ZVM’s Indian Undercurrent

So here’s my take on poor folks here on H1-B visa - you can’t vote, you don’t have credit history so you cant get a loan nor a credit card BUT you pay taxes! Native citizens believe that you are out to take their jobs but you believe that you are highly underpaid!

It takes six years on an average and you are very lucky to get a Green card, and 5 years after to get an apply for a citizenship - which is half a lifetime almost. Should be easier to walk across the border… in fact, folks on H1 who are probably highly qualified are treated similar sometimes, which is disturbing.

From today’s WSJ Article by Gary Becker (see below), the noted economist says:

The right approach would be to greatly increase the number of entry permits to highly skilled professionals and eliminate the H-1B program, so that all such visas became permanent. Skilled immigrants such as engineers and scientists are in fields not attracting many Americans, and they work in IT industries, such as computers and biotech, which have become the backbone of the economy. Many of the entrepreneurs and higher-level employees in Silicon Valley were born overseas. These immigrants create jobs and opportunities for native-born Americans of all types and levels of skills.

Absolutely! Please remove the ridiculous caps on H1-B and let the market decide on demand. At the end of the day, it results in lesser regulation, lesser paperwork for everyone involved. Use the H1-B guys to fix the horrible government systems which needs it from 20 years. It is cheaper and it probably will be the right investment in the long run. Protentionist measures will only go so far.

USA taught the value of free trade to the rest of the world, time to read a few pages and implement it locally before its too late.

Mr. Becker, the 1992 Nobel laureate in economics, is University Professor of Economics and Sociology at the University of Chicago and the Rose-Marie and Jack R. Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution.

Sridhar Ramakrishnan told me abaout a great site that talks about all that’s good about India. A simple browse and you realize that there is a whole community that wants to be positive, and not talk only about the issues mainstream media focusses on, but also to recognize simple successes of Indians all over the world. In short, a perfect complement to what this site is all about!

To whet your appetite, here’s an extract from the site entitled “The man who sowed Gandhi and reaped happiness“:

The road north, out of Udupi induces peace and calm. The Arabian Sea to the left, the sense of space and the bright light make you wonder if there can be anything better.

Soon you learn that there is. Turn right at Brahmavar [’Gift of Brahma’!] and right again. You are on a road fast asleep. Trees stand tall, broad and quiet. Fruit lies on the ground unclaimed. There are so few people about. You have just dropped through two or three floors of time, from noisy, crowded India.

10 km down the road at the village of Cherkady, 86 year old Ramachandra Rao welcomes you with a pitcher of water and three tiny cones of jaggery, into his 2.5 acre homestead. He’s a small, wiry man with twinkling eyes on an untroubled face.

He is eager to tell his story and it is best we have it in his voice.

Gandhi is all you need:

“Sir, I was born in Kodagu [Coorg] in 1917. When I was two, my father and mother, died mysteriously within a day of each other. My older sisters had been married. I was first brought to one of them in Dharmasthala and then here to Cherkady where another sister had been married. My brother-in-law was a farmer some distance away from here. I grew up grazing his cows and helping out in the fields.

“They sent me to the local school when I was close to 10 and I spent just two years there. That has been the only formal education I have ever received. Or needed.

“My teacher Ramachandra Patil had only one subject: Gandhi. He spoke of his life, thoughts and courage. He spoke of Gandhi’s frugality, devotion to nature and self-reliance. He spoke of nothing but Gandhi the whole time, and we were all under a constant spell.

“Patil-Teacher even kept a charkha in the school and we all fought each other to learn to spin. My two years were soon over. The farm needed my labours. I am glad I studied no more, for that would have diluted what I learnt.

“I was growing up in the fields helping my sister’s family. In my spare time, I was spinning the charkha at home. In my late teens, deciding that I must have a career, I went to Brahmavar to learn weaving. I made my first money when I was 22, for fabrics I had woven. I had not known money until then.

Weaving wins a bride:

“I gained a reputation as a good weaver. Oh, I loved it: the smell of lint in the air, the clack of the loom and the film of sweat on my skin. The whole thing was very meditative and kept me fit and well-fed. It gained me my wife as well. Her father thought me a stable fellow and she too began to weave. We earned Rs.600 per year as weavers. Life was good.

Read more here.

Ever lived in a city that offers efficient public transportation? It is a breeze to go from point A to Point B - all major cities are connected, and the transportation system (whether its the metro or subway system) offers a great alternative to stuck up traffic snarls that we are feel victim to in the Bay area.

Cities where I’ve seen this work - London , Paris, New York, Boston. Areas that are in bad need of this - SF Bay area. But hold on, you say - what about our famous BART? To this, I have a simple question - ever tried to travel from San Jose/Palo Alto to the east bay areas? You cannot use the BART for lack of connectivity, or at least continous connectivity. Even areas inside of San Francisco are covered sketchily. Add to the union woes, and fare increases, with long due expansion plans (to Livermore and beyond) - BART is a long way from truly being effective.

Let’s examine this historically. Ford invents the Model-T in the early 1900s. 15 million cars are produced by 1930. The US is on its way to becoming the largest automotive country in the world. The biggest threat to the automobile companies: public transporation, especially anything that runs on rails.

And then started the lobbying, the increases in fares, the labor unrests and the methodical but delibrate dismantling of a superior and efficient network of trains and replacement with roads. Which is where we are today - you can drive or fly anywhere but you cannot take a train or a bus.

It is indeed unfortunate that citizens of the bay area have chosen to buy automobiles, agree to sit in the killer traffic (See Mayoral candidates say traffic, housing top campaign issues) and debate endlessly on how to solve traffic problems with bandaids, and not even consider public transportation!

“We need to provide better safety for our children,” Kralik said. “We ought to start a pilot program for busing our kids. At the same time, businesses could help by staggering their starting times for employees.”

Buses! Now that’s a thought…

What’s clear here is not even cities in India are spared from this problem, and seem to be doomed in repeating this back at home.

The company in a recent statement said it saw significant potential in the Indian automobile market in the long term and that it would be well positioned to fully tap it. The number of luxury brands on Indian roads is set to expand with market watchers pointing out that several luxury carmakers such as Aston Martin and Ferrari are in the process of charting out their foray into the domestic market.

The problem is not that there are sellers of cars. The problem is that there are no sellers of public transport. Worse, even its “owners” have become its enemy. In most cities, bus fleets run not as transportation companies but as employment services.

And that, sadly is one of things that we talked about earlier in this channel. Having cars is cool, only if you can drive them at speeds higher than 10 Mph!

Any occasion for some cool tech toys!

One of the funniest in south asian comedy, check it out here: Russell Peters in New York.

Here’s some more comedy snippets as captured in BoingBoing.

In deal architect : Infosys’ Nilekani: Battle of Business Models Vinnie argues that he detects “hubris” in Nilekani’s response; my counter is that you need to look at another explanation for this called The Innovator’s Dilemma - incumbents such as Accenture and IBM do not often see the rise of challengers due to their obsession with margins until too late.

To be honest, Accenture has reacted admirably by hiring over 16,000 in a few years, but it is for the long haul not a short sprint. My bets are firmly on Infosys for now.

Morgan Stanley’s Steve Roach writes that Tom Friedman ’s The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century was a bit ahead of this time in the book, and goes on to quote why India will continue to lead services. Here’s an extract:

China and India both struggle with their deficiencies, especially on the all-important jobs front. Make no mistake, this is one of the highest priorities for both countries. China is now looking to services, whereas India is counting on manufacturing to fill the void. The question is, Can they pull it off? I still have my doubts about India’s manufacturing strategy, given the nation’s seemingly chronic shortfalls of infrastructure, FDI, and saving. At the same time, I can assure you that China is relatively clueless when it comes to understanding a services culture. I have seen this for years in my discussions with Chinese retailers and in my site visits to China’s retail establishments. And I saw it first hand the other night when I was downgraded flying out of Shanghai to Dubai. An extra pilot from Emirates Air was apparently onboard and regulations required the Chinese ground staff to give him my confirmed bed-like seat. Sleep-deprived and counting on the long ride for a little bit of rest, I strenuously protested but to no avail — rules were more important that customer service in the Chinese mindset. The good news is that when I arrived at the departure gate angry and exhausted, the spare Emirates Air captain heard the story and gladly gave up the seat that originally had been allocated to me. This underscores the dichotomy between those who get the attributes of a successful services culture (the dedicated staff of Emirates Air) — and those who don’t (their Chinese ground reps). China starts in a big hole in building a services alternative to their stunning manufacturing successes.

We happen to know a very talented teenager who speaks just like this! Yeah-uh!

Courtesy

As hard as it is for Americans (that includes of all orgins, not just white) to accept the phenomenon of outsourcing, it makes me wonder about the fate of people of Indian origin (PIO) in the USA.

Yes, the mainstream media is still reporting
yesterday’s news on how folks are bossy and rude to Indian call center agents, nobody is realizing that offshoring is a very democratizing phenomenon: no one is spared, including Indians in the USA.

I ran into this gentleman yesterday called Harish who has been a DBA in the US for the last 15 years, started a company of his own during the dot-com days (now defunct) and now is consulting with a large organization. He mentions that with the competition from the Indian vendors so high, it is impossible to command rates that he used to before. He feels the threat of lower wages and lack of $250/hr salaries that were easily available a few years back.

Therein I guess lies the dilemma - do Americans approve of companies spending ridiculous amounts of money on companies who in turn will pass that on to the consumer? Or, would they want to make the dollar stretch by the resultant savings?

The age of IT as a career is coming to an end in the United States. It makes as much sense to do IT here as much as it does to manufacture as compared to China.

For all of the IT folks who have sadly suffered pink slips, remember that innovation currently continues to be home in the US, commoditization is what is heading offshore. If you can reinvent yourself to innovate and seek higher value jobs (architects, team leads, program managers etc) that requires you to touch the client, you are safe.

The rule of thumb is pretty clear: If you do not talk to your customer (and I mean the one who pays your bill, not the silly definition of an “internal” customer) on a regular basis, you will be outsourced.

Folks, so please, take a hard look at what you are doing right now. Move to customer facing areas if you are not living in India, China, Phillipines or Malaysia.

And please, treat everyone with respect when you call a call center. Do not say things that you will say in person just because someone is sitting a few thousand miles from you. The problem with call centers is under-staffing, and as of right now, it can be solved only with a country of a great population at 1/10th the rates…

is Chennai’s gain writes theBanglorean.

Things aren’t looking up for Bangalore right now.

Rapid expansion of business has not necessarily resulted in investment in basic infrastructure. Plus, add to this the threat of majors such as Infosys moving to other states thanks to inflammatory accusations by Deve Gowda is all adding to its woes.