When we talk about an average Indian IT professional, there
are two distinct species of humans that come to mind instantly. One of them is
influential, drives a sedan and looks sharp. The other one is inconspicuous,
fuzzy haired, sporting a 3-day stubble and relies on public transport more
often than his private two-wheeler to go around town in order to manage the
month in his meager salary. Any further allusions to an average Indian IT
professional will imply the more ‘gareeb’ kind of the two.
When the IT industry bubble started growing in the 90’s, the
Indian IT professionals were introduced to a new phenomenon called ‘onsite’.
Going onsite originated from the dire need of having someone on client location
to constantly interact with the client and understand the requirements and
feedback of the client. That made perfect sense. But, over the years, somebody
in the collection of shrewd people in every company, known as the HRD, came up
with a brilliant idea of tying onsite trips with performance, dignity, honor
and brilliance. Onsite trips started to be used as incentives for good
performance and sometimes also as excuses for poor performance ratings (like
“Hey, that poor fellow didn't get an onsite, so we gave him the top rating. You
shouldn't mind a second grade rating because you got an onsite”). If the usage
as incentive and excuse was not enough, onsite trips also became a retention
strategy (“Come on, don’t quit. We will initiate an H1 for you this time”).
The problem is not that the HRs and managers started using
onsite trips as weapons to manipulate the employees; the real problem began
when employees allowed them to do so. The new breed of IT professionals grew up
with dreams of New York and London in their heart (notable contribution from
major Bollywood production houses). To these IT professionals, an H1b visa has
more value than a 15-20% hike in salary. And who could blame them. Saving a
dollar in the US is effectively saving Rs. 54 here. 4 years in US are enough to
enable the transition of an IT professional from gareeb to non-gareeb. It is
often said that a man makes his first onsite trip for a car and the second for
a house, and, more often than not, that is the case. On return from their first
onsite, most IT professionals buy a car on hefty EMI; on return from the
second, they buy a house on even heftier EMI. The third onsite is then needed
to pay off the blood-suckingly high EMIs on the car and the home.
But then, greed, like atomic fission, never ends. It just
keeps getting worse and keeps getting the better of human beings. That has been
the case since the beginning of history. Why would our era be any different to
that of our Neanderthal-ish forefathers? Why would we not succumb to the
temptations of Greed- the vile mistress of Misery? We do. And in the process,
we ruin a lot of things. Two nations are just the pinnacle of the carnage we
leave behind when we succumb to our greed for constant onsite trips.
I am pretty sure that an epiphany or a HIMYM-style
Intervention is not required for us to realize that whenever we go out there,
we are tagged as “immigrants”. We might not be treated like kings in our own
country, but the way we are treated in an onsite land is never better. Is it
not unsettling to realize that a Caucasian person never sits next to us in the
bus or train? Are the abuses and beer bottles hurled from passing cars late at
night not proof enough that we are unwanted in that nation? We, as apostles of
outsourcing, are eating up jobs of people who have spent much more money, time and
sweat than us on their education. We often make snide comments about the Angrez
being lazy and not working, thereby leading to outsourcing. Maybe it is not
about being lazy but about asking for better worth of the education that they
have. We do not value our degrees as much as them because we usually do not
work hard enough to earn them.
It is ironical to me that a country that provides such
diverse services in the IT sector to the entire world does not have a good enough
IT infrastructure at home. Perhaps if we took lesser interest in what Kevin
Rudd did to make our kind disappear from Australia and paid more heed to what
can be done to make the IT infrastructure in India better, we would be in a
much better place today. In the long run, outsourcing is not the way the Indian
economy will survive. With more and more countries realizing the threat
outsourcing poses to their own economy, it will become increasingly difficult
for us to penetrate existing and new markets.
I just hope the slumber ends...soon.
