West dying: 'Their kids will have to learn Hindi'

[Guest guest]

West dying: 'Their kids will have to learn Hindi'

 

"Will an Indian-turned-American see his children spin the clock back,

but this time into the future, and become Indians-turned-Americans-

turned Indians?"

 

Harish Dugh

Posted online: Thursday, July 14, 2005 at 1008 hours IST

Updated: Thursday, July 14, 2005 at 1016 hours IST

 

New Delhi, July 14: The world today for the jet-setting Indians

(NRIs) stands at the crossroads. They travelled to the West, braving

all odds. Made their money - as US-, UK, et al Indians. And just when

these Indians thought they could rest on their good fortunes the

pesky relatives back in mother country stole the jobs that were as

American and European as the Caucasian skin. For the Indians, the new

era of outsourcing may just have signalled another migration - back

to India!

The Earth is a very big orb made very small by human endeavour is

being proved with an increasing number of Indians trudging back to

mother country because the West is dying and no longer holds the

forth the dreams of affluence of yore.

 

Everyday changes have wrought a transformation that makes the high-

flying son of Indian immigrant parents to US debate the metamorphosis

that may force his Americanised kids to learn Hindi because American

jobs are flying through the window to Bharat.

 

Will an Indian-turned-American see his children spin the clock back,

but this time into the future, and become Indians-turned-Americans-

turned Indians?

 

The New York Times in its Op/Ed page says that, "According to a

confidential memorandum, IBM is cutting 13,000 jobs in the United

States and in Europe and creating 14,000 jobs in India. From 2000 to

2015, an estimated three million American jobs will have been

outsourced; one in 10 technology jobs will leave these shores by the

end of this year. Stories like these have aroused a primal fear in

the Western public: that they might soon need to line up outside the

Indian Embassy for work visas and their children will have to learn

Hindi.

 

Just as my parents had to line up outside the American consulate in

Bombay, and my sisters and I had to learn English. My father came to

America in 1977 not for its political freedoms or its way of life,

but for the hope of a better economic future for his children. My

grandfathers on both sides left rural Gujarat in north-western India

to find work: one to Calcutta, which was even more remote in those

days than New York is from Bombay now; and the other to Nairobi.

Mobility, we have always known, is survival. Now I face the

possibility that my children, when they grow up, will find their jobs

outsourced to the very country their grandfather left to pursue

economic opportunity."

 

An economically rising India has seen a change of fortunes wherein

the very foundations of the Western world's economic strength and

well-being has been challenged. India in short has risen up from a

country of snake charmers and poverty to one of a near-term

superpower who has wrested the power of optimism from the US and

allies and with it perhaps put the reigns of the world's future in

sub-continental hands to a large extent.

 

What started it: Outsourcing!

 

It has bred confusion, angst, self-questioning, perhaps even a look

back in anger.

 

The NYT's Suketu Mehta says, "The outsourcing debate seems to have

mutated into a contest between the country of my birth and the

country of my nationality. Of course I feel a loyalty to America: it

gave my parents a new life and my sons were born here. I have a

vested interest in seeing America prosper. But I am here because the

country of my ancestors didn't understand the changing world; it

couldn't change its technology and its philosophy and its notions of

social mobility fast enough to fight off the European colonists, who

won not so much with the might of advanced weaponry as with the clear

logical philosophy of the Enlightenment. Their systems of thinking

conquered our own. So, since Independence, Indians have had to learn;

we have had to slog for long hours in the classroom while the

children of other countries went out to play.

 

When I moved to Queens, in New York City, at the age of 14, I found

myself, for the first time in my life, considered good at math. In

Bombay, math was my worst subject, and I regularly found my place

near the bottom of the class rankings in that rigorous subject. But

in my American school, so low were their standards that I was - to my

parents' disbelief - near the top of the class. It was the same in

English and, unexpectedly, in American history, for my school in

Bombay included a detailed study of the American Revolution. My

American school curriculum had, of course, almost nothing on the

subcontinent's freedom struggle. I was mercilessly bullied during the

1979-80 hostage crisis, because my classmates couldn't tell the

difference between Iran and India. If I were now to move with my

family to India, my children - who go to one of the best private

schools in New York - would have to take remedial math and science

courses to get into a good school in Bombay."

 

Every Indian who left his village or hamlet for the bright lights and

big fortunes of the city, and did not make his fame and fortune,

indulges in self-flagellation, especially if the relatives he left

behind get enriched from locally sourced business. Poverty is a huge

black hole in the Indian economy and it is found in the middle of the

rich metropolis as well as in the most rustic of villages.

 

However, as NYT says, "Of course, India's no wonderland. It might

soon have the world's biggest middle class, but it also has the

world's largest underclass. A quarter of its one billion people live

below the poverty line, 40 per cent are illiterate, and the child

malnutrition rate exceeds that of sub-Saharan Africa. There's a huge

difference between the backwater state of Bihar and the boomtown of

Bangalore. Those Indians who went to the United States, though, have

done remarkably well: Indians make up one of the richest ethnic

groups in this country. During the technology boom of the late

1990's, Indians were responsible for 10 per cent of all the start-ups

in Silicon Valley. And in this year's national spelling bee, the top

four contestants were of South Asian origin.

 

There is a perverse hypocrisy about the whole jobs debate, especially

in Europe. The colonial powers invaded countries like India and

China, pillaged them of their treasures and commodities and made sure

their industries weren't allowed to develop, so they would stay

impoverished and unable to compete. Then the imperialists complained

when the destitute people of the former colonies came to their shores

to clean their toilets and dig their sewers; they complained when

later generations came to earn high wages as doctors and engineers;

and now they're complaining when their jobs are being lost to

children of the empire who are working harder than they are. My

grandfather was once confronted by an elderly Englishman in a London

park who asked, "Why are you here?" My grandfather responded, "We are

the creditors." We are here because you were there.

 

The Western world has shown that it is not only aging, its youth is

also tiring of any kind of toil, even the most easy ones that at the

most requires the fingers to tap on the PC keyboard to learn how to

make software, or any other job. This is the air-conditioned

nightmare of development - an ossified population that has such a

good life it loses all urgency to work hard. So we see the Europeans

fight tooth and nail for a 30-hour week, or else…. Even schooling is

a major ordeal for the all-American average kid. So if the 24/7 as

well as 365-days-a-year hard-working Indian goes ahead and does it

all, lets life by-pass him to earn his millions, why does the white

man rage?

 

Do they not realise that what has happened to the West is most

probably going to happen to India too? That soon Indian corporates

are going to find out that if they start outsourcing too to, perhaps,

Burma, they can get the job done at half the cost that an Indian

worker demands.

 

NYT says, "The rich countries can't have it both ways. They can't

provide huge subsidies for their agricultural conglomerates and

complain when Indians who can't make a living on their farms then go

to the cities and study computers and take away their jobs. Why are

Indians willing to write code for a tenth of what Americans make for

the same work? It's not by choice; it's because they're still

struggling to stand on their feet after 200 years of colonial rule.

The day will soon come when Indian companies will find that it's

cheaper to hire computer programmers in Sri Lanka, and then it's

there that the Indian jobs will go.

 

Of course, it's heart wrenching to see American programmers - many of

whom are of Indian origin - lose their jobs and have to worry about

how they'll pay the mortgage. But they are ill served by politicians

who promise to bring their jobs back by the facile tactic of banning

them from leaving. This strategy will ensure only that our schools

stay terrible; it'll be an entire country run like the dairy

industry, feasible only because of price controls and subsidies."

 

Lighting a spark of hope for the future NYT adds, "But we have a

resource of incalculable worth right here to help us compete: the

immigrants who've been given a new life in America. There are many

more Indians in the United States than there are Americans in India.

Indian-Americans will help America understand India, trade with it to

our mutual benefit. Just as Arab-Americans can help us fight Al

Qaeda, Indian-Americans can help us deal with the emerging economic

superpower that is India. This is the return of the gift of

citizenship.

 

And just in case, I'm making sure my children learn Hindi."

 

According to Hindu scriptures the world goes through cyclical stages.

But only those survive who have the intelligence to fathom the

present and read the future. While Indians paid a huge price for not

doing either in the medieval times and later, allowing foreigners to

rule the country, yet the pain of poverty has made the people the

smartest on Earth. They have shown over the last fifty years or so

that they have the ability to do both and prosper.

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