Think what that does to an 18-year-old.”
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Spock: *
Nice slideshow, except fo rthe first picture... Who is that guy in glasses in point no. 8?
[/QUOTE]
That's Intel President Paul Otellini, I presume.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by JaGGa: *
As suggested by Baba G. Here is the 11th reason. (site requires registeration)
[/QUOTE]
JaGGa, this seems to be an old report, isn't it? And I also hope you know what the source of drugs and famous routes for drugs coming to India and Africa are. They pass through/originate from a neighbouring country throuhout Europe, Africa and Asia. So instead of quoting this as 11th reason, I would say this is the first reason why noone should invest in a country that harbours such trade.
Mr. Dhir, the news was reported in the above paper on Nov. 11th 2003. But yah the trend has been in effect for some time now it seems. The question is why go all the way to India?
Millions of high-tech jobs may follow hundreds of thousands already in India
By Aaron Davis
Knight Ridder Newspapers
NAMAS BHOJANI, San Jose Mercury News
At 1 a.m. local time in Bangalore, India, – peak workday hours in the United States – the noise inside 24/7 Customer call center crescendos.
BANGALORE, India - On a dirt road leading away from Bangalore, thousands of India’s 20-something technology graduates stream at dusk toward the future - past construction sites, around mud puddles, in faded blue buses and white SUVs - until they reach four silver towers that rise high into the bug-filled sky.
Here, they enter the realm of the call center 24/7 Customer, where in nine-hour shifts they help hundreds of Americans sort out bank card problems, order new phone services and install software on their home computers.
This is the new India, where the economy throbs with hundreds of thousands of technology jobs, a sign, India’s optimists say, of tech’s role in the country’s future.
Critics, however, say the boom comes at the expense of workers in the United States, who often make four times what an Indian worker with a similar job would expect.
Sending jobs outside the United States isn’t a new phenomenon, but the fact that these jobs were made possible by technology is worrisome. Indian contractors are proving that just about any back-office processing job or customer service work that can be done over the phone or the Internet can be handled more cheaply and efficiently from their country than it can from the United States.
“It was the innovation of tech workers in places like Silicon Valley that launched the information revolution,” said Marcus Courtney, an organizer for the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, a group that’s opposed moving jobs overseas since Seattle-based Microsoft announced in July that it would begin moving customer service jobs to India.
“Where are you going to get skilled businesspeople to keep these companies going if you take your rank-and-file employees away? They’ll be gone, moving up a ladder somewhere else, in some other country.”
How many jobs have left the United States for India is open to debate. Congress has ordered a General Accounting Office study, and the Information Technology Association of America, a trade group, has commissioned a Nobel-winning economist to do the same. Both reports are due next year.
But the number is high, and is moving far beyond telemarketing and other low-level, back-office work. Some of America’s biggest technology names, from Oracle and Intel to Hewlett Packard and IBM, employ thousands in India and have plans to double and triple their offshore engineering work forces.
One company, Gartner, said information technology companies would move 1 in 10 jobs offshore by the end of 2004. Forrester Research said 3.3 million tech and service jobs would leave the country by 2015. Earlier this month, researchers at the University of California-Berkeley said 14 million U.S. service jobs, including tech positions, were threatened.
India’s call center industry has added nearly 200,000 workers since March 2002 and will reach total employment of 350,000 by early next year, according to researchers at Stanford University. And some predict that more sophisticated work is on the way.
U.S. banks, brokerage firms, insurance companies and mutual funds will send 500,000 jobs, or 8 percent of their work force, offshore within the next five years, according to consulting firm A.T Kearney. Every job sent to India saves financial companies $25,000 annually, the firm said.
Bangalore alone is planning for an influx of 1 million tech-service jobs in the next eight years, said government officials, who worry about keeping up with electricity and other demands on infrastructure.
Signs of growth are everywhere. In southern India, a bleary-eyed software executive shouts to be heard above the clanging and banging of workers laying fiber optics through a littered, red-dirt street.
And the flow of India’s elite university graduates to other countries to escape the country’s poverty is reversing.
“This is a sea change in India,” said R. Chandrashekhar, the joint secretary of India’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. “The best workers are coming home.”
At 24/7 Customer, one of India’s fastest-growing call centers, 98 percent of the employees have college degrees, meaning they usually can solve customers’ technical problems faster and more easily than call-center workers in the United States, who often have high school degrees or less. Yet Indian employees make $2,800 to $8,000 a year, compared with $30,000 to $45,000 for comparable American workers.
Few who pick up a phone in the United States and dial an 800-number for help ever know they’re calling halfway around the world. Employees at 24/7 are told not to reveal their location; if asked, the refrain is “You’re calling our global customer service center.”
Workers change their names, to sound more American. Saumya Jaikumar becomes “Sonya,” Prem Mani becomes “Ian” and Sangeetha Gopal, in flowing lavender sari, becomes “Sandra.”
Before they were allowed to work the phones, they were sent to pronunciation class, where they were taught to flatten their Indian intonations - to sound more American by pronouncing “Betty” like “Beddy” or to sound more English by stressing the “T.”
There even are lessons on geography and American baseball.
“Cheers,” Sonya, who at 23 has an engineering degree from Bangalore University, said in a crisp English accent as she ended a call scheduling next-day pickup of a package in northern Scotland.
“It’s really an exciting place,” a bubbling Ravi Venkatesam, the vice president of operations, said as he darted through the color-coded, quarter-mile-long call center.
After the huge East Coast blackout in July, Sonya and Ian each answered more than 100 calls a night, nearly twice the norm. They helped frustrated American convenience store owners in Pennsylvania and pizza parlor owners in New York determine which transactions were debited and which ones disappeared into the electronic netherworld when the lights went out.
24/7 promises its clients that it will outperform their best internal U.S. call centers by 10 percent within six months. It usually saves them far more.
Still, technology executives in India have one problem that their counterparts in the United States don’t: They can’t hire fast enough.
Venkatesam left the call center at 4 a.m. to interview a job candidate who he hoped would manage 24/7’s new Hyderabad call center - ready and waiting with 350 new seats.
Aussie R.B Governor says - get with the program!
This is one of the most powerful recognitions of the Indian economy and growth.
Nations adaptive to Indian, Chinese growth will thrive: Australian RB governor
SYDNEY : Describing Asia as “the fastest growing region” in terms of economy, Australia 's Reserve Bank Governor has said countries which can adapt to the emergence of the Asian tigers India and China , will thrive, while those which go into a defensive mode will stagnate.
“A lot of countries are terrified… as they see China and India threatening their own industries. Other countries see themselves in a position to benefit from this growth, and Australia surely has to be one of them,” I J MacFarlane said at a speech here.
“The potential benefit comes from the fact that China and India will not only be large exporters, but will be large importers as well,” he said pointing out that in the past year alone, Chinese imports rose by 40 per cent.
“Over any measure, say, 20 years, 10 years or even five years, Asia is the fastest growing region in the world, despite what we can now see was a relatively brief setback during the Asian crisis. And there is no reason to believe that it will not continue,” the Governor said.
“In fact, there is reason to believe that it will become more pronounced. Over the past few decades, a number of small Asian countries learned how to grow quickly, and now we are seeing the two truly huge countries ( China followed by India ) achieve the same sort of consistent high growth rates”. he said.
That sounds pretty dumb particularly coming from someone whose patriotism is with a country that trademarks illicit weapons trade and primary route for afghan grass.