IT or a time to get LIT?

re:#23 by shammi
Gujjus in particular are very clannish. Those in US seem to think that money is all they are here for. The doctor i worked for in Chicago (before i left him in disgust) was a Gujju whose skills in neonatology were iffy but he had acquired franchises in Donot shops and was treating medicine as some kind of business. I would have admired him if he had also excelled in his profession. This profession needs a lot of dedication. This guy was woefully out of touch with the latest things in his field. I left him for greener pastures. But i also learn a bitter lesson in the process. I am not much impressed by the business acumen of Gujjus or Sindhis anymore.
Besides, Gujjus (and i suspect Sindhis) are so clannish that they think of themselves as Gujjus first and Indians last. We know of so many prosperous Gujjus but how many of them have set up charitable institutions for Indians in India that benefit whole of India and not just their own people. Not one i think.
Sridhar

re:#9 by Romair
``This is why people cannot figure out how so many South Indians can run companies, when many of them can barely speak two words with confidence``
Intel was found by a south indian. He regularly addresses convocations in universities as a chief guest and is often consulted in matters related to IT by GOI.
South Indians by and large are not as gregarious as say Punjabees or other north indians. This is my personal observation as a south indian who has lived in the north all my life. That does not mean they lack the skills to be CEOs of a company. May be the ones you have met have given you that impression. The Pakis i have met have all been dull headed and awful looking and goes against the general impression that Pakis (or north indians for that matter) are good looking. People live in sterotypes. You are probably one of them.
Sridhar
PS: Shankar is an idiot! But then he is making all the right noises and sucking upto Paki a$$.

re:#10 by Star Buck
I would take more time to respond to you later. You do not seem to understand the kind of power IT has unleashed on the Indian masses. IT is no panacea but it can be used to disseminate information like nothing before. Andhra, TN and other states have been gearing up to this prospect for sometime now. This has nothing to do with caste. You are a moron if you think so. TN is teaching IT in class rooms. IT has truely been a leveller as far as caste equations are concerned. Anyone can go and enrol in an intitution (most are private) and learn the skills.
Have you heard of something called Simputer that was recently released by IIM-Bangalore scientiists? This does not even cost $200 and is being marketed in rural areas. This will increase access to computer in rural areas manifold. Have you heard of an innovative program called Tele-medicine? This is being spearheaded by Apollo group of hospitals and involves giving medical advice to people in far off areas thr` computer aided tools by doctors sitting in a hospital in a city. The list is endless. This is a mass revolution and i, sitting in US, feel excited about all this.
Sridhar

re:#15 by arjun_m
The biggest company founded by Pakis in 1947, called Pakistan, is sinking today. It has become a loss-making entity and is being kept afloat by foreign money. Its CEO is a short, pot-bellied, arrogant, devious guy who has taken over the (mis)management of the whole company, with all shareholders looking on helplessly. Shareholders cannot sack their CEO and are allowed to vote only if they abide by certain rules and promise that they will keep electing the same CEO!
This CEOs management skills are so good that he is actually taking his company in the reverse direction! While the whole world is entering the 21st century, his company is still in the 20th century and will soon be entering the 19th century, Inshallah. Now, that is quite an achievement. Romair is right. Paksitanis` skills as executives of any company cannot be questioned.
Sridhar

re:#22 by Rdesikan
Our Chowk General is good at generalising. That is why he is called a General. It is a pity he has not heard of P.T Usha, the only Indian (and yes, a south Indian) who came close to winning a medal in olympics. There are more sports schools in Kerala today than anywhere else in the subcontinent. Pity the chowk general does not know this.
sridhar

AWESOME...very moving. Motivational. Has anything changed?

Ref wholly-precious-you #: 48

[just don’t let them see you eating…we don’t want them to think all of us have bottomless pits for stomachs ;).. ]

Or be thought to be a ``starving Indian`` ;)

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Ref Layman #: 46

[I read this guy`s article earlier and think this Moran deserves a swift kick in the butt. India is nobody`s card to play. This `Moron` is mistaking India with UK, Saudi, Pakistan and other countries in America`s `Card Game`.]

Ha, ha, ha, ha! Delusions of grandeur, I see.

Just remember one thing: if there is an Indo-Pak war tomorrow, the US would be passing real-time information on India`s troop deployment collected from its overhead satellites to Pakistan. It would get there faster than reports from your front-line commanders would get to Vajpayee.

The US can make India the equal of Pakistan anytime it chooses. Until you have a military that can threaten immeasurable harm to the US, you will get no respect from the US and you are just a card to play in the game of geopolitics.

anNy

“and to think i need the passport to travel to a youth forum to REPRESENT pakistan.”

….that sounds interesting….where’re you going?….just don’t let them see you eating…we don’t want them to think all of us have bottomless pits for stomachs ;)..

Shakir,

Like yourself, i have recently moved to Pakistan...about a ten months ago... fortunately or unfortunately i sometimes work very closely with MOST... I have so far worked on two govt. funded projects. The organization i work for is also partially govt. funded and helps gop implement some of its IT projects / policies.

So, tell us a bit more about the state bank of pak project.... what is it all about.. the specs...which of the local software compaines are capable of doing the job? and why do you think they were overlooked?

I would appreciate your response.

Kind regards

cutandpaste #45:

`Why we should play the India card` by Michael Moran.

I read this guy`s article earlier and think this Moran deserves a swift kick in the butt. India is nobody`s card to play. This `Moron` is mistaking India with UK, Saudi, Pakistan and other countries in America`s `Card Game`.

Software programmers at work at Planet Asia, an Indian software company, in Bangalore, India. Cisco, IBM and Microsoft are just a few companies to have made recent investments in India`s high tech industry.



Why we should play the India card



An opportunity squandered



By Michael Moran

MSNBC

NEW YORK — They are the two most populous nations in the world, both struggling to get the heavy hand of the state out of their fast-growing economies, both also, incidentally, aiming nuclear missiles at one another. These two Asian giants also are both desperately wooing American private sector investment, especially in burgeoning high tech sectors. One, India, is a democracy. The other, China, is a communist dictatorship. Guess which one American corporations prefer?



CHINA AND its storied market of 1 billion-plus consumers has been the dream of American multinationals since Richard Nixon’s 1972 visit. Yet like Nixon’s visit, which sought to recruit China in a tacit alliance against the Soviet Union, there’s an ulterior motive for today’s U.S.-China trade relationship: the idea that market reform and dollars ultimately will break the Communist party’s monopoly on power.

For this and a few lesser reasons, the U.S. “engages” China to the tune of $40 billion in direct investment in the year 2000. Meanwhile, India, a democratic nation that regards China as a potential enemy, received a paltry $3.5 billion in direct investment from U.S. corporations, according to the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis. To put that into perspective, that’s roughly what American companies invested in Denmark last year. Nothing against our Danish friends, but there’s something rotten here.



Chinese workers assemble a Buick at Shanghai General Motors, one of the centerpiece investments of U.S. industry in China.





Those who followed the recent too and fro over the EP-3 spy plane that China’s clumsy Air Force accidentally brought down know all too well the dilemmas facing American presidents with regard to China. Sure, presidents talk tough about human rights abuses, trade preferences or our ability to veto loans at the World Bank or IMF. But the fact is, American companies now have so much invested in China’s economy that no president — and especially no Republican president — can discount the interests of the China lobby. In effect, a threat against Beijing risks a charge against future revenues for thousands of America’s largest corporations — among them, Boeing, General Motors, General Electric, Microsoft and AOL-Time-Warner.

But what if President Bush, instead of threatening to take action against China, instead took steps to make investments in India more attractive? Indeed — let’s blue sky this — what if Bush sent an envoy to India proposing to quadruple in a matter of three years the amount of direct foreign investment India receives in exchange for further liberalizations in India’s economic system?

The likelihood of a “perfect” deal — or even a public, binding one — is slim. But such a dialogue would serve the interests of three major players in this game — the U.S. and Indian governments, and the U.S. multinationals. And, frankly, it wouldn’t hurt China to realize that there is nothing inevitable about the flow of American dollars into its economy.



A NO-BRAINER



A pictorial history of China since the revolution.

For some time now, the idea that the United States should play “the India card” has been the foreign policy version of a no-brainer. Putting it this way, of course, is fairly offensive to India - a nation noted for taking deep and lasting umbrage when its national pride is tweaked. Fortunately, there is a lot more than puffed up Kissingereque power politics behind the idea of closer Indo-American relations. Even a short list of these reasons is tremendously compelling:

Both the United States and India feel threatened by China’s growing power;

Both point with alarm (India, understandably, with somewhat more alarm) to the deep and efficient assistance China provided to turn Pakistan into a nuclear-armed state;

Both have been targeted by Osama bin Laden’s band of zealots and regard the Taliban and other forms of extreme Islamic militancy as a menace to Asian and global stability;

Both have placed their faith in future economic growth in the global economy, and more specifically, the high-tech sector.

The most important reason of all — that both are enormous, dynamic, multi-ethnic democracies — is largely irrelevant to American multinational corporations, which make their own decisions about whose market to target and whose cheap labor to exploit. But the U.S. government is not completely powerless in this vein to create incentives that encourage investment in Country A rather than Country B. For instance, American tax credits can be set aside for such investments, much as they have been for firms willing to set up shop in places like Northern Ireland, Haiti or Bosnia. In this way, the U.S. has tried to harness the economic muscle of corporate America to bolster its peace diplomacy. It’s high time that power is harnessed for strategic purposes in Asia.



OUTDATED THINKING

Why has happened already? The answer is complex, but certainly part of the problem is the lingering effects of Cold War thinking on America’s foreign policy establishment. The United States has a long history of focusing too closely on the Indian-Pakistani conflict and not giving enough weight to India’s larger, more strategic rivalry with China.



The Cold War’s intellectual straight-jacket - (India was “theirs,” Pakistan “ours’) - fed this problem and it helped turn the desperately poor, newly independent Indian democracy, which had understandable socialist leanings, into a leading critic of the United States. India wound up as a founding member of the “non-aligned” movement, but in practice, became a MiG-flying, anti-capitalist client of the Soviet Union.



SLOW TURNING

After 1991, things began to change, but not quickly enough. As the Soviet Union was breathing its last, India realized it needed to join the world economy. With one eye on the rapid reforms underway in its regional rival, China, India unleashed capitalism and, not coincidentally, its economy has grown as a clip of about 6 percent ever since.

A glacially slow courtship dance between Washington and New Delhi began soon afterward. The Indian decision to test and deploy nuclear weapons in 1998 — again, a decision that has as much to do with China as Pakistan — brought American sanctions that again chilled relations. But sanctions have been lifted and, last year, President Clinton’s trip to India marked a new high water mark. Indeed, improved ties with India may turn out to be the most important foreign policy achievement of Clinton’s administration. Suddenly, the U.S. is more active in seeking to mediate between India and Pakistan, and has not recently chided India for failing to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. A new dialogue between the two militaries also is developing.

Still, both sides remain wary. Indian leaders must wean their population off of decades of anti-American slogans. American Cold Warriors — some suddenly influential again — still tilt toward Pakistan, citing its useful location next to the troublesome Afghans and the oil of Central Asia, yet overlooking its collaboration with China and North Korea on missiles and nuclear weapons, its support for exceedingly violent terrorist groups in Kashmir and elsewhere and its alliance with the Taliban in Afghanistan. The overthrow of Pakistan’s democratic government last year by the Army general who now calls himself president, Pervez Musharraf, should have been the last straw.



CHASING THE DREAM

Honest people can differ on whether American economic engagement of China will ever translate into democracy. What can’t be denied is that American dollars have become the primary fuel for China’s economic modernization, a fact that not only strengthens budding entrepreneurs and their spirit of individuality, but also China’s communist leadership (and by extension, the military hard-liners who export nuclear technology to Pakistan and plan for the coming showdown with America).





Taiwan: The breakaway island off the coast of China is the most sensitive issue in China-U.S. ties. Washington has had no diplomatic relations with Taipei since 1979, but remains the country’s biggest arms supplier. China claims the island and has threatened to invade if Taiwan declares independence or drags its feet on reunification talks.

Human rights: The United States is pushing for U.N. Commission on Human Rights censure of China for alleged repression of Tibetans, unregistered Christians, members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement and pro-democracy activists.

Beijing has bitterly rejected U.S. assertions that China’s human rights record has worsened over the last year.

Missile defense: China is staunchly opposed to U.S. plans to build a National Missile Defense system that Washington says is necessary to ward off ballistic missiles from hostile states such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq. Beijing fears such a system would negate its modest strategic arsenal.



World Trade Organization: China`s 15-year quest to join the WTO ended on Dec. 11, 2001, when it became a member of the international trading system. Its ascension to the world trade body prompted Washington to formally grant permanent trading relations to Beijing effective Jan. 1, 2002 — a move that helped to bridge Sino-U.S. rifts over the 1999 NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade and the mid-air collision of a U.S. spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet in 2001.

Detentions: China has detained, charged and convicted several U.S.-affiliated Chinese academics for `spying` for rival Taiwan. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell managed to win freedom for three scholars, including one Chinese-born U.S. citizen, ahead of a visit to Beijing in July 2001. However, several other academics still remain behind bars.

Whatever one’s position on engagement, though, it would be foolish to overlook the opportunity costs of current American investment trends: the squandered chance to help Asia’s other major power — the democratic one — secure its own future.

The executives of the great American corporations cannot be expected to think this way. Indeed, the laws governing publicly traded corporations specifically require them to put the interests of their shareholders above such abstractions as American national interests or the future of democracy in Asia.

It is up to American government to create the proper incentive. Even if India’s economic reforms make it a slightly less attractive site for investment, it is still a nation with an educated, English-speaking middle class which now has as many members as the U.S. has people. If we’re going to chase dreams, why not chase one more in line with our own?



Michael Moran is senior producer, special reports at MSNBC and was the site’s international editor from 1997-2000.

anNy #41 Reminds me of the time I was assigned the pleasant task many years ago when I was a student to get two attractive female students from Iran registered at Panjab University. The clerk assured me that he could be bribed to make the process as time-consuming as I wanted. So: see this as a compliment that these people were prolonging the agony of getting a passport.

shakir69 #42 I can understand your frustration with the government. If it is any consolation (and of it is not), the government pays a very heavy price for the lack of procurement systems. That is, in Pakistan (as in many other developing countries) the government pays 10 percent, or sometimes even more (i.e. manifold), above the going market price for goods and services (if they do business with the government at all). In the US, on the other hand, the GSA prices (which is the price goods are sold to the government) are significantly LOWER than market prices. Now sit down on a chair (so you dont fall down when you get the result of this) and multiply this price difference with the huge volume of govenrment procurement. This is the amount the government, and therefore the nation, is paying for poor procurement practices and systems in countries in developing countries.

tahmad321 - the indians have done a phenominal job of their knowledge-based industries....we`re just in the embryonic stages. i`m still tickled over this SBP thing...as company policy we dont bid for government gigs as they`re predetermined and dont depend on any sort of merit. thinking about a slush fund so we can buy ppl out, but hey...

semipreciousme - hey tell me about bureaucracy. but it`s part of the game. the point of this article wasn`t to whine and complain; rather to illuminate the picture on the ground as opposed to the fantastic press releases we`re treated to every week.

hullo shakir

were it possible to do through the net, id kinda salute you...i have been trying to get my passport which has expired fixed since the last one week...inspite of my dads insistence that i give it to him to get in order, i refused....`sahee channels sae karoongee`...yetserday when the lecher manhoos aadmee behind the counter asked me to get the 25th thousand thing verifed (irrelevent things like my inter certificate...that my brothers exist..that i was born in pakistan..ALL of which had previously been proven) i didnt threaten to have his ass hauled but did the next bad thing..i dropped my passport off to my dad...within a days time i had a bright new spanking passport in my hands..and to think i need the passport to travel to a youth forum to REPRESENT pakistan..i almost cried of sheer frustration in the whole process..the men there just sat behind the desks and smoked and joked..it was as though we in the lines were just not there...i literally had to stop myself from screaming and throttling those men..can u imagine how it is for the man who cannot afford the fees or doesnt have the connections? im not surprised people turn to terrorism in the process...note that you will not have a connected man killing people..it will always be someone who has no money, no connections...the system just sukks so bad

good luck in whatever you do shakir

best,

anNy

…shakir, bureaucracy and red tape and that too in a third-world country would be enough to drive anyone insane….but it must feel great to accomplish smt under these circumstances….keep it up…we need more ppl like you here…

Reply #: 36 shakir69

[recently when dr. eqbal ahmed passed away there was more of a response to the man and his writings abroad than in Pakistan. The average Pakistani doesnt even know who eqbal ahmad was.]

Eqbal Ahmad is as respected (and relavant) to an average Pakistani as his friend Naom Chomsky is to an average American. Chmosky is not even on the fringes of American political discourse, although he is well known abroad. I admire the average Pakistani for rejecting Eqbal Ahmad and his political ideology.

shakir69 #36 You are right about eqbal ahmed. I learnt of the house he lived in in Islamabad after he died: this was a house I had passed by many times without knowing it while he was living. On IT: What stops an IT outfit in Pakistan from competing for contracts in the global market place? They say the Indian IT industry grew because the government bureacrats did not understand the business and so (thankfully) could not figure out how to interfere. The same is true in Pakistan. While I dont thing the government can do much to build up this industry other staying out of the way (including getting out of the telecomm business but providing the necessary regulatory functions). The rest is up to people like you to make sure you make commitments you can meet, ensure repeat customers, and thus buildup a global reputation. Simply losing one contract (SBP) should mean nothing one way or another.

Sun shifts core Java unit from US to Bangalore



BANGALORE: Sun Microsystems, the global computing giant, has set the spotlight on its India engineering centre in Bangalore.

In a significant development, the $10-billion tech major has moved its Java tools and libraries division, a high-end engineering division which offers the technology platform to millions of Java developers across globe to build applications, from its Palo Alto technology centre to Bangalore.

Sun decided to shift the core work to Bangalore due to three key factors: to optimally use the engineering skill-sets available here, to beat the slowdown and to stay closer to the market. In India alone, over 1.6 lakh engineers are engaged in developing Java-based applications.

Leveraging the brand strength of India Inc. seems to be a new trend among the global tech companies. It may recalled that i2 Technologies has recently announced to relocate around 150 engineers from its US office to Bangalore.

One year back, Cisco, No. 1 networking company, moved a bunch of its engineers from its US office centre to Bangalore when it started its India development centre.

i2 The prime objectives of this development are to optimally utilise technology talents of the Indian engineers and reinforce the importance of the India engineering centre.

To steer the activity here, around six top notch engineers of Indian origin working in the same division in USA have opted to work at the Bangalore centre.

Speaking to The times of India, Dale E. Ferrario, director of product engineering, Java software in Sun Microsystems, said: ``The Java core tools and libraries are the ones which every programmer will depend on to build applications. It is a core piece of work that every application needs.``

Simply put, while Java tools are the compilers that help in packaging applications, libraries include three main areas: Java.io (input and output), Java.util (utilities) and Java.lang (language).

Out of its total workforce of around 400 engineers in the centre here, over 55 technocrats are engaged in defining and creating Java platform in areas like Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE), Java Standard Edition (J2SE) for desktops, Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) for mobile platform. The other developers doing work for Sun One, network storage, Solaris, Star Office eventually build applications on these platforms.

Sun India on J2ME

In a key development, Sun India engineering centre has engaged a dedicated team of 10 engineers to develop the J2ME platform, which will deliver the Java-based location-specific wireless technologies to the device makers. The team works in collaboration with developers based in Sun`s engineering centres in Sweden and Israel.

According to Dale Ferrario, director of product engineering (Java Software), the shipment of J2ME-enabled handsets is just 18 months away. The market for these products is estimated to touch $1.6 billion by 2006.

The competing standards in this space include IBM`s Brew and Microsoft`s Stinger

taahmad - salam was not the only one in pakistan. recently when dr. eqbal ahmed passed away there was more of a response to the man and his writings abroad than in Pakistan. The average Pakistani doesnt even know who eqbal ahmad was. quite sad. my problem isnt with the ``ghar ki mrghi daal barabar`` issue, it`s with the fact that so much lip service is paid to ``IT`` like it`s some sort of magic mantra, when there are few real changes on the ground.

shakir #69 A bit off the subject, but yesterday some private letters in the 1950`s between Neils Bohr and Heisenberg (Hitler`s head of the Nazi atomic bomb project) were made public for the first time. In one of these, our own (although disowned by the mullahs) Abdus Salam is mentioned (in letter from Heisenber to Bohr): ``By the way, I have since had yet a special pleasure: the relative parity of the Sigma and Lambda particles, about which I disagreed with Salam and others in Aix en Provence and Brussels, has in the meantime been measured in California, and it turns out to be odd, just as it came out in Dürr’s and my calculations. Thus, we now begin to understand the complicated spectrum of elementary particles.``

So, clearly Salam was very much among the leading scientists of the world even back in the 1950`s (even though his name is mentioned here only in disagreement). The manner in which he was treated in Pakistan was shameful. It is time we stopped treating ``ghar ki murghi, dal barabar`` and gave talent - in IT or basic sciences or anything else - the respect it deserves.

Ref Layman #: 33

[shankar #31:

``{{Shankar is a South Indian all right. He may have lived in Bombay but is a Tamilian.}}

``Actually I`m a Saraswat Brahmin. My mother-tongue is konkani. It is such a small community that even most Indians arent aware of our existence:)``

Oops! Apologies Shankar, Romair.]

No need to apologize. From his self-hatred, you diagnosed him to be a TamBrahm.

shankar #31:

``{{Shankar is a South Indian all right. He may have lived in Bombay but is a Tamilian.}}

``Actually I`m a Saraswat Brahmin. My mother-tongue is konkani. It is such a small community that even most Indians arent aware of our existence:)``

Oops! Apologies Shankar, Romair.

The community is not that small. I have come across a few amchigeles myself :-)

ref ali1 - ali my company never bid for the SBP contract. i was merely using it to highlight how the government doesnt seem to have much confidence in the pakistani software sector. confidence is measured in dollars not press releases.

shakir

Layman,

{{Shankar is a South Indian all right. He may have lived in Bombay but is a Tamilian.}}

Actually I`m a Saraswat Brahmin. My mother-tongue is konkani. It is such a small community that even most Indians arent aware of our existence:)

Acc to my grandparents, our ancestors migrated from Kashmir to the Konkan area--mainly around Mangalore & Goa. Then, in order to escape conversions by the Portugese, they fled to Bombay & a few to Bangalore. My great-grandparents onwards were all Bombayites. Our ancestral temples are in Kashmir & Goa.

Some well known ``aamchis`` (thats what we call our folks) are Shyam Benegal, Guru Dutt, Prakash Padukone & Girish Karnad...

{{On Sindhis in Bombay, anyone remember products with the tag ``Made by USA``? These did well till someone discovered that USA stood for Ulhasnagar Sindhi Association!}}

Yes, that was famous in Bombay:) Most Sindhi refugees from Pakistan settled in Ulhasnagar & Kalyan (suburbs of Bombay). Hey..talk about Sindhi ingenuity..gotta hand it to them.. they can sell a freezer to an Eskimo:)

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The author`s complaint is not peculiar to Pakistan. In India, Maruti Udyog uses Oracle`s ERP system and Bajaj uses SAP. Goes to show how much reliance all these guys place on Indian software engineers. There hasn`t been any software package to come out of India. It is all code coolies working for daily wages in far away places and congregating in desi ghettoes like NJ or Sunnyvale, CA.

As a friend in the business put it, ``A hundred years ago, I would have been sitting on my haunches smoking a beedi in some village trying to recruit laborers to go to Malaya for tapping rubber trees, to Fiji for cutting sugarcane or to Ceylon for plucking tea leaves. Today I sit in an airconditioned ffice and recruit people to go to Canada, USA, UK, Germany or Australia. The difference is in degree not in substance.``

Romair,

Shankar is a South Indian all right. He may have lived in Bombay but is a Tamilian.

On Sindhis in Bombay, anyone remember products with the tag ``Made by USA``? These did well till someone discovered that USA stood for Ulhasnagar Sindhi Association!

Re Rdesikan

{{and what are the leaders of Mckinsey, United, or the Hartford companies. Chopped liver or Indians?}}

considering their immigrant status and the small % of the US population they make-up, Indians have no match for corporate leadership success...in McKinsey, aside from the CEO, a disproportionate number of other Partners are Indian...these are not entry-level drones, but senior Partners of the firm...the place is full of Jews and Indians...although to a lesser extent, this is true for every leading management consulting firm and investment bank...

and i need not rattle off a list of indian leaders in industry...

You lost a bid at SBP... big deal.

Next time, know the decision maker in advance and send him a suitcase of Jinnah`s pictures... the ones printed on the Rs. 1000 bills, and you`ll be ok.

shankar #16: I cannot give you the answer to the joke. All this time, I thought you were from South India. I am not sure where the dividing line is between North, South and Central India, but I assume it cannot be higher than Hyderabad. Which would make you a non-South Indian. In which case, it becomes politically incorrect to make South Indian jokes. So I take back my somewhat racist attempts at describing the faults and virtues of South Indians. I hope I didn`t offend anyone.

Jinnah and Gandhi were both from Gujrat, I believe. Jinnah from Bombay. There is a city named Gujrat in Pakistan, also; not a province. It is between Pindi and Jehlum. There are many Pakistanis who have migrated from Bombay. Their families have been very successful in Pakistan. Memons dominate the business circles in Karachi.

Your comments about Indian Sindhis is interesting. In Pakistan, you will hear exactly the opposite about Pakistani Sindhis. Rural Sind is the most backward part of Pakistan. Completely feudal, with extremely low literacy rates. Unfortunately, it only produces potential Prime Ministers and MNAs. Due to this everyday rural Sindhis, I am afraid, haven`t had chances to move ahead in any field. Added to this is the fact, that they face competition from urban Sindhis. Urban Sindhis (Muhajirs), by a huge margin, are the most educated, progressive and wealthy group in Pakistan. They have also been very successful at the officer level in the beaurecracy and military. So rural Sindhis are completely out of the loop. Due to this, there exists a great deal of animosity between urban Sindhis and rural Sindhis. Two ethnic minorities, one at the top of the ladder, the other at the bottom.

I am assisting a friend with a story on Chowk. Chapter 3 introduces a shipping tycoon from Bombay.

Shakir:

An entrepreneur faces different problems depending upon the part of the world he lives in. And these different parts of the world also provide competitive advantages. Silicon valley has better infrastructure and access to talent and capital but many of the emerging IT economies have cost advantages that are difficult to come by in the developed world.

I agree with your assessment that the government can do jack about ushering in a IT `revolution`. Unlike most I am no fan of the science and technology minister. His micromanagement has already saddled Pakistan with a bunch of white elephants in the form of IT universities and various regulatory bodies. I have a feeling that pretty soon the requirement for running for parliament in Pakistan would not be a mere BA but a BCS(Bachelor of computer science)!! Even some of the peons in the government departments proudly display this qualification..............

India has done relatively better than other countries in the IT sphere because unlike Pakistan and others it has indigenous uses for IT resources developed within the country. It has also coped well with the brain drain that has afflicted the industry. In Pakistan the best and brightest have left not only the engineering but also the beauracratic and junior military cadres. Its the brave few like you that have ventured back. Pakistani software houses are on a decline unmatched across the border. Cressoft once the premier software house has pretty much gone under. Same thing with Netsol. It went from 4 floors in a swanky building to just one in a matter of weeks. But then these are trying times.

Shankar:

Sikhs and Sindhis are the two groups amongst Indians guaranteed to have a good time with. The rest are too busy counting their pennies :)

The ambitious immigrant needs communities because unlike the high-flying natives he or she cannot draw upon networks from prep schools and colleges.

later

-sac

Re Romair

The General of Generalizations goes off again.

``The ideal South Asian CEO would have a South Indian mind, a Sikh sense of humor, Afghani looks and Pakistani leadership skills (haven`t met enough Indians in IT from other parts of India to form any opinion about them yet).``

What Pakistani leadership skills, sir, are you inferring? Rather than get into the usual body count of leadership, I am going to refute both. Leadership is not a regional or ethnic thing. It is personal and individual-oriented. Just because you haven`t met in your travail a single southie with the charisma doesn`t mean they all are alike. OK, there is one dynamic CEO who`s paki, but he`s not in IT and you guys will ignore him--Fred Hassan of Pharmacia. Other than that, it`s a mixed bag, right? and what are the leaders of Mckinsey, United, or the Hartford companies. Chopped liver or Indians?

``Why shouldn`t South Indians play sports?``

Another gross generalization. Rather, the question is why don`t most subcontinentals play sports? The answer is poverty and the need to find a job. Sports is a luxury in most cases. But here are a few counterpoints:

Tennis: Amritraj brothers, Bhupathi. Weightlifting: Malleswari, the only person from the blasted subcontinent who won a goddam medal in the last olympics.

Cricket: at least a third of the current Indian team

Track and Field: the whole subcontinent stinks here

Archery and shooting: Oh no, not the Ak-47 shoot people up type, but the sport versions: the whole subcontinent stinks

Re: Shankar

``...After a few years, she refused to go to any of their functions. So, by & large, we socialise primarily with Americans...``

Capitulating to your better half is one of the cardinal rules for happiness in life.

``...Sindhis & Gujjus have colonised the whole world & made millions...``

I have run into Sindhi/Gujju traders in East Africa (where they practically run the economy), and in (of all places) US Virgin Islands. I was stunned to see the entire market for duty free shopping for passenger cruiseliners taken over by Sindhis. One Sindhi businessman told me how he had relocated from Karachi, Bombay, Nigeria to US VI (all in a lifetime)! It was amazing. The crew for cruiseliners were also mostly S. Asian.

Do you really know where the thugs & terrorists are?--Are you sure you are not under a Satanic spell?---Are you really putting your use of english to free your colonised minds,or--?Is your soul really yours,or--?---when was the last time you checked?

______________________________________________

Coca-Karma: The Very Secret Battle of Bob Kolody vs. Coca-Cola (KO)

Prologue: April 18, 2001

When the shareholders of Coca-Cola filed into the Playhouse Theatre in Wilmington, Delaware on the morning of April 18 for their annual meeting, you can bet that the last name they had on their minds was that of Bob Kolody. What with the recent resignation of President and COO Jack Stahl, Chairman Doug Daft’s failed attempt to buy Quaker Oats, and the Atlanta court ruling that awarded close to $200 million dollars in damages to Johnny Cochran’s racial discrimination suit, they had enough names to worry about. Not to mention the fact that their stock was selling for $45, thirty percent off the 52 week high of $64. Right about where it was 5 years ago.

But if some of those shareholders had known the story that you are about to read, they would have had good reason to question Coca-Cola Chairman Doug Daft about Bob Kolody. They would have been fascinated to know that for the past four years Coke has employed one of the country’s top intellectual property lawyers to defend a case that it has never identified in its annual SEC filings. What’s more, the $4 billion lawsuit has gone totally unreported by a national media that has, of late, reveled in the prospect of major U.S. corporations involved in trials that could cost hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.

Over the next ten installments of an exclusive Special Report, GNN breaks wide open one of the most intriguing cases in corporate legal history. The story begins with a major advertising agency stealing an independent consultant`s story-boards and culminates with allegations that Coke filed fraudulent copyright applications and enacted a high-level form of espionage against their legal opponent. What`s more, the federal judge in the case has been accused of having links to organized crime. Tantalizing? You bet. And we’re only getting started…

Coca-Karma: The Very Secret Battle of Bob Kolody vs. Coca-Cola

Introduction: Short Synopsis

Part One: Classic Coke, Classic Cars

Part Two: The Plot Thickens

Part Three: David and Goliath

Part Four: Alice in Wonderland

Part Five: The Beginning of the End

Part Six: Enter Skolnick...

Part Seven: The Bravest Lawyer (I)

Part Eight: The Bravest Lawyer (II)

Part Nine: Battle Scars

Part Ten: Final Jeopardy

Epilogue: The Fire This Time

Updates

Breaking News: August 2, 2001

Update: December 22, 2001

Send this Page | About GNN | Subscribe

FOR COMPLETE ACCESS:www.guerillanews.com/cocakarma

Romair #12 you write ``South Indian mind, a Sikh sense of humor, Afghani looks and Pakistani leadership skills ``

I assume you mean:

- a South Indian mind: like that of Jay Thakeray;

- a Sikh sense of humor: like that of the Vancouver Sikhs who blew up an Air-India flight a few years ago;

- Afghani looks: like that of Mullah Omar; and

- Pakistani leadership skills: like that of Nawaz Sharif, Benazir, Zia, ``Taegoor`` Niazi...

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

Romair,

Being a South Indian, I enjoyed your complimentary remarks, though I think it is too much of a generalisation. Still, among the top Indian IT companies, Wipro, Infosys, Satyam are all South based and run by South Indians (most of Premji`s staff is South Indian even though he is not), so maybe you have hit upon something ;-)

Romair,

{{Why shouldn`t South Indians play sports?}}

umm...lemme guess...their brains use up most of the calories, so none remain for the body. But I`m sure you got a funnier answer.

BTW, have you dealt with any Bombayites? Bombay is the most Westernised city in India. In my experience, Bombayites adapt to the US culture better than most Indians. Ahem..we have the best qualities of both, the North & South. In a sense, we are just like NYorkers--we curse Bombay constantly, but just cannot live in any other part of India, other than Bombay:)

90% of the Indian docs in my town are from the South. Very intelligent, with highly successful practices. They`ve even begun to buy out American doc`s practices! Amazing, cos they cant speak English to save their lives! They will use their entire vacations to go to India--EVERY year!

Their wives, though very sweet, are extremely clannish. They wont socialise with any Americans; primarily because they have an inferiority complex. Their children, who are by now in colleges are usually extremely bright & get into some of the premier Ivy league schools. I`m beginning to see a lot of clashes between the 2 generations.

My wife, also a Bombayite, came to the US in her early teens. She cant STAND going to Indian parties. These ladies will start a conversation with her--& in mid-sentence, revert to their S.Indian language & start babbling amongst themselves. She`s totally ignored & feels like she`s a fly on the wall. After a few years, she refused to go to any of their functions. So, by & large, we socialise primarily with Americans. Most of my classmates are in Chicago--boy, if we want to have a good time with Indians, we fly down to the windy city.

The Indians who have the BEST business acumen, by far, are Sindhis & Gujeratis. Marwaris are superb too, but very few of them go abroad. Sindhis & Gujjus have colonised the whole world & made millions. I have a soft spot for Sindhis, because most of my classmates are Sindhis. Their parents left Pakistan with just the clothes on their backs. In just one generation, their per capita income is probably several times that of an average Indian. Even in the US, my Sindhi classmates started investing their meager Intern`s salary in the stock market. Today they are multi-millionaires many times over--even when the market is down.

Bottom line..if you want a good partner AND want advice in getting a date---try a Bombayite.....esp a Sindhi..but make sure you keep youre hands on youre wallet all the time:))

There are fundementally two problems:

(a)Shakir has identified one - why go outside when you have home grwon talent. There is a need to build up expertise. Without that you can shout from the roof tops and didly happens. People say that govt should be out of the loop. SUre it should, but the real help comes in developing the expertise in the country - and that comes by providing project and hence funds for developing this expertise.

(b) there is a telling article in the frontierport by Yattu and I quote

``We have neither the institutions, nor the teachers, nor the students available, neither in number nor in quality. So what kind of IT professionals would we produce? Competing with India just for the sake of competition is plain absurdity.

Perhaps our policy makers are not aware of the fact that India is one of the few countries outside the West and America that has knowledge-based industries.

The same is true about China.

They need IT for inside much more than outside. ``

Note the last line. Now that is a telling line in the article. It is asociated with point one. You have to develop it in house - generate and create expertise then you will have the exports.

Else it is like putting thecart before the horse.

Reply Romair

Romair, that`s as good an argument for a South Asian confederation as I have ever heard.

Ham thaiyaar hain. We have Chidambaram poised and ready for deployment.

Zafar

PS I will warn you that I will work against appointment of Bangladeshi to deal with culture since I loathe Robindra Shongeet. Apart from that, I can see your CEO`s ``star quality``, you have a free hand as far as I`m concerned.

``Yet as entrepreneurs we are expected to compete with international companies with no electricity, no phone lines, and bad infrastructure. This is exactly like expecting the Taliban to win against the might of the American war machine``

Are you implying that the Taliban should not be expected to win against the American war machine ? Do you have no faith brother ? Have faith brother. Rely on Allah and don`t think so much about business and making money because your reward lies in the hereafter.
The trouble is nobody gives the Taliban time to accomplish anything. Wars take years atleast- give the Taliban some time and they will win the war and turn Afghanistan (and then Pakistan) into 6th century Muslim empire ! golden age of Islam :) Insha allah :)

Shankar #5: I hope ROTFL means Rolling on the Floor Laughing, and not something abusive.

I have learnt my lessons through hard experience. My partner/accountant in my tiny consulting business is a South Indian. I never make any of the major decisions, regardless of how much he asks me to. South Indians have an uncanny ability to filter out the static and logically point out the core of a problem. This is why people cannot figure out how so many South Indians can run companies, when many of them can barely speak two words with confidence. Their talent lies in decision making based on logical analyses.

The reason for this is either their diet, or their genes. My own theory is that they are related to Vulcans. If you look at their ears, they are bit pointier than most. Based on this, my experience has been that Pakistanis and Indians, on average, individually are on the same plane as far as IT is concerned (I don`t think Indians are any better than Pakistanis; although many people think so). However, South Indians are at a different plane from both Pakistanis and non-South Indians.

At the same time, a lot of South Indians don`t seem to have very good execution skills. I once interviewed with the CEO of a small US consulting company run by a South Indian. He spent two hours trying to explain exactly what he was doing. At the end, he was so tongue tied and his speech so confused, that I came out of his office with a headache. Yet every project the guy put his company into was a success. It was amazing. The contract was a few months long. He made all the decisions for the projects, and I did all the talking. It worked out quite well.

Similarly with my partner, he decides which projects we will take, and which ones we will reject. I then go and actually try to get the contract. He decides for both of us which car to buy, and I go talk to the salesman. If it was vice-versa, we would both end up buying the wrong cars and paying a couple of thousands dollars too much for them.

The ideal South Asian CEO would have a South Indian mind, a Sikh sense of humor, Afghani looks and Pakistani leadership skills (haven`t met enough Indians in IT from other parts of India to form any opinion about them yet).

Since you seem to be in a mood for humor, answer the following:

Why shouldn`t South Indians play sports?

One Indian thinks I.T. is one more exclusivity of the priviliged class with land money & therefore education to continued reign on the 80% disenfranchised for whom Gandhi bled!

It`s the old Brahminical instinct. Colonise knowledge, build four walls around it, and use it to your advantage. The Manusmriti, the Vedic Hindu code of conduct, says that if a Dalit overhears a shloka or any part of a sacred text, he must have molten lead poured into his ear. It isn`t a coincidence that while India is poised to take her place at the forefront of the Information Revolution, millions of her citizens are illiterate. (It would be interesting, as an exercise, to find out how many `experts`—scholars, professionals, consultants—in India are actually Brahmins or from the upper castes.)``

Which famous acclaimed award winning Indian said this in the 21St Century ?

With more than 200000 largest influx of Code coolies from India ,there is a dramatic difference in immigrants of 60,70,& 80s who are stable citizen by now & never knew alphabet soup of visas J-H1b- L- Fiance visa what not .But never before 200.000 came in 2-3 years period of time.

The immigration game just changed & rule is EASY COME EASY GOES ...or Last one in First one to Go ...or somthing like that

Posted at 10:20 p.m. PST Saturday, Feb. 2, 2002

Back to India for tech workerRecession steals his

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

job and American lifestyle

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

BY JENNIFER BJORHUS

Mercury News

MUMBAI, India -- The rice maker, blender and bread maker went to charity.

The dining room table, the television and the leather couch they had carefully picked out together, they sold. Niranjan and Sandhya could not afford to get sentimental.

Still, Sandhya had forbidden her husband the engineer from selling the glass-encased clock her co-workers back in India had given her when she went away. It held the spot of honor on the entertainment center in their Fremont apartment, a piece of home marking the days of their new life.

``I promised her a lot. I said jobs are plentiful,`` the 29-year-old Niranjan says.

Four months after getting a pink slip from his San Jose employer, Niranjan`s big dream of starting his own software company had come to this: a one-way ticket back to India, the day before Christmas.

With tech`s fortunes slumping, laid-off programmers like Niranjan have been streaming back to India. ``The Global Indian`s in Reverse Exodus,`` heralds a New Year`s Day paper in New Delhi. There`s even a Web site to help with the re-entry (www.return2India.com).

No one knows how many of the estimated 250,000 Indians working in the United States on special H-1B visas have headed home since the technology bubble burst and recession set in. H-1B visas allow foreigners to stay in the United States for six years as long as they`re employed by a sponsor company. With no job, it`s either find a new sponsor or leave.

The U.S. government doesn`t track H-1B exits. H.H.L. Viswanathan, India`s consul general in San Francisco, guesses that at least 2,000 H-1B visa workers from the Bay Area have headed home in the past year. Raj Desai, president of the Indus Entrepreneur, figures it`s more like tens of thousands.

The reverse exodus illustrates the undertow of economic globalization -- people caught in the storm, as globalization-watcher William Greider puts it, of an economic revolution that`s rewriting psychological boundaries and norms of business.

The story of Sandhya and Niranjan -- they asked not to be identified further -- is about this storm. It`s a tale of opportunity and bottom-line shakeouts, of excitement and pain, of two homes and the upheaval in between.

It`s also about a fairly new concept for people like Niranjan: no job security like back home.

Uncertainty and fear

Niranjan was highly paid, even by U.S. standards, reflecting globalization`s premium on certain skills. Still, not unlike migrant laborers in orchards and kitchens, this elite group lives with the uncertainty and fear that for many go hand in hand with globalization.

``It puts them right into the same pot as the factory worker in Michigan,`` says Antonia Juhasz at the International Forum on Globalization in San Francisco. ``Companies have protection. The only way workers can protect themselves is if the company has long-term roots in the community, or they have unions and contractual agreements.``

Others focus on what they see as a silver lining in the storm cloud.

``We`re sort of seeing a shift from `brain drain` to `brain circulation,` `` says AnnaLee Saxenian, a professor at the University of California-Berkeley and expert on transnational communities.

To her, Niranjan and Sandhya are part of an accelerating back-and-forth of Chinese and Indian emigres between the United States and their homelands. Such an exchange will benefit both economies in the long run, she argues.

What`s unique about India`s overseas tech workers, Saxenian notes, is that there`s largely two streams. Less-experienced code-writers may have been exploited by so-called body-shoppers who illegally underpay workers or intimidate them, for instance, by holding passports.

The other stream frequently is the cream of India`s best schools. Many quickly became part of the Silicon Valley elite, enjoying material comforts they could only dream of at home, and even beyond the reach of most Americans.

``They`re becoming one of the most powerful groups in the global economy right now in terms of access to capital, ability to travel and political influence,`` Saxenian says.

Beyond stereotypes

Niranjan is proud to be an ``engineer ambassador`` for his homeland, showing people an India beyond the stereotype, as he puts it, ``of snake charmers and roaming elephants.`` Indian culture taught him the concept of ``Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam,`` he says: ``The world is one family.``

The story of Niranjan and Sandhya`s American odyssey began in Bangalore in 1998.

A lush tropical city in southern India with fiery hot cuisine and frequent rain showers, Bangalore is the heart of India`s burgeoning tech industry. India`s Silicon Valley, it`s called.

Niranjan was just 25 then, an adventurous young engineer writing code for a large German company. He earned good money by Indian standards -- about $4,300 a year. The company had even sent him for a year to Germany, where he tasted the wealth outside his poor country.

By 1998, the Y2K and Internet business was heating up. Recruiters were scouring India for engineers. Body-shoppers would cold-call Niranjan at his office, promising interviews in Singapore or the United States.

It was a world Niranjan knew little about. He did not come from a wealthy family -- his mother was a science teacher, his father taught Hindi and art in a quiet town just outside Kolhapur, an industrial city of 700,000 in the tobacco and sugar cane fields of southwestern India.

His most direct exposure to U.S. culture were the hippies who hung out in Kolhapur. He knew the United States as a superpower with impressive scientific achievements. He had heard the success stories of Indians who had gone to the United States and become doctors.

Niranjan ignored the recruiters in Bangalore. But when he saw an ad for a Silicon Valley telecommunications start-up, he went for an interview. The work sounded interesting, the pay princely: $57,000 a year.

Four months later, with his H-1B visa, Niranjan was off to America. Everyone, it seemed, was leaving.

``It was really a mass exodus,`` he recalls. ``We were having parties and everything. Everybody was happy.``

May 9, 1998. It was raining when Niranjan stepped off the plane in San Francisco.

Everyone can afford cars, he remembers thinking. He was surprised to see so many Indians.

Niranjan dove into his new life with gusto. He went to work for a Newark start-up writing code to route telephone calls. He loved flying down the freeway in the new Volkswagen Passat he bought -- his first car. He also took up a different kind of flying -- paragliding. On weekends, he soared like a bird over the hills off Highway 1.

Work was good at first. His green card, which would allow him to stay in the United States without a company sponsor, was being processed. Still, much of the job was routine maintenance -- not what he had expected. ``Donkey work,`` he called it.

Lucrative offer

In December 2000, a San Jose optical-networking start-up offered him more creative work at a far bigger salary, with stock options. Niranjan grabbed it, even though the job-hopping would set him back in getting his green card. The work meant that much to him, he says.

It was a classic valley tale -- right down to the job-hopping.

But for all his embrace of ultra-modernity, Niranjan has one foot planted squarely in tradition. Back home, his parents were arranging his marriage.

A month after switching jobs, Niranjan flew back to India to meet a young woman he had never before seen. Grabbing his childhood friend Umesh for moral support, he and the family trooped over to her house for tea. There was Sandhya, a pretty young woman with thick cropped hair in a pink sari, her father, who helped manage a mining company, and her mother.

Niranjan was nervous -- but he immediately liked Sandhya`s independence and intelligence. She had a degree in computer science and did programming for a firm in Kolhapur. He didn`t want a traditional homemaker.

``She also thinks the modern way,`` Niranjan says.

Two days later he asked Sandhya to dinner -- and to marry him. They walked home that night, holding hands for the first time.

Six months later they married. After a quick honeymoon in Switzerland, they flew to California and moved into their new Fremont apartment to live out their dream.

A self-described tomboy, Sandhya loved the California outdoors. The couple filled weekends with ski trips, hiking and ice skating. They loaded up on stuff from the mall.

Still, Sandhya was homesick. She put statues of Ganesh, the elephant-headed Hindu god of wisdom and good fortune, around the apartment. The glass clock was a prominent reminder of home.

Because Niranjan didn`t yet have a green card, the law said Sandhya couldn`t get a job. So, with Niranjan`s long hours, she found herself alone much of time.

Then, last August, it happened: Niranjan`s company was struggling. After buying another firm the company was over-staffed. It cut about 100 software developers.

Niranjan remembers how his group forced smiles as they trooped into a room to collect their termination letters. He called Sandhya. Don`t worry, she said, you`ll get another job.

But without another company to sponsor him, Niranjan wasn`t even sure he was in the country legally. He was scared. He kept trying to find work, but doors closed, he said, when the issue of his visa came up. A lawyer told him he could stay a maximum of six months without another sponsor. Particularly frustrating, he said, was seeing his old co-workers at his first job get their green cards.

Niranjan was angry. Not at Silicon Valley or his company`s managers, but at the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service for what he saw as the indiscriminate system of distributing green cards. Many employers won`t hire people on H-1B visas, for legal and political reasons.

``It`s like we`re migrant labor,`` Niranjan says. ``I really feel very bad. It`s not my decision to go back. It`s something that was forced on me. I have contributed so much to the economy and everything.``

Layoffs may be routine in the United States but they`re a new phenomenon in India with its quasi-socialist history. Companies historically retain employees even in tough times. There are no pink-slip parties.

``People hide here,`` said one 31-year-old engineer in Hyderabad who quit his job in Phoenix before what seemed like an inevitable layoff. ``It`s a prestige issue.``

The United States is the ultimate destination of any self-respecting software engineer, says R. Murugesh, chief executive officer of Assure Consulting Services, a recruiting firm in Bangalore. For many people, the U.S. job was a source of tremendous pride not just for the engineer but for the whole family.

``Everybody looks at the family with new awe and respect,`` says Shikha Bhatia, Assure`s associate editor.

She estimates Assure gets as many as four inquiries a day from people who have lost their jobs in the United States but who keep going to work without getting paid. Returning to India is a last resort.

``It`s seen as some kind of failure in a brave new world,`` Bhatia says. Adding insult to injury, computer engineers are even commanding less on India`s marriage market these days.

But in a sign that ``brain circulation`` isn`t just a catchphrase, Niranjan landed a job outside Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay) even before he and Sandhya moved back. He`s at a start-up -- he asked not to name it -- run by an Indo-American in Silicon Valley.

At $24,000, his annual pay in Mumbai is a fraction of what he was earning in California. Given the difference in cost of living, however, it puts them squarely in India`s upper-middle class.

The new year has Sandhya busy furnishing the two-bedroom apartment they found in a good neighborhood. High in a tower with a view of the hills and the rising sun, the apartment has polished white granite floors.

Tech doing OK

Despite the flood of returning engineers, those with solid experience at U.S. companies will find jobs, recruiters say. India`s young tech industry has largely weathered the recession better than expected.

With exports and foreign investment still a tiny part of its income, India is insulated from some of globalization`s storm this time. It may be able to dodge the global recession altogether, some economists say.

Kiran Karnik, president of Nasscom, India`s top technology association, describes his nation`s tech downturn as a ``speed breaker.``

For Niranjan, Sandhya and many others, it means starting over.

It`s not easy.

They had never planned on living in such a huge city. Mumbai`s filthy air gives Sandhya fevers. The tremendous crowds and traffic mean no quick weekend getaways like the ones they relished in California. Struggling to explain what was so special about the United States, Sandhya says it let free her adventurous spirit. And she misses their Fremont apartment near Lake Elizabeth, where they would stroll in the evening.

Niranjan is holding fast to the dream of his own software company. Resolute, he insists their story will have the happy ending they want.

When it came down to the wire in December, he didn`t sell everything. He put the computer, the VCR and the Passat into storage in San Jose.

There it all sits, waiting, along with Sandhya`s glass clock, marking the time until the couple returns to claim it.

``I`m going to come back,`` Niranjan says. ``See you in the Bay Area.``











© 2001 The Mercury News. The information you receive online from The Mercury News is protected by the copyright laws of the United States. The copyright laws prohibit any copying, redistributing, retransmitting, or repurposing of any copyright-protected material. Mercury News privacy policy

Posted at 10:20 p.m. PST Saturday, Feb. 2, 2002

Back to India for tech worker

Recession steals his job and American lifestyle

http://www0.mercurycenter.com/front/docs1/046478.htm

BY JENNIFER BJORHUS

Mercury News

MUMBAI, India -- The rice maker, blender and bread maker went to charity.

The dining room table, the television and the leather couch they had carefully picked out together, they sold. Niranjan and Sandhya could not afford to get sentimental.

Still, Sandhya had forbidden her husband the engineer from selling the glass-encased clock her co-workers back in India had given her when she went away. It held the spot of honor on the entertainment center in their Fremont apartment, a piece of home marking the days of their new life.

``I promised her a lot. I said jobs are plentiful,`` the 29-year-old Niranjan says.

Four months after getting a pink slip from his San Jose employer, Niranjan`s big dream of starting his own software company had come to this: a one-way ticket back to India, the day before Christmas.

With tech`s fortunes slumping, laid-off programmers like Niranjan have been streaming back to India. ``The Global Indian`s in Reverse Exodus,`` heralds a New Year`s Day paper in New Delhi. There`s even a Web site to help with the re-entry (www.return2India.com).

No one knows how many of the estimated 250,000 Indians working in the United States on special H-1B visas have headed home since the technology bubble burst and recession set in. H-1B visas allow foreigners to stay in the United States for six years as long as they`re employed by a sponsor company. With no job, it`s either find a new sponsor or leave.

The U.S. government doesn`t track H-1B exits. H.H.L. Viswanathan, India`s consul general in San Francisco, guesses that at least 2,000 H-1B visa workers from the Bay Area have headed home in the past year. Raj Desai, president of the Indus Entrepreneur, figures it`s more like tens of thousands.

The reverse exodus illustrates the undertow of economic globalization -- people caught in the storm, as globalization-watcher William Greider puts it, of an economic revolution that`s rewriting psychological boundaries and norms of business.

The story of Sandhya and Niranjan -- they asked not to be identified further -- is about this storm. It`s a tale of opportunity and bottom-line shakeouts, of excitement and pain, of two homes and the upheaval in between.

It`s also about a fairly new concept for people like Niranjan: no job security like back home.

Uncertainty and fear

Niranjan was highly paid, even by U.S. standards, reflecting globalization`s premium on certain skills. Still, not unlike migrant laborers in orchards and kitchens, this elite group lives with the uncertainty and fear that for many go hand in hand with globalization.

``It puts them right into the same pot as the factory worker in Michigan,`` says Antonia Juhasz at the International Forum on Globalization in San Francisco. ``Companies have protection. The only way workers can protect themselves is if the company has long-term roots in the community, or they have unions and contractual agreements.``

Others focus on what they see as a silver lining in the storm cloud.

``We`re sort of seeing a shift from `brain drain` to `brain circulation,` `` says AnnaLee Saxenian, a professor at the University of California-Berkeley and expert on transnational communities.

To her, Niranjan and Sandhya are part of an accelerating back-and-forth of Chinese and Indian emigres between the United States and their homelands. Such an exchange will benefit both economies in the long run, she argues.

What`s unique about India`s overseas tech workers, Saxenian notes, is that there`s largely two streams. Less-experienced code-writers may have been exploited by so-called body-shoppers who illegally underpay workers or intimidate them, for instance, by holding passports.

The other stream frequently is the cream of India`s best schools. Many quickly became part of the Silicon Valley elite, enjoying material comforts they could only dream of at home, and even beyond the reach of most Americans.

``They`re becoming one of the most powerful groups in the global economy right now in terms of access to capital, ability to travel and political influence,`` Saxenian says.

Beyond stereotypes

Niranjan is proud to be an ``engineer ambassador`` for his homeland, showing people an India beyond the stereotype, as he puts it, ``of snake charmers and roaming elephants.`` Indian culture taught him the concept of ``Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam,`` he says: ``The world is one family.``

The story of Niranjan and Sandhya`s American odyssey began in Bangalore in 1998.

A lush tropical city in southern India with fiery hot cuisine and frequent rain showers, Bangalore is the heart of India`s burgeoning tech industry. India`s Silicon Valley, it`s called.

Niranjan was just 25 then, an adventurous young engineer writing code for a large German company. He earned good money by Indian standards -- about $4,300 a year. The company had even sent him for a year to Germany, where he tasted the wealth outside his poor country.

By 1998, the Y2K and Internet business was heating up. Recruiters were scouring India for engineers. Body-shoppers would cold-call Niranjan at his office, promising interviews in Singapore or the United States.

It was a world Niranjan knew little about. He did not come from a wealthy family -- his mother was a science teacher, his father taught Hindi and art in a quiet town just outside Kolhapur, an industrial city of 700,000 in the tobacco and sugar cane fields of southwestern India.

His most direct exposure to U.S. culture were the hippies who hung out in Kolhapur. He knew the United States as a superpower with impressive scientific achievements. He had heard the success stories of Indians who had gone to the United States and become doctors.

Niranjan ignored the recruiters in Bangalore. But when he saw an ad for a Silicon Valley telecommunications start-up, he went for an interview. The work sounded interesting, the pay princely: $57,000 a year.

Four months later, with his H-1B visa, Niranjan was off to America. Everyone, it seemed, was leaving.

``It was really a mass exodus,`` he recalls. ``We were having parties and everything. Everybody was happy.``

May 9, 1998. It was raining when Niranjan stepped off the plane in San Francisco.

Everyone can afford cars, he remembers thinking. He was surprised to see so many Indians.

Niranjan dove into his new life with gusto. He went to work for a Newark start-up writing code to route telephone calls. He loved flying down the freeway in the new Volkswagen Passat he bought -- his first car. He also took up a different kind of flying -- paragliding. On weekends, he soared like a bird over the hills off Highway 1.

Work was good at first. His green card, which would allow him to stay in the United States without a company sponsor, was being processed. Still, much of the job was routine maintenance -- not what he had expected. ``Donkey work,`` he called it.

Lucrative offer

In December 2000, a San Jose optical-networking start-up offered him more creative work at a far bigger salary, with stock options. Niranjan grabbed it, even though the job-hopping would set him back in getting his green card. The work meant that much to him, he says.

It was a classic valley tale -- right down to the job-hopping.

But for all his embrace of ultra-modernity, Niranjan has one foot planted squarely in tradition. Back home, his parents were arranging his marriage.

A month after switching jobs, Niranjan flew back to India to meet a young woman he had never before seen. Grabbing his childhood friend Umesh for moral support, he and the family trooped over to her house for tea. There was Sandhya, a pretty young woman with thick cropped hair in a pink sari, her father, who helped manage a mining company, and her mother.

Niranjan was nervous -- but he immediately liked Sandhya`s independence and intelligence. She had a degree in computer science and did programming for a firm in Kolhapur. He didn`t want a traditional homemaker.

``She also thinks the modern way,`` Niranjan says.

Two days later he asked Sandhya to dinner -- and to marry him. They walked home that night, holding hands for the first time.

Six months later they married. After a quick honeymoon in Switzerland, they flew to California and moved into their new Fremont apartment to live out their dream.

A self-described tomboy, Sandhya loved the California outdoors. The couple filled weekends with ski trips, hiking and ice skating. They loaded up on stuff from the mall.

Still, Sandhya was homesick. She put statues of Ganesh, the elephant-headed Hindu god of wisdom and good fortune, around the apartment. The glass clock was a prominent reminder of home.

Because Niranjan didn`t yet have a green card, the law said Sandhya couldn`t get a job. So, with Niranjan`s long hours, she found herself alone much of time.

Then, last August, it happened: Niranjan`s company was struggling. After buying another firm the company was over-staffed. It cut about 100 software developers.

Niranjan remembers how his group forced smiles as they trooped into a room to collect their termination letters. He called Sandhya. Don`t worry, she said, you`ll get another job.

But without another company to sponsor him, Niranjan wasn`t even sure he was in the country legally. He was scared. He kept trying to find work, but doors closed, he said, when the issue of his visa came up. A lawyer told him he could stay a maximum of six months without another sponsor. Particularly frustrating, he said, was seeing his old co-workers at his first job get their green cards.

Niranjan was angry. Not at Silicon Valley or his company`s managers, but at the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service for what he saw as the indiscriminate system of distributing green cards. Many employers won`t hire people on H-1B visas, for legal and political reasons.

``It`s like we`re migrant labor,`` Niranjan says. ``I really feel very bad. It`s not my decision to go back. It`s something that was forced on me. I have contributed so much to the economy and everything.``

Layoffs may be routine in the United States but they`re a new phenomenon in India with its quasi-socialist history. Companies historically retain employees even in tough times. There are no pink-slip parties.

``People hide here,`` said one 31-year-old engineer in Hyderabad who quit his job in Phoenix before what seemed like an inevitable layoff. ``It`s a prestige issue.``

The United States is the ultimate destination of any self-respecting software engineer, says R. Murugesh, chief executive officer of Assure Consulting Services, a recruiting firm in Bangalore. For many people, the U.S. job was a source of tremendous pride not just for the engineer but for the whole family.

``Everybody looks at the family with new awe and respect,`` says Shikha Bhatia, Assure`s associate editor.

She estimates Assure gets as many as four inquiries a day from people who have lost their jobs in the United States but who keep going to work without getting paid. Returning to India is a last resort.

``It`s seen as some kind of failure in a brave new world,`` Bhatia says. Adding insult to injury, computer engineers are even commanding less on India`s marriage market these days.

But in a sign that ``brain circulation`` isn`t just a catchphrase, Niranjan landed a job outside Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay) even before he and Sandhya moved back. He`s at a start-up -- he asked not to name it -- run by an Indo-American in Silicon Valley.

At $24,000, his annual pay in Mumbai is a fraction of what he was earning in California. Given the difference in cost of living, however, it puts them squarely in India`s upper-middle class.

The new year has Sandhya busy furnishing the two-bedroom apartment they found in a good neighborhood. High in a tower with a view of the hills and the rising sun, the apartment has polished white granite floors.

Tech doing OK

Despite the flood of returning engineers, those with solid experience at U.S. companies will find jobs, recruiters say. India`s young tech industry has largely weathered the recession better than expected.

With exports and foreign investment still a tiny part of its income, India is insulated from some of globalization`s storm this time. It may be able to dodge the global recession altogether, some economists say.

Kiran Karnik, president of Nasscom, India`s top technology association, describes his nation`s tech downturn as a ``speed breaker.``

For Niranjan, Sandhya and many others, it means starting over.

It`s not easy.

They had never planned on living in such a huge city. Mumbai`s filthy air gives Sandhya fevers. The tremendous crowds and traffic mean no quick weekend getaways like the ones they relished in California. Struggling to explain what was so special about the United States, Sandhya says it let free her adventurous spirit. And she misses their Fremont apartment near Lake Elizabeth, where they would stroll in the evening.

Niranjan is holding fast to the dream of his own software company. Resolute, he insists their story will have the happy ending they want.

When it came down to the wire in December, he didn`t sell everything. He put the computer, the VCR and the Passat into storage in San Jose.

There it all sits, waiting, along with Sandhya`s glass clock, marking the time until the couple returns to claim it.

``I`m going to come back,`` Niranjan says. ``See you in the Bay Area.``

Hmm the sad lamentations of the returnee expat hoping to make a difference...old story..but always sad to hear:P

I definitely agree with you, about the out sourcing bit, look what PIA did with Sabre..transferred all their ticketing service abroad!

That the EPB and others are staffed by incompetents is a well known fact as well

Your comment about the total ineptness of regulatory authorities is also very true, cas ein point the move to setup a Natioal Gateway to filter net data, and even better PTCL`s decision to stop access to internet telephony, without even bothering to ask PTA..the PTA in most cases is staffed with PTCL people, who see PTCL and protection of it`s interests as it`s sole purpose and not the protection of consumer interests, the same though applies for other reguklatory authorities which lack any enforcement power when they do want to make a difference,

Monopolies and the uncompetitive environment are mostly to blame. The lack of access to alternatives causes the frustration which you express; and even more so globally..although that`s a another story.

Re: Romair

``...I would be interested in finding out from our Indian colleagues, out of the thousands of IT companies in India, how much of the export is generated by the top five. My own guess would be around 50% of the IT export revenue is generated by the top 5 companies. Is this a correct guess?...``

The number is less than 28%. Here is how -- according to NASSCOM, the top 5 Indian IT (software+services) exporters sold a total of $1.77 bn last year. These companies, in order of decreasing exports, are: TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Satyam, HCL. The total Indian IT market is about $8.7 bn.

source: http://www.nasscom.org/it_industry/top20_exporters.asp

Romair:

Check out http://www.nasscom.org/Default.asp for details on India`s IT industry (stats, etc.)

{{Rule no. 1: if you want to get an apartment, buy a car, or set up a business, always consult a South Indian (not a North Indian, not a Pakistani, not an American, but a South Indian; and the longer the last name, the better). Rule no 2: if you are trying to get a date, never consult a South Indian....}}

ROTFL

Dear Author,
Things aren`t too different in India it seems. For eg, I remember someone once saying that the VSNL(Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited, govt. agency reponsible for communications uplinks)was the most hated entity among s/w companies. This inspite of operating within something called `software technology parks` which were the government`s own contraptions for offering shelter in the bureacratic jungle to export-oriented s/w ventures.
Hang in there.

Shakir, I`m glad that you did not hold back much.
Had a chance encounter with Pak Minister Dr. Attaur Rehman last year at TIEcon. Seemed like a very sharp individual and much driven towards improving the IT business climate in Pakistan.
As far as:
``On one hand the Government is asking software companies and global corporate entities to outsource their projects to Pakistan, and on the other hand institutions like the State Bank are handing out multi-million dollar projects to companies abroad.``
There lies Pakistan`s main problem, something that even improved infrastructure cannot correct.
Hang in there and wish you luck.

Ras

Interesting article. Good to get an inside view of what is going on. If you don`t regret what you are doing, and are surviving, then that must mean you are profitable. In which case, things may not be as bad as you have indicated. They definitely need to be better, however. I hope the direction is correct.

At the very least, S&T has a budget now, and has a scientist as its head. Rather than the stud farmer and landlord Abida Hussain, who was the minister of S&T under NS. So some progress is being made :-)

I have heard Pakistani infrastructure is better than India`s. So infrastructure cannot be the main problem. And India has notoriously been more beaurecratic than Pakistan. So that cannot be the problem either. So the problem is something else.

I have started spending time studying Wipro, Infosys and Satyam. It is better than studying Accenture, KPMG etc. if one is going to do an off-shore business from Pakistan. Similar situations, and a lot of success. Even within India, there are certain companies that make it big, and many that don`t in the off-shore business, due to the reasons you mentioned. So what do the companies that make it big have? That is what needs to be figured out.

Correct me if I am wrong, but in Pakistan, two companies are on the Nasdaq: NetSol and Align. Both with large off-shore offices in Lahore, I believe. They have gone down with the stock market, but they are still there, hanging on, the former with the skin of its teeth.

I think the IT industry of Pakistan will be driven by the same factor that drives most IT industries. And that is not going to be anything from the govt., apart from universities. Some universities will produce bright IT graduates. Four or five of them, will somehow or the other form large successful companies. And these companies will define the direction of the Pakistani IT market.

I would be interested in finding out from our Indian colleagues, out of the thousands of IT companies in India, how much of the export is generated by the top five. My own guess would be around 50% of the IT export revenue is generated by the top 5 companies. Is this a correct guess?

So, stick to it. You are doing a great service to Pakistan. I may join you in a couple of years. Before that, of course, I would like to spend a few years in the US offices of Wipro, Infosys or Satyam. Rule no. 1: if