Indian Outsourcing Story : Makes money and Ruins the brain power.
Posted by Abdul Vasi on 19 Apr 2007 at 5:31 pm | Tagged as:
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India’s booming economy next to china is setting all engine cylinders afire. An astounding growth story, to say the least. The ‘Tata Consultancies”, ‘Infosys” and ‘Wipros” have spawned a new era for the Indian IT services and is continuing unabated even until today and is likely to continue to do so stretching into a few more golden - goose years.
According to Businessweek,
Infosys, Tata and Wipro are still outright profit machines with stellar growth prospects for managing IT networks and testing or developing software products at home and abroad.
As if this wasn’t enough, the rise of Indian economy’s status as the ultimate “floor-costing”, ” Unmatched quality” and “Capable productive brain power” with respect to IT/ITES/KPO services has given way to a lot more opportunities right here in the Indian sub-continent’s lap. A lot more companies in industry segments like mobile telephony, internet services, telecommunications, Computer hardware and even gaming, gambling and much more have opened up and this ended up producing untold number of jobs for many “deserving” candidates. The way of life for most youngsters today, who think that this is just about the right thing to do after college. It’s all about money, honey. Well, I am not going to say anything about the manufacturing, textiles and automotive Industries just as yet. A lot of ground needs to be covered then.
But I just don’t agree with this apparently foolish ” Irrational Exuberance”. The major fallacy in thinking that money is everything and hence blindly letting your feet push through the well-furnished huge, pretty looking, tall buildings mushrooming everywhere that belong to this new breed of IT/ITES/KPO/Telephony/ Gaming/gambling. It might be, if I am not really mistaken, a blow to the raw untapped brain power Indians are endowed with. I feel that you could have done the nation proud either by being en entrepreneur yourself, or working in Industries or jobs where you know that your input has a definitive output to it. Engineering, technology, art, sciences, Agriculture, Software, hardware component manufacturing, education etc. You get it?
Look, I am not saying that these ITES and related industries, the huge FDI input coming in due to them and those thousands of jobs being created are bad. Absolutely not. as a matter fo fact, it is the other way around. It earns tremendous profits for the Indian services exports and some companies like Infosys list a profit growth of over 60 % year on year. But then, I think that most people in these industries, with IT and Software being the possible exceptions, just do repetitive, mundane and back-office jobs and then move on upwards managing people who do the same thing again and again, for years together. The gnats. The Dilberts. The drones and the woodpeckers. So we have them all. Don’t we?
Huge well made buildings with crappy work. For years you end up doing the same thing. However, you are pampered well enough to make do for the lack of juice in your actual job. Look at Google, in India and other developing countries. It hires fresh MBAs and engineers for it’s ‘Ad word’ Representative positions. Is it worth it? 3 months of painstaking rounds and lot of drilling ( even harder to enter than the Indian Army, The Scotland Yard Police or the NYPD) and then all you do is write little nuggets of keywords that you assumed people would be typing in the search engines to get whatever they were searching for. I heard some of my friends’ eyes glossing over the possible “perks” of getting into Google. Free food? Free Gymnasium and Aerobics, Free drinks, juices, snacks et all. Bells and whistles, chocolates and ribbons. That’s how you can have Indians believe that they have the best job in the world. Now you know why they have been ruled by countless number of nations.
How quaint!
Am I Serenading Google? No, I am not. I respect and admire the company and everything I use online almost belongs to Google. It’s not even wrong for Google to have thought of this remarkable way to cut-down its costs and make more profits. However, it is our fault to take up such jobs. They make you do tiring, contrite and boring stuff for way too less than what an American or an Brit would have cost them. You are cheap. You do accept that fact. Perhaps you don’t bother coz their low-cost equivalent pay has really clouded your senses because it translates into a nice big 6 figure salary in INR. So you have nothing to complain. You manage with the mundane nature of your job. You live on.
But the facts remain . For thousands of freelancers in fields like writing, web-designing, software coding, software development, advertising, copy-writing and many more such services, notwithstanding the ubiquitous big name IT/ITES and the like, we come cheap for Americans and we, by nature charge them way too less than what we ought to be charging them. We are a little subtle, not demanding and hence let Uncle Sam have his way. Not a very happy situation. Is it?
There needs to be a Charge revolution. Talented, upcoming and focused service providers from the Indian, chinese and Taiwanese economies or for that matter anyone from the coterie of developing economies must match their prices atleast a little less, equal to or even more than their counterparts in the American or British economies charge. The pricing ball-game is different altogether. I am not about to get into that. But selling yourself way too short is simply, Unacceptable.
What? Indian Outsourcing companies might lose edge? A lethal blow for the very Industry that started on the fact that we had cheap labour? I don’t mind the cheap labour. But I do mind the cheap jobs.
Hear it harder this time. For the very smart, aggressive, creative and resourceful people there are a lot of ways to earn money, but the most foolish way to earn it is to join one of these back-end types. Back-end types are for back-end type people. Moms who have their kids and family to worry about, people with good communication skills but stunted education for some reason or the other. You getting the Idea?
End of story. However, think about it.
What would these guys will be doing if these MNCs have not set shops here. They would discussing politics, creating religious and caste wars. These MNCs help India to achieve prosperity and also good Law and Order if not for them India would be another Iraq or Somalia.
Indian economy is not so fragile to let itself become an Iraq or Somalia. I am not saying that these MNCs are bad, I was only saying that they would have never let young talent like Sania Mirza, Dhoni or whoever make it to whereever they are, if they had chosen these MNCs and withered away in the corporate world. Ditto to youngsters making it big in Business and lot of other spheres in life.