IT companies to be labor democracies…!

It's time that India opens her borders wide and ask'em to come in and sweat it out. No need for H1-Bs. Come on in, all are welcome - so long as you've got skill and willing to work like us.

The best of Indian IT firms like Infosys, Wipro, TCS boast of hiring more and more global workforce and mostly display them in their Annual Reports. They make a pretty picture and tempts one to think that they play fair game besides getting the talent mix right. In that context, whenever I hear about outsourcing backlash in the US / Europe, I ask what the hell. Outsourcing ring fences client’s bottomline, renders its processes better (the reason why more global corporations look eastwards). To go one step further, new found prosperity of the east winds its way back to those economies by way of tourist $$ / Euros.

To give a perspective -

“Figures from Visit London show that tourists from India spent £139m last year - up from £107m a year earlier and £78m in 2003. About 212,000 Indians visited London last year, up from 130,000 in 2003” - reports Julia Finch in The Guardian.

“When compared to 2005, international visitor spending by many European countries declined in 2006; total U.S. travel and tourism exports to Europe declined one percent in 2006. However, spending increases from Indian visitors (55%), Chinese visitors (21%), Canadian visitors (16%), and Brazilian visitors (11%) helped propel the industry into record-breaking territory” – reports OTTI, US”.

India earns less than China from overseas, but its tourists give back more than double. We love Disney Land and the London Eye, yeah...!

But Senators Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., would have none of it and have some questions.

I had visited Sen.Grassley’s website which has the full text of questions they raised to oursourcing vendors who cornered the maximum H1-B visas. Between those questions and the awaited reply lie the arguable shade of grey depending on how the game is being played out in the middle – and to be fair to all, to whom those pictures are really meant for.

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Or is it just the anti-India outsourcing lobby at work ?

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