Where did jobs go? Look in Bangalore (Part 1 of series)

[RamboLiberal]

BANGALORE, India -- This is the epicenter of a revolution.

Here, on the outskirts of this crowded cosmopolitan city, sits the 65-acre campus of India's largest software exporter, Infosys Technologies.

Its 35 office buildings -- all built in the last decade -- include a library, a basketball court, a Domino's pizza shop and an auditorium with a huge video wall. They rise above a campus of gardens, shimmering fountains, neat lawns, and sidewalks swept by women wearing saris, using brooms made of palm stalks.

The Infosys campus, which employs 7,000 of the company's 21,000 workers worldwide, showcases India's aspirations to become a powerhouse in the global economy.

It also symbolizes what is happening to American jobs in Pittsburgh and other cities around the nation.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04081/288539.stm

For the 'Zippies,' life is good

Computer program analyst Arvind Nimbalker has dreams that would be familiar to any young man doing well in his first job. He wants to buy a car, a motorcycle and stereo equipment.

His acquisitive lifestyle, though, is of little interest to his parents, who grew up in an India with a state-controlled economy and severe shortages of basic commodities and consumer goods.

"My standard of living is better than my parents'," Nimbalker said as he had lunch with a co-worker in one of the open-air food courts that dot the verdant campus of Infosys Technologies in Bangalore.

"But they are definitely happier people because they don't have very high expectations from things," said Nimbalker, a 2000 graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. "Probably our generation is more materialistic than they are."

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04081/288432.stm

Founder of outsourcing powerhouse offers views

What is now iGate Corp. began as a discussion in a Green Tree bar nearly 20 years ago between Sunil Wadhwani and two friends about the then-emerging industry of software services.

Their venture, originally named Mastech, was formed in 1986 and nearly folded a year later under the weight of long hours and mounting bills. But by 1988, the company had signed three big clients, hired its first staff member and recorded annual sales of about $1 million.

Today, the still-evolving company does about $290 million a year in business and has about 5,000 employees, roughly half of whom work for an offshore subsidiary, iGate Global Solutions.

A native of India, Wadhwani, 51, earned a mechanical engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras in 1974 and a master's degree in science in industrial administration from Carnegie Mellon University in 1976.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04081/288429.stm

A Q&A with Robert Reich on outsourcing

Q: The offshore outsourcing of technology and back-office jobs to lower-cost countries including India is on the rise. What do you think the long-term trends in outsourcing will be?

A: In the next five years, outsourcing won't amount to much. At most, we're talking about a few hundred thousand jobs subtracted from an American labor market that is likely to generate 10 million new jobs. In 30 years, outsourcing will be a very big deal.

Q: In your view, how big a role has outsourcing of IT and other service-related jobs played in the current jobless recovery?

A: Outsourcing isn't to blame for the slow recovery. The jobs recovery has been anemic because there hasn't been enough demand to restart the jobs machine. President Bush gave huge tax breaks to rich people who were already spending as much as they wanted to spend (that's the definition of being rich). They didn't turn around and spend their extra money. They invested it around the world. If you want to stimulate the economy, you've got to give tax breaks to working people who will spend the additional cash.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04081/288422.stm