Indians breaking new ground on job front

After making an impression on information technology programming jobs, Indians may now foray into specialised jobs like research and design, which used to be American specialities, and this could have 'murky implications' for the US, a newspaper columnist warned on Friday.

"Many Indians are smart, like (in) mathematics, want money, speak English and have Internet connections. Such folk do not move aggressively into bricklaying (low tech jobs)," Washington Times columnist Fred Reed wrote.

He admitted that Indians are as efficient as their American counterparts and the fact that they "come at a lesser cost" is enough to sway US companies in their favour. He further noted that General Motors recently set up a $21 million automotive research laboratory in Bangalore, its first outside the US.

"It is nothing new for multinationals to have research projects conducted with foreign universities or to do technical work overseas," said Reed.

"Many such companies operate in various countries under so many laws that it is hard to say which country they belong to. But the scale is increasing and the flow is towards Asia."

The outsourcing, he said, is not just limited to 'brainwork'. Not long ago, American workers were angry because manufacturing jobs were going to Mexico. Now Mexicans are upset because the jobs are leaving Mexico and going to China, Reed said.

Reed said an Indian software worker earns about 15 per cent as an American. India graduates 200,000 engineers a year.

Many American observers are of the opinion that employment of Asians in places like Silicon Valley is a good thing. The US has always drained high-end brains from elsewhere and this is what keeps the country prospering, they contend.

Reed, however, said, "What appears to be happening now is that the best brains in Asia may choose to stay at home and work, by Internet or otherwise, for American firms –which inevitably means setting up, before long, their own companies."

The new 'transnational telecommuting,' he said, is different from past practice, in which the incoming brains usually become citizens.

The old assumption was that people in other countries wanted to come to the US. Other things being equal, however, people tend to prefer to stay in their own cultures, Reed said.

"If techies in Mumbai can live splendidly on what they get from a company in Scranton, Pennsylvania, why would they choose to leave Mumbai," he wrote.