WaPost: A Reversal of the Tide in India: Indian Tech Workers Flow Home

[Dr. Jones]

A Reversal of the Tide in India
Tech Workers Flow Home to More Success

By S. Mitra Kalita
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 28, 2006; Page A01

MADRAS, India -- In 1997, Dutt Kalluri left India to work for a Canadian software company, hoping the overseas experience would do his résumé good. A year later, he was promoted to head U.S. operations from Rockville. But as he returned to India for business and to visit his elderly mother, he marveled at the changes sweeping his homeland: new stores, more cars, enthusiasm for technology.

In 2001, not wanting to miss out on this transformation, Kalluri gave up a six-figure salary and the family's townhouse in Gaithersburg for a job here with an Indian conglomerate. His wife, Uma, gave up her daily syndicated dose of "Seinfeld." Daughter Lakshmi said goodbye to her Montessori preschool classmates.

These return migrations have become increasingly common; Indian expatriates such as the Kalluris are finding that, at times, the best way to move up is to move back.

Read the full article here http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/27/AR2006022701513.html?referrer=email&referrer=email&referrer=email

[rodeodance]

1. "Technology development happens in India. Technology consumption happens

in the US. yup.



.....They bought a beachfront house here, arranging the contents from their former home just as they were in Gaithersburg. But other transitions were not as simple.

They do not drive anymore; chauffeurs do that. Dutt Kalluri is one of the few executives arriving at meetings on time; his colleagues follow "IST" -- Indian Standard Time, which is to say, late. A wistful Uma Kalluri longs to make Folgers coffee instead of a sugar-and-spice-laden South Indian java and is adjusting to living with her mother-in-law.

Yet the Kalluris brush off the cultural disconnects, saying they have simply followed opportunity to the United States and back. "If you want to be in the latest trends, you have to be in India," said Dutt Kalluri, who heads data warehousing and business intelligence at the information-technology division of Larsen & Toubro Ltd., India's largest construction and engineering company. "Technology development happens in India. Technology consumption happens in the U.S."

[Dr. Jones]

2. Good point.

This is pretty much par for the course for the U.S. economy right now. Production and development happens in foreign countries, and consumption happens in the U.S. We have successfully outsourced virtually all our industries, and have become a consumption society. We simply don't produce much anymore.

Recently I read Bill Moyer's recent speech where he talked about Tom DeLay and his siding with companies who employ slave labor in the Marianas to produce goods for major American companies. The kicker was that these products were stamped "MADE IN THE USA!!" OUTRAGEOUS!!