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India loses BPO sheen: NYT report
By siliconindia staff writer
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Tuesday, 01 June 2004, 19:30 IST
If New York Times scribe Eduardo Porter is to be believed, the worldÂ’s largest democracy is on a downhill trip, especially in the outsourcing saga. India, which has been hailed as the biggest BPO destination, the report says, is losing her hold over the new age profession as US entrepreneurs are now posing queries over the efficiency of skilled Indian workers.
As the outsourcing debate swirls in the American circles in the crucial election year, there have been US states which have passed legislations banning the movement of jobs to India. At present, 80 Bills are pending before the US Congress and various state legislatures against the offshoring of US jobs.
Even as the United States goes to polls to elect a new president in November, the brouhaha over outsourcing has assumed various proportions. Jobs being outsourced have translated into a huge protectionist trade movement, as fears of a job backlash take centre-stage .
In the midst of such sentiments, spelling good news for the US, some entrepreneurs are now discovering that India's high-technology work force is not living up to expectations. And thus, the report points out, that some firms are headed homeward after trying to reduce costs by contracting out software programming tasks to India.
"For three years we tried all kinds of models, but nothing has worked so far," co-founder and chief technology officer of Storability Software in Southborough, Massachusetts, was quoted as saying in the report. This firm has recalled most of the work to the United States, in spite of the fact that it costs thrice as much. Further, the CTO also said that “Indian programmers' depth of knowledge in the area we want to build software is not good enough."
Porter cites the example of entrepreneur Hemant Kurande. Born and brought up in Mumbai, the IIT Powai alumni, after a brief stint of outsourcing tech work to India, concluded that cost advantage has not paid off rich dividends. Kurande is one of the few voices that spell dissatisfaction with the trend of offshoring jobs to India, which has largely been a success as more companies in the US rush to take advantage of the ample supply of cheap, trained workers.
After waxing eloquent about the advantages of outsourcing, some experts are now pointing out that more creative jobs need to be retained as it becomes more difficult to manage creativity at a distance.