WHAT A RACKET:

India's outsourcing flip-flop (Siddharth Srivastava, 8/20/04, Asia Times)

The outsourcing story has so far headed down a one-way street - with Indians and Indian firms accused of eating into jobs in the United States and the United Kingdom, and the latest estimates pegging India's offshore services growth rate at over 40%.

But as Indian information-technology (IT) firms reach global scales, a reverse trend is also evolving - Americans and others from the West are finding employment in the overseas operations of Indian firms. It is been termed "reverse outsourcing" and nobody, including presidential aspirant John Kerry, should find cause to complain about it - even if elections are looming in the US. This adds to the many out-of-work executives from the US who have moved to India in search of better opportunities.

In the latest instance, an affluent US county has invited Indian and Israeli firms to open branches, creating millions of square feet of vacant office space for such use. The Economic Development Authority of Fairfax County (Virginia), close to Washington, DC, has opened offices in Bangalore and Tel Aviv to persuade Indian and Israeli firms to set up offices in the county.

"We looked around to see where the hot technology markets are and how compatible they are with us," said Gerald L Gordon, president of the authority. "We are targeting as many as we can get. We tell them: 'You can do business here.'"

They get all those great hard-working, low-paying jobs and all we get back are high-paying management boondoggles?

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 19, 2004 10:48 AM