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Indo-Asian News Service
Washington, May 27, 2005
On a day this month when the US Congress was not in session, hundreds of graduates of the Indian Insbreastutes of Technology (IITs) filled members' seats in the House of Representatives to listen to a handful of congressmen speak about India-US technology cooperation.
Congressman Tom Davis, a Republican from Virginia, looked at the Indian audience and quipped: "It is unlikely we have ever had this much brainpower in Congress before."
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Davis' remark was typical of the praise lavished on alumni from India's elite technology schools by politicians and pundits during a conference here on May 20-22.
Participants at the conference, breastled "Technology Without Borders", focused on US and Indian collaborative efforts in technology, education and business. They discussed potential risks and impediments to new trade and economic development for India.
As India and the US stand poised to upgrade their cooperation in high technology, engineers, hi-tech entrepreneurs and scientists produced by the IITs have been at the forefront of a technology boom in both countries.
Arun Shourie, a former Indian information technology minister, said though he regretted the fact that the country loses 100,000 professionals a year who emigrate, the IIT graduates "have changed the world's perception of India".
Some 40,000 IIT graduates live and work in the US.
Trade between the US and India in 2004 reached $20 billion, according to the US-India Business Council. And outsourcing by US companies of computer programming, call centres or other business process jobs accounted for the lion's share of that trade -- $12 billion.
According to Forrester Research Incorporated, a technology research company in Cambridge, Mbuttachusetts, an additional 3.4 million US jobs will move offshore by 2015, and more than half million of those jobs will be computer-related.
Shourie said the low cost of doing business in India would continue to lure jobs. He said India's space programme, "the second best in the world in its remote-sensing technology", spends only $475 million a year on research and development.
"A dollar goes far in India," Shourie noted.
However, Ganesh Natarajan, who heads Zensar Technologies Limited, an international software company at Pune in India, cautioned that the cost of doing business in India eventually would rise.
"If programmers' salaries continue to go up 12 to 15 percent a year, eventually... other countries will offer cheaper solutions," he said.
Natarajan believes small companies in the US and India should collaborate on innovations "to add value to jobs in both countries" rather than shift jobs from one place to another.
Indeed, India and the US are "innovation leaders", said Ben Wu, an buttistant secretary of the US Commerce Department. He said both governments hoped to expand trade, not just in IT, but also in defence and biotechnology.
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There will be a biotech conference in Philadelphia in June, at which Wu said private businesses would take part with Indian and American government officials.
Wu also outlined an export seminar scheduled by both governments for July in India and a meeting of the High Tech Cooperation Group, established in 2002, in the fall in New Delhi.
The group seeks to work on removing tariff and non-tariff barriers and address US concerns about privacy of data handled by companies in India.
"President (George W) Bush is committed and very excited about these initiatives," Wu said.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will visit Washington in July, and Wu said Bush was likely to return the visit "sooner (rather) than later".
Ron Somers, president of the US-India Business Council, said he believes Bush will visit India late in 2005 or in the spring 2006. "It will be a remarkable celebration, similar to Nixon visiting China," he said.
There was also palpable evidence at the Washington conference that the trend of bright Indian graduates leaving their homeland and going to the US is beginning to feel a reverse pull.
Rohit Bhayana, a partner of a small company in Maryland that specialises in database management, said his partner decided to move to India and work from there. Technology has made this possible -- the partners talk each morning online for the cost of an Internet connection, he explained.
Microsoft opened a lab at Bangalore in India in January and has hired Indian Americans who graduated from the University of California and Ohio State to work there.
P Anandan, managing director of that laboratory, was at the Washington conference and took the opportunity to discuss work on computer applications that will appeal to poor, rural people in the world's emerging markets.
Sam Pitroda, who is credited with helping lay the groundwork to allow the technology boom to take hold in India, spoke about how much there still is to be done to meet the needs of rural Indians.
Pitroda worked in India from 1981 to 1991, part of which time he spent as a technology adviser to former Prime Minister Rajiv Ghandi.
He was instrumental in installing telephone systems in rural villages, where 70 per cent of Indians live.
Pitroda said that in 1981, there were two million phones in India. Today, there are more than 100 million phones in India, and close to two million are being added every month.
Pitroda, who now lives in the US and is chief executive of WorldTel Ltd that invests in and develops infrastructure in developing countries, said India has a lot of work to do, on water, energy, housing and other areas.
He said to get things done there must be political reforms that empower local officials. He asked the IIT alumni to pressure the government for such reforms. He compared technology know-how to the "light that makes Dracula back off".
"Bureaucrats are like Draculas - throw light on them and they back off," he remarked.
US-India Business Council chief Somers cited a study by the Confederation of Indian Industry that said a typical trade transaction into India goes through 30 separate parties, requires 257 signatures and 118 copies of the same document. But he noted: "Things are getting better."
