New
Delhi: India has a growing bank of 4.1 million technical
workers, partially supplied by over 1,832 educational institutions
and polytechnics. These institutes train more than 70,000 computer
software professionals every year.
The above numbers are in addition to those graduates of the
prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), where the
quality of technical training is comparable to the best of the
educational institutes in the world.
The software industry had a compounded annual growth rate of more
than 59 per cent between 1992 and 1999, and the Indian software
sector expanded almost twice as fast as its counterpart in the US,
though from a smaller base.
According to National Association of Software and Service
Companies (Nasscom) data the Indian software industry
was worth Rs 16.3 billion ($4 billion) in 1998-1999. This
represented an increase of Rs 300 million ($20 million)
from a decade ago.
Out of the $4 billion revenues generated by the Indian software
industry, almost $2.65 billion was from the export of software and
services to 86 countries. A high-powered National IT Task Force,
constituted by the prime minister of country, has projected an
industry turnover of $85 billion by 2008, of which $50 billion
will come from exports.
The past decade saw a surge in demand for Indian software
programmers, systems analysts and engineers in most countries
around the world. For a long time, the US has been the first
choice of migration for most Indian professionals, chiefly because
of language considerations and also because the US is perceived as
being less racist than the UK and European countries.
Migration to the US from India increased during the early
nineties. According to the US Immigration and Naturalisation
Service, Indian H-1Bs grew steadily from 1989. In 1994, India
accounted for the highest number of professionals seeking H-1B
visas. This number doubled in 1996, and quintupled by 1999.
About 195,083 Indian nationals succeeded in obtaining H-1B visas
between 1989 and 1999 and more than half of them were able to
obtain a green card also. In 1999, Indian nationals received 44
per cent of the 115,000 H-1B visas issued, compared with 10 per
cent for Chinese nationals.
But the recession that hit the US economy and other economies
around the world in 2000 changed many things. In early 2000, the
US froze granting of visas to Indians till October 2000 and by
2001, the reverse flow started. Software engineers were not only
finding it hard to get jobs, those already working in the US or
the UK on contract were actually being sent back home.
According to Prem Anand, publisher of a Singapore-based Internet
site that keeps track of Indian high-tech workers, about 1,000
techies returned from the US in March 2001 alone and thousands
more followed in that year.
A software engineer sent as a consultant to a software firm in the
UK says his company
laid off 40 people recruited for projects in Europe. With no
new projects in sight cost-cuts became the dictum, so the company
had no option but to lay off the surplus staff. There are
others who now prefer to be back in India in spite of a good pay
package being offered abroad. The reason is simple: increasing
work opportunities in India.
H1-B visas-holders are sponsored by a firm, which employs her or
him. If the worker is laid off, he or she gets an average of 30
days to find another sponsor. Most Indian workers leave at this
juncture. One option they have is to relocate to another foreign
country, and countries like Germany and Japan may stand to gain a
lot from the sudden availability of Indian high-tech experts.
Hundreds of IT workers who were trained specially in e-commerce
and Internet technologies are the ones hardest hit, because the
market for such skills has dwindled in the US, says a US-based
software engineer. A headhunting firm in Bangalore says it is
receiving up to 10 rsums a day from Indians in the US looking
to relocate.
In recent times the US has increased outsourcing projects to
Indian companies in order to take advantage of the inexpensive but
good technically qualified manpower available. While some US
companies have
started going through call centres, others are expanding their
presence and transferring their research and development
facilities units to India (See ).
In the last two years alone the call centre business has witnessed
a growth of nearly 70 per cent in business process outsourcing,
creating many jobs in the process. American companies like
Netscape, Dell Computers and Hewlett-Packard have also set up
offices in India and it may just happen that IT jobseekers might
find themselves accepting a reasonable compromise.
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