← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Centinel
Thread ID: 6821 | Posts: 4 | Started: 2003-05-20
2003-05-20 22:41 | User Profile
From Wired News, available online at: [url=http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,58814-2,00.html]http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,5...58814-2,00.html[/url]
Indian IT Success Sparks Backlash
By Manu Joseph 02:00 AM May. 20, 2003 PT
MUMBAI, India -- In March, 270 Indian IT workers were arrested in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on immigration-related charges. They were awakened by police on a Sunday morning, handcuffed and forced to squat in a shed for hours before being released, according to news reports.
Many in the Indian technology industry say the episode highlights a growing resentment against Indian software professionals for taking jobs from local workers -- resentment that has led to punitive action against Indians by police in many countries.
"I believe that there is something to the timing of such incidents," said Vijay Mukhi, a Mumbai-based IT trainer. "These countries have chosen to interpret their laws today in a manner that will affect Indians."
The Indian government issued a press release saying that the Kuala Lumpur police tampered with many of the workers' passports, and the acting prime minister of Malaysia, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, apologized to India for the incident. Six police officers will be disciplined for "mistakes that occurred during the operation," said the police inspector general, Norian Mai.
Also in March, the Dutch Social Intelligence and Research Agency rounded up 13 employees of Indian financial software firm i-flex solutions in Amsterdam, Holland. According to Makarand Padalkar, i-flex's Mumbai-based chief of staff, they were interrogated, then asked to leave the country within a week for not possessing valid work permits. The Dutch government is also trying to extradite one of i-flex's top executives, V. Senthil Kumar, and had him arrested in London for alleged visa violation and tax evasion.
I-flex is fighting the charges and says its employees have done nothing wrong.
The Royal Netherlands Embassy in New Delhi denied that these actions were part of a broader clampdown on Indian software workers, and said that i-flex was suspected for some time of illegal employment practices and other unacceptable activities. The embassy issued a statement saying, "The arrested Indian nationals have been treated in a similar way as any other foreign employees involved in illegal employment. This particular case is certainly not an action against Indian IT professionals."
The case may hinge on how IT work is defined. Workers who code software need a different visa than those who install software. "The Dutch government had a preconceived notion that our employees had gone to Amsterdam to do coding," Padalkar said. "Coding requires a different work permit that takes nine to 18 months to procure.
"But the truth is that our employees were there not for coding. They were on valid business visa(s) to train and consult our software customers," Padalkar said.
In another incident in Indonesia, Jakarta-based Bank Artha Graha claimed that Polaris Software Lab, an Indian software company, had violated a contract. Polaris CEO Arun Jain flew to Jakarta to negotiate in December 2002. But when the dispute was not resolved, he was arrested by local police and jailed for 11 days. He was released only after India exerted diplomatic pressure on the Indonesian government. The contract dispute is now being settled in a Singaporean court.
Some industry observers say these arrests represent a backlash against the Indian technology industry that's been intensified by the worldwide economic slump.
"The job market the world over is bad, and Indians are looked at as people who take away jobs," Mukhi said. "My students who work in many countries often tell me about the palpable resentment against them in America and Europe."
Others discount any connection between the arrests. "Though the arrests of Indian IT professionals in (the) Netherlands, Indonesia or Malaysia happened within a short span of time, they cannot be linked together. They are separate events," said Kiran Karnik, president of the National Association of Software and Service Companies. Nasscom, the primary software trade group in India, has defended Indian workers in every country where they have been threatened by local laws.
Nasscom estimates that more than 200,000 Indian software professionals work in 85 different countries. Another 100,000 constantly move in and out of these countries.
"With so many Indians based in other nations or traveling there," a Nasscom representative said, "there is a statistical probability that some of them may face harassment for various reasons, including security concerns."
Karnik admitted, however, that increasing unemployment rates in many countries and the widely publicized large-scale outsourcing of work to India "are bound to have some degree of backlash."
The spread of such outsourcing has spurred trade and workers' unions in Europe and the United States to lobby against government or corporate policies that may take away local jobs. U.K. trade unions are opposing British Telecom's plan to outsource part of its call center operations to India. Organizations and websites like WashTech and TechsUnite in the United States have strongly criticized laws that facilitate outsourcing large projects to India.
Several potential legal changes in the United States also have Indian IT workers on edge. **The annual cap on H-1B visas, raised to 195,000 to accommodate higher demand during the dot-com boom, will revert to 65,000 this year if Congress doesn't intervene. The government also is rumored to be reviewing L-1 visas, which multinational companies use to transfer their top employees to the United States. In New Jersey, a bill to prevent offshore outsourcing of state government projects passed the state Senate, but the bill has stalled in the Assembly. **
Despite these actions, however, Nasscom insists that in a depressed global economy, technology companies will find it hard to resist cutting costs by outsourcing work to India.
2003-05-21 02:37 | User Profile
Sounds like someone paid off the court. I think rban calls those guys geeks because they actually have technical knowledge, which he doesn't. Such horrible racism. Rban, we're appalled.
Now here's something spooky. Rban says all of the same things that the Indian who distinguished himself in last week's campus shooting did. Same complaints, same talk about Indian supermen, etc. Everything. Maybe the shooter is rban. Maybe he's writing his posts from his cell. Read some of the articles on the guy. Maybe it's some type of pathology in the make up of Indians.
[url=http://www.cleveland.com/cwrushootings/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/10532506095130.xml]http://www.cleveland.com/cwrushootings/ind...32506095130.xml[/url]
...The guy was always kind of grim," said Ken Fisler, who met Halder a few times at meetings of his computer club. "I don't know if I ever saw him smile."
Halder's only outlet, it seems, was his Web site, called the Worldwide Indian Network, where he hoped to create a coalition of Indian entrepreneurs to solve the world's problems - and make himself a billionaire along the way.
On the Internet, Halder also played the role of a left-leaning social activist, posting essays with titles such as "Let Us Make the World a Better Place to Live," protesting everything from the United Nations' sanctions against Iraq to third-world debt.
"...Troubled work history
Bisu Halder was born in India and moved to Germany and Canada before coming to the United States in 1969. Like so many, he came to America hoping to get rich, as he told a former colleague, but in the end he found only frustration.
Halder got a job with a computer consulting firm, DARUS Dat-Com Ltd., in New Jersey around 1970. He told colleagues there that he returned briefly to India with the hope of finding a bride.
Maybe that's why rban seems so frustrated. Take a look at some of the articles (go to the hated google). He had all the answers, India has all the answers for Western decay. Except that this Indian had to shoot some black guy who outsmarted him.
Rban, are you writing us from a jail cell? Cool.
[img]http://www.frank-williams.net/jquest/title/hadjismall.gif[/img]
2003-05-21 02:58 | User Profile
Originally posted by rban@May 20 2003, 20:50 ** Uhhh, there is one minor difference here. This guy was CRAZY, I am perfectly NORMAL. **
Maybe your sense of humor is more highly developed than we give you credit for.
2003-05-21 15:41 | User Profile
Others discount any connection between the arrests. "Though the arrests of Indian IT professionals in (the) Netherlands, Indonesia or Malaysia happened within a short span of time, they cannot be linked together. They are separate events," said Kiran Karnik, president of the National Association of Software and Service Companies. Nasscom, the primary software trade group in India, has defended Indian workers in every country where they have been threatened by local laws.
I don't. Seems that many countries are wising up and trying to discourage outsourcing of IT jobs to cow turd worshiping server monkey's. They probably have discovered that cheap is no substitute for innovation and quality. :th: