DEVELOPMENT-INDIA: Worry Over Exodus of IT Experts

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Sep 14 2000 (IPS) - The large crowds before the U.S. embassy here, no longer wave anti-imperialist placards. Instead, they anxiously clutch proof of being information technology (IT) experts, seeking work in that country.

Last year, Indians cornered half of the 115,000 coveted H-1B visas issued by the U.S. government to qualified professionals worldwide. This year, the H-1B quota is expected to be increased to 200,000, with half of these likely to go to Indian ‘techies’.

Even as IT employers in the United States lobby hard to get legislative approval for a hike in the H-1B quota, Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee will do the same during his present visit to the United States.

Vajpayee, who is in the United States these days, will press for a substantial hike in the H1-B quota and the elimination of social security charges now paid by Indian workers in that country.

“We are pressing for avoidance of double payment of social security, removal of caps on H-1B visas and locational constraints on those who qualify,” said Dewang Mehta, president of India’s National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM).

However, the growing exodus of Indian IT professionals to the U.S. and other nations, has also led to worries that the country may again be losing its best talent to the industrialised countries.

The government is not happy with this at a time when India aims to become an “IT superpower”, says Information Technology Minister Pramod Mahajan.

The ‘India Information Technology Task Force’ set up by Mahajan’s ministry, has identified manpower shortages as one of the main hurdles to reaching this goal.

According to Mahajan, while the government has been accommodating so far in allowing IT professionals to seek lucrative jobs abroad, it cannot let the exodus continue.

But it may be too late, says Gurunandan Bhat who helped set up the government’s Advanced Centre for Informatics. “Nothing was done to make it attractive stay back,” Bhat said.

According to Bhat, Indian IT professionals are successful in the West not so much because of their expertise, but because they are simply good immigrants. “Put an immigrant Indian on foreign soil and he becomes a diligent, hardworking and useful employee,” he pointed out.

Indian IT experts also become successful entrepreneurs abroad because they “suddenly find themselves in a refreshingly different environment in which they are free of unfair and unrealistic government regulations and a corrupt system,” he added.

The only check on the outflow of Indian IT experts is being provided by trans-national corporations, which are setting up shop in the big Indian cities.

The two southern cities of Hyderabad and Bangalore have become major global IT hubs. Microsoft chief Bill Gates, who is expected to visit India this week, said he has opened a Microsoft development centre in Hyderabad because he saw great potential in India.

“India is now second only to the U.S. in the number of Micrsoft- certified professionals and I think that’s great in terms of pure talent available here,” Gates told the ‘Times of India’ newspaper.

According to Ramesh Mashelkar, director general of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), which control more than 40 premier research institutions in the country, “India has the potential to become the remote processing country for the world.”

However, industry observers expect the number of IT professionals leaving the country to grow as more industrialised nations seek Indian expertise in the field.

During his August visit to India, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori promised relaxation of his country’s tight immigration rules for Indian IT experts.

Wooing Indian professionals, German IT companies are offering them everything, right down to vegetarian food, if they take advantage of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s scheme of 20,000 work permits for foreign IT experts.

But Indian professionals, familiar with the English language and put off by stories of racism in Germany and Japan, prefer to work, and perhaps eventually settle, in the United States.

“The U.S. is still the land of opportunity,” said Ramesh Gulati, an electronic engineering graduate from the premier Indian Institute of Technology (IIT).

Gulati, who had found a job in that country, said he always wanted to go to the United States, but failed in his last attempt to get there on a student visa.

“Things look different now and I would still like to try my hand at being an entrepreneur once there,” he said. Gulati has been inspired by success stories of Indians who floated their own IT ventures in the United States.

His hero is Sabeer Bhatia, the man who started the popular Internet email service ‘Hotmail’ on borrowed money, before selling it to Microsoft for a reported 400 million U.S. dollars.