Nerd mentality — Europe too begins covet Indian brains

“We have gone from being a superpower to just being interested in supermarkets,” Lord Paul joked self-deprecatingly at a meeting on Thursday of Indian CEOs, even as Sir Christopher Meyer, the US Ambassador of the country once known as a nation of shopkeepers, fidgeted embarrassedly.

“Indians have always regarded England as their second home. I invite you to come and invest in your second home,” Paul pleaded.

To paraphrase the title of a movie (based on an Indian writer’s work) that is playing to much acclaim in these parts, it has been “Such a Long Journey” for the hitherto unwanted Indian. From being a constant suspect as a visa-grubbing illegal alien, the peripatetic Indian — at least the one with computer skills — is now being courted with ardour by western nations.

“Quite a change from the time I first came here,” mused Sudhakar Shenoy — CEO of the Virginia-based Information Management Systems who came to US in the seventies — as he heard Lord Paul’s spiel.

Typical of the Americans though, they are moving fast to grab the best, brightest, and the most, leaving the dregs for the Europeans.

“The Germans are waking up a decade late. The United States has already taken the cream of our talented computer people. All that remains for the Germans are leftovers,” one Berlin-based Indian diplomat said in one of the many stories in the US media about Germany’s bid for Indian brains.

But despite the head start and a decade of packing in Indian brains, the US still finds itself critically short of hi-tech manpower.

According to a study commissioned by the ITAA and released earlier this week, the US high-tech industry will create a demand in this country for roughly 1.6 million IT workers this year alone.

With demand for appropriately skilled people far exceeding supply, half of these positions — 843,328 — will likely go unfilled, the study said. In a total US IT workforce of 10 million, that shortfall means one job in every dozen will be vacant. The study was sponsored by companies such as Microsoft, Cisco and Oracle, and included Complete Business Solutions, an Indian-owned company from Michigan.

Close on the heels of the study, US lawmakers, led by Republican Lamar Smith, voted this week to remove for the next three years the cap on H1-B visas that allow skilled foreign workers into the US. In doing so, Smith, a Conservative Texas Congressman, outdid other lawmakers who had upped the limit from the original 65,000 to 115,000, and now to 200,000.

“Given the importance of the high-tech industry to our economy, I think we should give the industry the benefit of the doubt and accommodate the current level of demand,” Smith said. “Let the market determine how many foreign-skilled workers we need rather than have Congress set limits based on arbitrary numbers.”

The US move would straightaway checkmate Germany’s bid for high-techworkers, given that Indians — the biggest workpool — typically prefer the US to Germany, where feeling run high against immigrants.

In the US too, it’s not all hunky dory. Some local business interests resent the assembly-line entry of foreign workers, but for now the high-tech industry is having its way.

“It’s a global marketplace. Germany, and also other countries are going to attract Indian high-tech workers,” warned Harris Miller, president of the ITAA, cautioning against losing the battle for the brains as some are calling it.

In recent days though, Germany has been rocked by a furious debate about the advisibility of inviting Indians. The opposition Christian Democrat Party in Germany has been campaigning against the move using the slogan “Kinder statt Inder” (children instead of Indians).

Unlike previous research restricted to narrow “core” job categories — computer programmers, systems analysts and computer scientists — the latest ITAA study looks at the bigger picture and describes a far more vibrant and diverse technical population using the eight “career clusters” developed by the Northwest Center for Emerging Technologies (NWCET). (The full study is available at itaa.org).