Nearly one-fifth of the 10,000 engineers who attended Google Next 2017 conference here are of Indian origin. It’s not some big news for those who know India’s strengths in the IT industry.

The news is that a concern for safety has begun to bother them in the back of their minds, which was never before. “What is new is that (hate) attacks on Indians. It is in our back of our minds. Though we don’t see any threat in the West Coast, the hub of all IT activity in the US, it (safety) is in our conscious now,” Hemanth (name changed), told BusinessLine .

Interactions with a few attendees from the Indian origin give a sense of a perceivable change that happened in the local communities after the killing of Kuchibhotla Srinivas, an IT employee, in Kansas last month. This attack, in which another IT employee was injured, followed by a spate of attacks on the IT professionals in some other areas.

Srinivas’ killing came as rude shock to the Indian Diaspora here and rattled India as the kin of those who are working in the US expressing concern over their safety. Indian IT firms have started issuing advisories to their staff working in the US locations.

“It certainly is disappointing and sad incident. Though it is not uncommon for us to face difficult situations, some people have become bolder recently and started to pose a threat to us,” the promoter of a start-up said, wishing anonymity.

The three-day conference has attracted huge number of software engineers and others in the cloud ecosystem. A good number of them travelled from different parts of the US and abroad as well. You don’t see people discussing the issue, but when one talks to them they don’t make any attempt to hide their apprehensions. The situation at the American airports, at least in the San Francisco airport, is completely different than what is being imagined in India. There’s no palpable difference in the way immigration officials quizzed those arriving from the international destinations. There were no difficult questions asked as they approved the arrival of passengers.

The situation seems to be near normal in cosmopolitan areas and bigger communities. “There could be some challenges in interior towns and communities. We get a lot of support in the Eastern and Western coasts. We must acknowledge that the US by and large is very accommodative and treat immigrant workers well,” he said.

“The Indian community here has understood (the change in situation). We know that it is not a good development. The people I talked to say that they more careful and conscious,” an entrepreneur said.

Fearing attacks and stalking, students living in smaller places are moving in groups.

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