CALCUTTA, India, March 9 (UPI) -- For India the odds against U.S. outsourcing of jobs may have increased quite a bit lately with the Massachusetts senator, John Kerry, apparently capturing the Democratic nomination to challenge President Bush in November for White House.
A close fight between Bush and Kerry will not only mean considerable diplomatic challenges for India, which is enjoying an unexpectedly cozy 3-year-old relationship with the Bush administration, but also for its money-spinning outsourcing industry. They fear a Kerry win could turn what Indian's view as an obsessive outsourcing backlash in the United States into an explosive backlash.
There are a few other strategic concerns for India's diplomatic channels as well, like Kerry's insistence on India signing the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, the Kashmir issue, where Kerry's policy is not very clear, and the issue of H1-B visas.
Already, Kerry's presumptive win has started rattling the outsourcing sectors of both the United States and India. And perhaps for the first time the anti-outsourcing issue has reached company board and shareholder level, instead of just being restricted to a political issue. Today GE told its shareholders that if the "Call Center Consumer's Right to Know Act" introduced by Democrat presidential candidate Kerry becomes a law, its call center operations outside the United States would be hit.
In its letter to shareholders, GE's board of directors asked shareholders to reject a resolution from a pension fund, which wants the company to present a report on the risk to GE's image resulting from outsourcing. The resolution is coming up for vote at the annual general meeting of the shareholders to be held on April 28.
But this is just the latest instance of outsourcing on the hot seat. Last Friday, the U.S. Senate approved an anti-off-shoring bill by a majority of 70 to 26, which bans government contractors from using American taxpayer money to move jobs offshore.
This is the second time that the U.S. senate has passed what Indians view as an anti-globalization bill. In January, a more diluted version was passed and the off-shoring of jobs was banned whenever the federal government contracted out.
The bill this time encompasses goods and state governments as well. Democrat Sen. Christopher Dodd, of Connecticut, who sponsored the new bill, was unrepentant. "You may be able to do that (outsource) with your own money. The question is, should you be able to do that with taxpayers' money?"
Moreover, protests over export of American jobs spilled over into the streets for the first time ever in Florida last Wednesday, when a group of protesters chanting "stop outsourcing" trespassed into Walt Disney property to harass those attending an outsourcing conference about for shifting jobs to India.
India will also have to give the H1-B visa issue an added push in the United States during the election year ahead.
The H-1B visa issue, which are work permits that the United States issues to foreign professionals to allow them to work, is crucial for India's IT industry. America has reduced visa numbers drastically --from 195,000 to 65,000 -- this year. India's IT sector is the bigggest user of these visas globally to send its software professionals to the United States for training.
For the moment, Indian policymakers have decided to play it cool and maintain a low profile in making any proactive decisions for two reasons: India believes that the storm might blow over after the U.S. elections, and the country is wary of turning the anti-outsourcing issue into a U.S.-India bilateral issue.
Nevertheless, India has adopted a three-pronged strategy. This includes backroom lobbying, making Indian software exports less U.S.-centric and looking for ways to invest in the U.S. market to showcase a job-creation enterprise.
Besides, industry lobbies like the Confederation of Indian Industry and the National Association of Software and Service Companies are also engaging top Washington lobbyists to make issue briefs for U.S. legislators.
"Essentially our strategy is to keep our head down and let U.S. corporations deal with this in the interest of their competitiveness," says Tarun Das of CII.
Indian-American government-contracting companies are also reportedly trying to influence the Congress through a task force called govcon under the banner of the U.S.-India Political Action Committee.
A second term for Bush, then, is clearly what India favors, particularly given the improvement in bilateral relations over the last few years. But since that may not happen, India is fervently hoping that all the ado about outsourcing currently rocking the U.S. and India's back office sectors, turns out to be mere electoral populism at work.
