http://yahoo.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_49/b3861001_mz001.htm


"The game here really isn't about saving costs but to speed innovation and generate growth for the company,"


If India can turn into a fast-growth economy, it will be the first developing nation that used its brainpower, not natural resources or the raw muscle of factory labor, as the catalyst.

Indeed...being an immigrant from India, I was kind of struck by the cover of the magazine if you guys get a chance to see it:)

Article makes some great points-- as far as I see, there are some stiff challenges ahead that will *not* be easy for Indians to counter if they want to ever dream of making some real changes to the billion people country. And not matter how good the IT guys are, you cannot operate under complete ignorance of the 100s of millions of others struggling to make a basic living! That is the crucial difference and challenge which will have to be dealt with.

Yes that is so true. and they say that internet penetration in India is just 0.4% now !

Also with politicians eating the money which can be better used to help the poor people or help india itself in manyother ways ( such as improving infrarstructure).

Originally posted by zaid2001
Indeed...being an immigrant from India, I was kind of struck by the cover of the magazine if you guys get a chance to see it:) http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_49/art03_49/0349covdc.gif

The topic title should have been: India rises again from the dust

India has always been a great land with an ancient civilization which was started to develop about 5000 years back. If you look at India's agricultural and industrial sectors even before its independence and new age economy you can find remarkable achievements. Even in ancient sciences like medicine, metallurgy etc it had very advanced knowledge. As a matter of fact the Indian ruler Tippu Sultan was the pioneer of missile technology and it has been potrayed in a painting in a NASA centre in USA. So is the acheivement of Nobel laureate Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar the scientist who was responsible for the research of white dwarfs. NASA has acknowledged his brilliant acheivement by naming a lab after him. Likewise there are many scientists who have made remarkable contributions: Ramanujam, Homi Baba, C.V Raman to name a few...

As any other nation India has a history and some of its events set back its development and progress. The recent leaps in space and IT sectors is unimaginable but it is not sufficent for the overall economy of a huge nation. In the past decade we have seen the failure of high tech agricultural and food processing enterprises and there hasnt been much progress in old economy sectors like steel, cement, metals, pharma, etc. If India can also progress in other areas like aviation, ship building, industrial machinery, biotech and medicines then it can soon be a giant economic power in the world.

I see this a good and a bad thing. I am glad that all the code monkeys will be shipped over seas. This will create very intelligent and innovative communities of programmers in America(other it fields as well). Since getting a job as a programmer will no longer be a motivation, then the only people who will get into programming are people who really love it. I'm looking forward to the time when all code monkeys will be filtered out.

I'm really not sure what will happen in the next few years, but it will be interested to witness.

One thing that does bother me about reading these kinds of articles is they all treat the IT workers in India as people of supreme and unmatched intelligence. Let's get the facts straight. Companies outsource to India, because of money. They have no interest in improving the global economy. Companies do not care where they get the man power as long as it increases the profit. If pinguins could push buttons with reason, then you'll see GM outsource jobs to pinguins. Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to compare Indians to penguins; I am simply trying to point out that these companies did not invest in India, because somehow the people in India are more intelligent than other nations. They first look at cost, then bloat over the fact that they are helping India to improve their ecnomy and promote globalization.

The problem is that even those who love coding face being displaced by the cheaper labour.
It's just a fact of life which we have to deal with.

So excuse me for not celebrating ;)

Originally posted by Shyne
If pinguins could push buttons with reason, then you'll see GM outsource jobs to pinguins. Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to compare Indians to penguins;

so far I guess indian penguins are pushing more buttons I guess ! :D

Is USA outsourcing because Indians work for lower salaries or is it because even USA has suffered a terrible setback since the last economy crash ?


A door half open is also half closed.

Originally posted by RajanUrs
Is USA outsourcing because Indians work for lower salaries or is it because even USA has suffered a terrible setback since the last economy crash ?


A door half open is also half closed.

simple as that, because indians programmers are cheap and they speak english ;)

Dell recently moved their customer service from India to Texas. Simply because US customers cannot understand accents.

If India can turn into a fast-growth economy, it will be the first developing nation that used its brainpower, not natural resources or the raw muscle of factory labor, as the catalyst.

Brainpower, what a bunch of ****, some people like to pretend customer service jobs for example get moved to India from Europe and North America, because Indian call centres only employ graduates and are therefore better educated, besides the fact that having a degree is of no use in most customer service jobs is the even more blindingly obvious fact that those working in India earn at least 10 times less than their equivilents in developed nations, that is what explains Indias growing economy.

Originally posted by timechange.com
Dell recently moved their customer service from India to Texas. Simply because US customers cannot understand accents.

For those really involved with this timechange, I will tell you this was more of a "national" stunt than anything else. Beleive me, bad accents are major problems and if indeed this was a widespread problem, the outsourcing of call centers would shut immediately.

At best, that closing was only an exception and could have been due to multiple reasons including bad training, mess up by the HR guys etc. If indeed Dell customers incur difficulties in understanding the Indian accents, Dell by now would have shut down all the "offshoring" of CS centers.

That was the way it was mentioned in the article (accent issues). If it were a political "stunt", Microsoft would have pulled out of India faster than you can say "Brahma Vishnu Shiva Krishna Rama Ganesha Laxmi Durga Kali" :D

The way I see it is this... US and European (possibly even Japanese) companies are outsourcing IT jobs to India. Thus the higher educated Indians working in the IT field, even though they are making high salaries (compared to the rest of India), they are still working for companies in other countries, so other countries benefit more from this than India does.

It wont be until India starts producing some major players (India based companies) to compete with the US/European/Aisian markets that India as a whole will benefit.

It is well known that the truely wealthy people in the world are the business owners/entrepreneurs. As long as the business owners remain in the US etc, and the employees are Indian, India as a whole will not prosper. India needs to produce some Entrepreneurs and Business owners of its own, to harness India's own talent, to truely prosper.

Originally posted by amish_geek
As long as the business owners remain in the US etc, and the employees are Indian, India as a whole will not prosper. India needs to produce some Entrepreneurs and Business owners of its own, to harness India's own talent, to truely prosper.

India does have some very successful Entrepreneurs and Business owners.

http://www.infosys.com/
http://www.wipro.com/
http://www.satyam.com/
http://www.biocon.com/


are a few examples of high profile companies. Of them Wipro is a an old generation company which was originally in the business of vegetable oil trading now a leading IT solutions company. Infosys is headed by a man Naryana Murthy who was a middle class worker who used to commute to work on an old Lambretta scooter. Biocon was the brainchild of a woman entreprenuer Kiran Mazumdar who gave birth to it in a carshed in her home. Now it is the leading biotech company in India. Satyam is also a great performing company into various activities in the IT sector which as shown sustaining power not every IT company can boast about.

Apart from them there are hundred of thousands other companies traditional as well as new economy sectors like IT, Telecom, etc. -from small scale sectors to large corporates.

The reason why India did not progress well post independence is because of a different reason and not due to failure of performace. After Independence the first Indian Prime Minister Jawarlal Nehru decided to infuse socialism into the industrial and utilities sector. So India ended up with a large number of govt controlled public sector organisations for all kinds of business: local transportation, phone, watersupply, power, banking, insurance....you name it, the govt had it. This meant literally no competition and absolute inefficiency by the people managing and working in them. Ofcourse this was haven for corruption to breed.

Nothing much happened untill a shrewd politician PVN Rao became the prime minister sometime in early 90s and appointed a professor of economics Manmohan Singh as India's finance minister. They both decided to copy the free enterprise economy of USA and started to delicence the industrial sector to allow private entreprenuers and business leaders to progress. What we see in India today is truly the result of its performance from only about a decade. In reality India has vast natural resources, skilled, semi skilled and non skilled work force and brainpower also. The largest drawback to India is the monopoly of politics by a few parties who dont quite know how to rule the nation especially pertaining to the economy and infrastructure development. This is changing though with the new private sector companies showing amazing results thereby making the politician think twice about meddling in their business.

Some interesting reading.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitextlo/int_manmohansingh.html

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitextlo/int_narayanamurthy.html

Bah, satyam, the last i saw they charged $1000USD for a 128kbps line.

Originally posted by WadeXII
Bah, satyam, the last i saw they charged $1000USD for a 128kbps line.

Exactly, though I am not sure of the exact price, last time I was there(couple months back) I was just happy to be online on a 56kbps connection. Honestly, it's still quite difficult to get *quality* broadband access, if not impossible.

I know a good friend of mine who runs a consumer portal from Bombay and for three years they have been running off of multiple dialups and cable/dsl lines!

To date I fail to understand what the problem is with providing good bandwidth internet access, if not to consumers than at least for corporates who are willing to shell good amount. Last I heard the only reliable connection is to get VSNL or a data center to lay a pipe underground to your office for like $50K for 1mbit connection. :rolleyes:

I want to be a MP ( lok sabha ) .... from a good state ..

Lots of money to be made :)

fact: VSNL was the only govt monopoly ISP at first and all other ISPs were just rebranded VSNL. Not anymore...

designNYC: You are absolutely correct. Doing cheap labour for BPO's does not make a country prosperous or in any way closer to the "super power status" the indian media dreams of.

But outsourcing products and work forces from Africa, Mexico, South America, India, China, Japan etc will make a country prosperous.

There is an "internet to masses" policy which is in the anvil

http://www.hindu.com/2003/12/02/stories/2003120203921300.htm

for more info.


on another side note now it is an

UK company's turn (http://www.hindu.com/2003/12/03/stories/2003120304481501.htm)

Internet to the masses by public kiosks is an excellent idea which all telecom and isps are planning in India. The govt owned BSNL With its wide network of public phone booths has plans to introduce public kiosks with phone, internet access and a wide range of infornation and facilites like railway booking, utility bills payments, govt records retrieval etc. Even Reliance is planning on a nation wide network of kiosks with phone and broadband access.

It is already a reality with the musrooming very large number of internet cafes across India. The next generation internet cafes will also be offering video conferencing facilities, learning facilities, shared applications like printing, softwares, etc.

In fact one need not own a printer anymore. WepIndia is offering to take care of all printing needs. Just upload print files and they will deliver to your door. And even offer onsite installations for bigger customers.

Personally I did the same with my printer and scanner. I just sold them off and now I just use the sevices of a internet cafe located at 3 minutes walking distance from my place.