United States President Donald J Trump has announced: “We will follow two simple rules: buy American and hire American”. The US market accounts for a large number of Indian companies and employees. Indians have added big value to the US, given jobs to millions of people, including American people, paid billions of dollars in tax and above all given skilled workforce. Critics state that it is talent shortage and lower costs that makes American companies hire from India.
In fact several top Fortune 500 companies and other busines
s giants have also set up their offshore call centres, BPOs and other services in India. Factors, which helped in this massive growth of BPO in India, include favourable policies, good communication networks, comparatively lower pays and skilled, English-speaking workforce. Cost savings, improved quality and productivity have encouraged companies to outsource services to India. Many US-based companies, including Fortune 500 firms, have heavily invested and are dependent on Indian IT service providers.
In any case, for India to remain globally competitive, its laws and structures need to be made more compatible for today’s era of business. For instance, skill development needs to be encouraged such as by way of amendments in the Apprentices Act, encouraging ethical training bonds etc; provisions of working hours, leaves, holidays need to be aligned with current work culture.
Depending upon the nature of establishment and category of employees, companies should be allowed to have flexible working hours, especially in organisations where there are policies like work from home, setting own work schedules, ‘compressed work week’, which allows employees to work less than five days a week though longer working hours a day etc; likewise, provisions for leaves and holidays also need a review; exorbitant and globally incompetent tax rates and liabilities, ambiguous provisions, cumbersome compliance systems weaken the Indian corporate against foreign rivals.
There’s an urgent need for reforms, clarity in provisions and well-organised transparent procedures with adequate checks on statutory authorities; outsourcing laws are ambiguous and the judgments are conflicting with respect to claims such as regularisation and pay parities. As far as possible, foreign brands’ outsourcing should be kept immune from such litigations and closing down manufacturing units should be simplified. Terminating workman category employees, according to Indian laws, is tougher than divorcing spouse!
Companies find recruitment of fixed employees as the safest option, wherein employee gets terminated as per terms of the contract. This category of employees needs to be diluted.
Jobs that require less specialised skills—like the BPO units and call centre jobs—may be affected if there are changes implemented in the American policies. However, better-skilled jobs are likely to remain unaffected for a longer time given their insufficient availability. H1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in speciality occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise in specialised fields. Under the H1B visa programme, US-based companies hire highlyskilled foreign workers. Accustomed to Indian work culture, they often work long hours without extra pay. Indian legislature needs to set laws and practices right before it’s late.
We need to showcase that all these decades, Indian technology sector has been a boon for the US economy as well as highlights contributions in terms of taxes, creation of jobs and skilled work. But, nevertheless, to remain competitive we need to simplify provisions, have flexible labour market, generate more trained, skilled, educated and upgraded workforce.