The Hindu Business Line : BPO backlash — Be seen as value creators, not job stealers: Murthy

THE Indian software industry and the Government will have to avoid grand standing in public and instead engage in bilateral discussions with the US to handle the sensitive issue of outsourcing backlash, urged Mr N.R. Narayana Murthy, Chairman, Infosys Technologies.

Speaking at Nasscom, 2004 on `Key Challenges and Strategies to Offshoring from a Political Perspective,' Mr Murthy said that Nasscom, as the industry voice, would have to interact and work on this issue with key technology associations in the US such as the Information Technology Association of America and Computer System Policy Project, which has Intel, IBM and Dell as its members.

India will have to employ a low key and action-oriented rather than rhetorical approach to handle this issue, something which emphasises improvement in the competitiveness of the US economy. Anything which the Indian Government could do to build credibility on free trade would help solve this problem, he added.

From a long-term perspective, Mr Murthy said that the industry would be able to strengthen its case if positioned as value creators of global corporations than merely as cost reducers or job stealers. Concentrating on analytics and value-added BPO (business process outsourcing) services rather than a call centre kind of activity will also reduce pressures as the latter affects the lives of people overseas in a big way.

Mr Steve Clemons, Executive Vice-President, New America Foundation, a think-tank based in Washington, highlighted that India was being made a "convenient scapegoat" in this outsourcing debate. The corporate scandals in the US and absence of strategic and economic thinking on the future had led to a compromise of moral leadership of the US. The effects of these elements may spill over beyond the elections, which may end in November, he cautioned. Unless the US goes into a "soul searching" mode and encourages free trade, it is likely that the entire "chain of productivity and value creation" may suffer at the global level.

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