Indian companies are learning the Washington lobbying game (Interesting)

[OhioChick]

The US-India Political Action Committee has defended outsourcing vendors, most of whose employees are in India. In a sign of their changing approach, the Indian vendors are also imitating a tactic used against them in the last election: putting a human, and preferably American, face on the issue.

In the heat of the 2004 US presidential race, John Kerry likened outsourcing to treason, Lou Dobbs harangued against it from his CNN anchor chair and the Indian outsourcing vendors were left scrambling.

Engineers to the core, their leaders fired back with data-packed PowerPoint presentations. Outsourcing is good for the economy, they said; it increases efficiency; it creates more jobs than it costs. But in the eyes of Americans, those arguments proved no match for vivid tales of laid-off software engineers.

“Telling someone who loses their job in North Carolina or Jacksonville that this is good for the economy doesn’t work,” said Phiroz Vandrevala, Executive VP, Tata Consultancy Services.

Now as the 2008 US election starts to sizzle, the Indian outsourcing firms have returned to win Washington over as veritable insiders, slicker and better connected than ever. They have hired a former high official in the administration of President George W Bush as a lobbyist. They are humanising the issue by bringing Americans they have hired into meetings with politicians.

http://www.deccanherald.com/Content/Aug272007/eb2007082621598.asp