Kaujalgi 24×5.5

The New York Times reported on the case of the Glasgow Airport car bombing and identified one of the suspects as an Indian Aeronautical Engineer who worked once for a Bangalore based Outsourcing company. Here is the link: Suspect in British Plot Worked as Aviation Engineer .

What does this mean for the Outsourcing Industry? Here is what I think will happen:

1. Expect some backlash from companies in sensitive industries (Defense, Aerospace, High End Design, Banks, etc) with either talk or action in terms of scaling back work to India.
2. Expect discussions with Indian vendors by their customers regarding their hiring, screening practices and talk of contractual protection.
3. Expect issuance of visas becoming more difficult on a case to case basis in the near term.
4. Any more such terrorism occurances will bring much severe visa restrictions and rigorous background checks. Companies are already under a microscope regarding their visa practices.
5. Expect this to become an issue in the 2008 Presidential Elections in the US, if there are more terrorists of Indian origin

Due to the increasing respect for India as a “happening” country, the Outsourcing Industry can expect a treatment somewhere between how the UK is treated (they are strong allies even with multiple cases of homegrown terrorists) and how Syria is treated (they are all crazy).

In any case, it is important for IT companies to have a better ear to their employees so that they can take appropriate action. This is borne by the NY Times article which quotes the police chief in Bangalore  “….. he surprised friends when he appeared with a traditional muslim beard in place of his former goatee, and was brimming with notions about fighting for Islam…..” 

There needs to be a system within each company (hello HR!) and within the industry (hello Nasscom) to be able to track potentially dangerous behavior. It is an opportunity for the Industry to design a system which not only works in India, but can evolve into an international standard.

I was invited to write a column by Thinking Street for their Insight section. Here is the link to article: http://thinkingstreet.com/business/2007/07/08/the-offshore-value-add-problem/

I will continue to write some more articles there and will parallel post them here or link them from this blog. Here is how Thinking Street defines their objective: “The driving force behind this intellectual initiative is to provide a shared platform for the IT services community where various resources are made available at one address itself. This information is not limited to IT services but also covers associated areas like technology consulting, industry knowledge, venture capital and private equity investments. The flat world that we live in today provides us with voluminous data and information to help us remain in touch with the latest in industry but the same is there in a spread-all-over-the-place form. ThinkingStreet.com aims at simplifying this information maze to provide ready-to-use material in one organized net street.”