Issue 12.02 - February 2004 The New Face of the Silicon Age How India became the capital of the computing revolution.
[snip] The six Hexawarians are sympathetic but unmoved. They disagree with the very premise that cheap labor is hurting the US. And they think it's somewhat laughable that, because things aren't going exactly our way, ordinarily change-infatuated Americans are suddenly decrying change. "Back in the US, it's all about cheap, cheap, cheap. It's not only about India being cheap. It's quality services," says Jairam's colleague Kavita Samudra, who works on applications for the airline industry. "The fact that they're getting a quality product is why people are coming to us."
Ritesh Maniar reminds me that Hexaware has scored a Level 5 rating from Carnegie Mellon's Software Engineering Institute, the highest international standard a software company can achieve. The others are quick to note that, of the 70 or so companies in the world that have earned this designation, half are from India. Over several days, here and at other companies, I hear this factoid repeated like a campaign talking point.
Translation: We're not just cheaper, we're better.
And that, they say, is good for everyone. Maniar, a senior technical architect, describes one American client: "We helped them become process-oriented, which they were not before. They were spending again and again on the same thing. We explained the process that we follow, because we would like to bring them up to our standards."
"Don't you think we're helping the US economy by doing the work here?" asks an exasperated Lalit Suryawanshi. It frees up Americans to do other things so the economy can grow, adds Jairam.
What begins to seep through their well-tiled arguments about quality, efficiency, and optimization is a view that Americans, who have long celebrated the sweetness of dynamic capitalism, must get used to the concept that it works for non-Americans, too. Programming jobs have delivered a nice upper-middle-class lifestyle to the people in this room. They own apartments. They drive new cars. They surf the Internet and watch American television and sip cappuccinos. Isn't the emergence of a vibrant middle class in an otherwise poor country a spectacular achievement, the very confirmation of the wonders of globalization - not to mention a new market for American goods and services? And if this transition pinches a little, aren't Americans being a tad hypocritical by whining about it? After all, where is it written that IT jobs somehow belong to Americans - and that any non-American who does such work is stealing the job from its rightful owner? [snip]
If you're among the pissed off, such advice - especially coming from talking rodents chasing cheddar around a maze - may sound annoying. But it's not entirely wrong. So if Hem and Haw make you hurl, return to where Aparna began when I met her that first day - the sacred text of Hinduism, the Bhagavad Gita, whose 700 verses many Indians know by heart.
The Gita opens with two armies facing each other across a field of battle. One of the warriors is Prince Arjuna, who discovers that his charioteer is the Hindu god Krishna. The book relates the dialog between the god and the warrior - about how to survive and, more important, how to live. One stanza seems apt in this moment of fear and discontent. "Your very nature will drive you to fight," Lord Krishna tells Arjuna. "The only choice is what to fight against." [snip]
Nay; for the transcendence of ruinous competition itself.......The algorithms of cooperation, compassion and metacomputational cognition/emotion beckon us all in our time of transfinite troubles.
Ian