When Deepak Bhatt, a 24-year old software engineer from New Delhi, landed at the Frankfurt airport to take up a job in a nondescript Internet firm, he was given a grand welcome. International media was present in full force at the airport; the German media chased Bhatt for interviews. His claim to fame is simply this: he was among the first Indian IT professionals selected to work in Germany. As many as 18,000 Indian applicants have already registered with the Federal office for Employment in Bonn, and some 3,000 make up Bonn’s first batch. The applicants’ desire to work in Germany is in response to Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s scheme to issue 20,000 green cards to computer specialists from non-EU countries. German business and industry estimate a shortage of 75,000 IT experts and reckon that Europe’s largest economy will sorely lag behind other European nations if this vacancy is not filled immediately.

Until now, the most favored destination for aspiring software engineers has been the United States. But the list of countries seeking the services of Indian IT professionals is increasing every day: France, Japan, the UK, Denmark, Canada, New Zealand and others. Software and training major NIIT (based in New Delhi) recently signed an agreement with a Singapore consortium to recruit 1,000 Indian software personnel to work in different firms there. This comes after the visit of the Singapore Prime Minister’s visit to Bangalore earlier this year. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori also visited Bangalore during his recent visit to India to get a first-hand feel of the software industry. He even had a swing or two at the Infosys golf course.

The job columns in Indian newspapers these days are filled with advertisements put by companies or placement consultants, seeking Indian software professionals to work in foreign destinations. Most of them are eyeing IIT grads or students from other prestigious institutions like the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Multinational corporations are also setting up centers of excellence or collaborative programs at premier institutions. For example, Sun Microsystems recently launched a collaborative research program with three IITs, by which selected professors and students from IITs will come up with new products for Sun or provide inputs its ongoing product development. In effect, Sun is outsourcing some of its research activity to the IITs. It works out to be cheap because all Sun has to do is provide these institutions with computer power and grant money. Since most students working on such projects join the sponsoring companies at the end of the project, its a good deal for the companies. They get their research done and also get new employees, who are already familiar with their work.

Bodyshopping: Trends

If this trend continues, India may well be on its way to becoming the IT professionals’ “super bazaar of the world,” manufacturing graduates and specialists for multinational corporations of the world, and burning scarce resources that could go into India’s higher education system.