Online NewsHour: Tom's Journal: American Jobs in India -- March 9, 2004 relates how as many as 4 million American jobs to be outsourced to India over the next 10 years (which I find conservative). New York Times columnist Tom Friedman spoke about the now large and ever growing outsource industry and identified a truly concerted Indian strategy to offer exactly what American firms needed - cheaper, yet well-trained English speaking human resource who have nothing to lose and everything to gain!
Ever heard of an "accent neutralization" class? This is where Indian youths are trained to adopt different accents of the English Language when dealing with calls. This is a fine example of business adaptation which goes to show why India is now arguably the call center capital of the world.
There is even an impact on regional security covered in this segment:
TERENCE SMITH: You were there at a time, just recently, at a time when there is a real rapprochement between India and Pakistan settling some very long-standing differences, or working on it anyway. Is it related to the economic uplift of all these jobs?
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Directly related, because India now is part of a global supply chain. These American companies -- GE, Microsoft, American Express -- have moved parts of their back rooms to India, to Bangalore. Now, comes along the India-Pakistan crisis -- I'll tell you exactly what happened. These American companies got on the phone and told their Indian back rooms, "Friends, we're going to have to look for an alternative for you. You don't want us to be looking for an alternative, and we don't want to be looking for an alternative."
When you're part of a global supply chain like that, you can't say, "Oh, we're going to take a week off to fight a war. We'll see you." You will shut down whole major corporations. Well, that has percolated up.
The Malaysian equivalent is an old story that is no longer valid with the phenomenal appetite of China. We have lost our manufacturing excellence and relatively cheap skilled labour. We need to identify our new niche - to see ourselves beyond OEM to ODM for example. Have we identified this?
Our skills are moving upstream and as yet, very little in form or intent has been demonstrated. How are we, as a nation equipping ourselves to compete? What steps have we put in place to train relevantly skilled labour? And I am not referring to the current programmes under the purview of our Human Resource Ministry which is merely subsidizing sub-standard skill training institutions.
We speak of building a knowledge-based society. Fair and well, except that for every knuckle-down programming job available in the market, 3 out of 4 finds its way to India and China. As a culture, we can scarce be called a nation of orators, which knocks customer service out of the list.
How about bio-engineering? It is relatively new and our rain forests are unique as they are filled with potential for new medicinal cures and nutrition. Until now, the largest single investment into this was by our much maligned MAVCAP. RM 20 million into a tongkat ali factory that clearly highlights which organs they are opting for when it comes to ideas...
There's Petronas and our natural treasure trove - how many Malaysian are trained to offer value added services and products along these lines? One only needs to ask around to realise that most of the upstream (and even some downstream) revenue is heading in the wrong direction - which is a distinct shame.
After looking east for so long, try Bangalore for new ideas...
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