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Learning to read
India
By Siddharth Srivastava
NEW DELHI - When future corporate leaders
of the world make a country their subject of
study, it's a measure of its rising economic
fortunes. Indians heading to the West to study is
old story. American and European students treading
across to India is a more recent phenomenon. Until
recently, most such students would be mainly drawn
to Oriental subjects such as Sanskrit,
spirituality, yoga, Ayurveda or Indian dance and
music forms. But this is now changing.
The
Indian software sector, with earnings of $22
billion (exports over $17 billion) last year, is
one enterprise in which the country has emerged as
a clear leader. Thus topping the list of
must-understand for Western managers are the two
information technology (IT) giants, Wipro and
Infosys, which have been at the vanguard of
India's software revolution. Both firms have
witnessed a huge jump in the number of
international management students seeking to make
them part of their project coursework.
Apart from credit programs, many business
schools in the United States have individually
begun to bring student groups over to India. Wipro
has played host to a team of students from the
Royal Institute of Stockholm and the Stockholm
School of Economics. Recently, a team from
Stanford visited Infosys and Wipro. The Kellogg
School of Management at Northwestern University,
which operates one of the top US MBA programs, is
looking at offshore outsourcing as a topic of
study for its GIM (Global Initiatives Management)
program. Students from the university will soon be
visiting India. Schools like Wharton, Stern, and
the MIT Sloan School plan to visit the country to
build up knowledge on offshore sourcing.
Recently, India was host to C
Jischke, president of the prestigious Purdue
University, the first president in Purdue's
135-year history to visit India, with the object
of "globalizing" US education. He is probably also
the first head of a US university who came to
India to network personally to talk to leading
Indian institutes and identify subjects for study.
"We are aiming at subjects India is strong in:
engineering, pharmacy and management," said
Jischke.
Jischke
felt that with globalization, multinational firms
with operations around the world will prefer
candidates who have studied abroad and had
exposure to different cultures. "It demonstrates
an ability to work in different environments, at
times more challenging," he said. Purdue has
already inked deals with the prestigious Indian
Institute of Technology (IIT-Mumbai) as well as GE
to arrange for short stints for students to imbibe
a first-hand experience of the Indian syllabus as
well as management style.
Infosys, which
is looking at attracting high-caliber
professionals from around the globe, has devised a
global internship program called InStep to
introduce students around the world to Infosys and
India. Infosys officials say they have been
receiving interns from colleges like MIT, Harvard,
Stanford, Wharton, St Gallen (Switzerland), London
Business School, Darmstadt (Germany), Hitotsubashi
(Japan) and RMIT (Australia). InStep is said to
have received 3,000 applications for 33 posts this
year. The company presently has interns from more
than 12 different countries.
In an
interview, Prabhudev Konana, a professor at the
McCombs School of Business, University of Texas
(Austin), said he plans to bring a large
contingent of students to visit India soon. He
said since more than half the Fortune 500
companies and most other big global firms are
looking at India for IT outsourcing, it is
imperative for MBA programs to expose students to
the economic, political and cultural issues
related to doing business with India.
The
United States Education Foundation of India
(USEFI) has also been involved in identifying
India-specific study-abroad programs that give
American students a view of the country. It has
identified over 50 such packages, ranging from
week-long to full-year study options that range
from subjects such as religion and culture to law,
engineering and the sciences. "India is
strategically and culturally important for US
students. Knowledge of India is valued by
universities," said Jane Schukoske, executive
director of USEFI.
In signs of more
educational partnerships, Indian e-teachers tutor
students from the grade of 3-9 across America,
sitting at their work stations in India - a
technique brought about by the shortage of
teaching manpower in the US. Outsourcing companies
such as Career Launcher, Educomp, Datamatics and
NIIT have identified this opportunity that arose
after the George Bush administration signed the No
Child Left Behind Act '01, with its multi-billion
dollar funding for outside-of-school tutoring.
When today's global students touch down to
get a first-hand feel of the world's IT
powerhouse, tomorrow's professionals can't be far
behind. The interest of foreigners in Indian
industry has been at two-levels - one, high-end
technology and multinational jobs (for example, at
General Electric or Nokia); and two,
language-specific requirements as a result of
India's emergence as a hub of outsourced jobs
catering to international customers. Recent
research has estimated a potential demand for over
160,000 foreign language professionals in call
centers and other back-end operations by 2010. The
number of foreigners working in India in the
software and outsourcing industries is estimated
to be mounting rapidly. At last count it was
50,000, according to the foreign registrar office
in New Delhi.
It's estimated that
200,000-400,000 jobs have moved from the US since
the outsourcing trend began in the 1990s, which is
still a fraction of the total number of jobs that
have the potential to move. The most high-end
projection has been offered by Forrester Research,
which predicts a loss of 3.3 million jobs by 2015,
including 1.7 million back-office jobs and 473,000
IT jobs - which will create a dent in the US job
market.
Siddharth Srivastava is
a New Delhi-based journalist.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact us for information
on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
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