Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Is Indian IT too insecure

Every time we hear Obama's political rhetoric, there is an outcry against the so-called "protectionism" by Nasscom. Frankly, this is making them seem like crybaby's. 

Obama is a politician. Whether in India or US, a politician's primary focus is his constituents and his comments are geared towards them. Right now, the US is hurting with massive job losses, and as their elected leader, it is his duty to address that.

Indian companies too have their own set of favourable circumstances vis a vis American firms, they pay almost no tax on their profits due to the STPI scheme. They have a huge wage advantage, as most of their employees are in India. If these are not sufficicient for them to compete and thrive, then they deserve to fail. after all this is the Capitalism that they so praise in action.

As for Nasscom, what happens to their grand pronouncements on the strength of Indian IT (1 million + employees, 60 Billion revenues)? Surely, an industry of this size should be able to innovate to handle any bouncers of this nature? Or deep within their hearts, do they know that Indian IT is nothing but a bunch of low skilled code coolies whose only advantage is the cost and the minute you take that away, the entire thing will unravel?

1 comment:

Sanjeev Kumar said...

Very well said. Why can't NASSCOM encourage companies to think creatively and innovate models? As long as the industry is happy to ride the arbitrage and be happy, not much is going to change. On one hand, the dollar value might fall. And on the other hand, plain simple application development volumes will most likely decrease drastically. Where would that leave the Indian IT industry, which is so heavily focused on blindly providing programmers to clients, and on measuring success by the number of people billed?