'Americans can do certain jobs'

Barack Obama’s previous stance on outsourcing seems to have undergone a complete shift during his India visit. Clarifying his earlier comment he said that India is creating jobs for the US and not taking them away. Obama called India a victim of stereotyping as the American public still perceived India to be a land of call centres and back offices.

 Metrolife spoke to a few people in the industry about the repercussions India would face if Obama ‘changed his stance’ again.

Tina Vinod, the marketing manager at ThoughtWorks, states that India would definitely get affected if the new immigration bill was approved and the tax breaks were withdrawn. But the impact would be only short term. “India has a world class talent pool, which is unparalleled in the world. The kind of work that is coming to India is very good. This only proves that we have specialists capable of handling complex projects. There are only certain jobs that the Americans can do, not all,” she adds.

Umang Bedi, managing director of Intuit, a software company also had a positive take on the issue. “I don’t think the President will go back on his statement. Both the countries are looking for a long term strategic relationship. It is a two-way street and we can benefit only if both sides contribute. As a company, we are also creating a lot of jobs locally,” he says.

An official spokesperson of HCL says, “We continue to increase the number of local HCL hires at our two near-shore delivery facilities. In the last fiscal year, we added 680 jobs in the United States and will continue to hire there as our business expands. We  are also the leaders of business practice called employee “re-badging” wherein the US employees engaged by HCL’s customers are transferred to HCL’s rolls and become a part of our US workforce working on projects for HCL’s US clients.”

Sounding a little cautious Mustafa Jafar, a BPO employee asks, “What happens to the millions whose livelihoods depend on these jobs? It is already bad enough that we are paid half of what our developed counterparts earn for doing the same work. Americans had their chance to develop and flourish; it is unfair of them to create obstacles on our growth path.”