India Feeling the Pinch

[Token Funder]

India Could Lose 10 Million Jobs by March

Federation of Indian Export Organizations points to recession in North America and Europe, which account for 37% of India's merchandise exports, as root cause of potential job losses.


By . Agence France-Presse
Jan. 7, 2009 -- At least 10 million Indians will lose their jobs by March as the economic slowdown in North America and Europe hits India's exports, A. Sakthivel, president of the Federation of Indian Export Organizations( FIEO) predicted on Jan. 6.



"I can safely say that negative growth trends will continue in December and in the next couple of months... I hope we will end the fiscal year (to March 31) with exports of about $175-180 billion" said Sakthivel, lower than New Delhi's target of $200 billion for 2008-2009.


The gloomy forecast comes despite two economic stimulus packages unveiled by the Indian government to boost growth in Asia's third-largest economy.


India's exports, which totalled almost $160 billion last year, account for about 20% of gross domestic product and the sector employs 150 million people, according to FIEO.


It cited recession in North America and Europe, which account for 37% of India's merchandise exports, as responsible for job losses in India.


Sakthivel said he did not see any positive trends for the export sector before the last quarter of 2009 "though a complete U-turn may take a little longer."


India has forecast growth of 7% for the year to March 2009 but economists say it could be as low as 6.8% this year and 5.5% the following year.


Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2009

http://www.industryweek.com/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=18148

 

[oracle]

Don't intend to hijack the thread.

India just had it's own case of Enron. Fourth largest IT Company in India. Satyam computers revealing false accounts including some $1bn (£663m) in fictitious reserves.

Read article here

India's benchmark index fell nearly 7% on the news, as Satyam stock shed 82%.

Cheers,
Oracle.

 

[Aaron Sice]

India "could" lose 10mil job - COULD - not will.

big big big difference in the real world, but not in fairy-media-land i guess.

if the world blows up tomorrow we "could" all die too.

 

[Token Funder]

What's with the hypersensitivity

India "could" lose 10mil job - COULD - not will.

big big big difference in the real world, but not in fairy-media-land i guess.

if the world blows up tomorrow we "could" all die too.

...and this outpouring of emotion is relevant to a comment made by the president of the Federation of Indian Export Organizations why?

I'm not sure Mr Sakthivel or IndustryWeek.com are exactly "fairy-media-land" but whatever.

 

[Strannik]

well our company already stopped contract with one of indian bodyshops, and all their guys went back to india

you cannot imagine how glad i am, some of their code was horrible

 

[tdh78au]

well our company already stopped contract with one of indian bodyshops, and all their guys went back to india

ditto. The mob I work for sent back hoardes of HCL & Infosys folks back to India. I'm pretty sure some of these will contribute to the 10m number

you cannot imagine how glad i am, some of their code was horrible

no arguments here

 

[sparky23]

Thats ok I'm sure there will be plenty of 'customer service' jobs for them with more and more people to be called about defaulting on their loans!

 

[Token Funder]

I actually spent some time in India a couple of years ago looking at the outsourcing caper...I'm surprised to this day that any company would outsource anything that matters to these firms. One of the services firs I visited had a slide on their presentation highlighting their staff attrition rate of 50%....they were claiming it as a positive!!

Best in their sector!!!!

 

[natecv8]

I lost my job of 8 years with a big Australian corporation due to the outsourcing of our jobs to Infosys. We developed sophisticated OSS systems and also did "fourth level" support for them.

I was personally half way through a very expensive transition of some quite out of date systems which has completely halted since we left. No progress has been made leaving the system running on insecure and unmaintained software on a hardware platform no longer supported by the vendor, which is now around 6-7 years old. The standard lifecycle for these systems under our control was 3 years with 6 monthly patching and maintenance and constant refinement of the software.

None of this has occurred since we left. I still have contact with some of my ex colleagues who all ask - what the hell do Infosys actually do? How is this an effective cost cutting strategy? At best it is an incredible gamble.

The worst thing I ever saw during the transition, which involved 12 months of us transferring all of our knowledge to room-fuls of ever changing Infosys employees (who, in the majority of cases, were clearly not keeping up) was that I was passed a quote they had handed us for some maintenance. In essence, one of our systems used tables of information for customer service reps. One of them was a table of products which needed to be amended with a number of new products.
We would usually do this after 5PM on a weekday. We didn't get overtime, so it was effectively a no-cost venture.

Infosys quoted $9,000 for the change with 4 weeks for preparation. The cost alone of not being able to provide customers with the new product for 4 weeks would have been astronomical. The quote was accepted.
There was also a significant incident involving the company placing _all_ of our source code, complete with configuration which would have significantly compromised security, on a publically accessible internet host.

I'm not bitter, don't get me wrong. I'm astounded though, I would have expected after all the effort we expended and the expectations that were upon us, that the outsourcing solution would have been effective. Instead, it seems to have cost a ton and set the company back a long, long way.

In an amusing twist of fate, I'm now working for another company which has a considerable joint venture planned with Satyam. The plans for infrastructure were well underway and lots of money has been expended so far. Hopefully the deal will still go ahead, because if not, everyone loses out.

 

[Strannik]

as far as i know most of the outsourcing attempts fail to reach their main goal - saving money

in the end it costs more to fix up stuff after them

 

[Aaron Sice]

...and this outpouring of emotion is relevant to a comment made by the president of the Federation of Indian Export Organizations why?

I'm not sure Mr Sakthivel or IndustryWeek.com are exactly "fairy-media-land" but whatever.

lol my point was that no one will commit to saying "x WILL happen if y doesn't", it's always could, would, might, maybe, dunno - ask fred in the corner talk.

i'd like to see a reporter write an article and actually be confident in thier sources for one. too much grey in the information supply lately.

 

[lizzie]

i wonder how much longer before the call centres are bought back onshore ... most people i know immediately hang up when they hear the indian accent on an inbound call - and it is as frustrating as all buggery when trying to get a problem solved with someone who speaks english but doesn't understand the local lingo (read: terminology).

 

[Strannik]

even if they bring it back here there is no guarantee that they will not hire indians, so it will be exactly the same