Brain Drain And … Freeze! Link to heading

Currency, passport and flag of US

Image by Joshua Woroniecki from Pixabay

A steady influx of college-educated Indian workers to US has never bode well with struggling Americans. The growing resentment was still not potent enough to be at loggerheads with a thriving corporate atmosphere enabled by reduced labour costs. It remained so until the recent announcement of yet another exorbitant levy on H1B visa applicants by US government. The Immigration Act of 1990 was introduced in US to compensate for labour shortage by allowing employment based immigration with provision of administrative naturalization.

Those who govern must see how the people react to administration. Ultimately, the people are the final arbiters.

- Lal Bahadur Shastri, Second Prime Minister of India

Since the announcement, corporate America is full of trepidation over the President’s “no free lunch” diktat. The clarifications made by the White House did bring some relief to existing H1B holders as they learnt that they have been exempted from its scope. However, it is the US startups which are among the worst hit as they would no longer be able to afford hiring workers abroad. Perhaps, the best talent has already settled itself at a more conducive ecosystem. India on the other hand has very little to benefit from the move as its best talent would manage to find another attractive destination to venture. The key factor for their return to motherland appears to be rise in hate crimes against Indian diasphora driven by the resentment among the jobless youth abroad.

Is AI hallucinating or the companies which believe it can replace workers? Link to heading

Artificial Intelligence has not yet lived up to its promise of replacing workers. Corporates are eager to fire their bloated workforce under the pretext of AI agents take over only to realize their blunders later. They often fall back on legacy systems as AI has led to slower turnaround. GenAI tools aren’t generating production ready code. Teams would suffer because of the repeated verifications required in the process. The results are exactly opposite of the promise. Citizens from all walks of life are equally affected.

Investors in US are making huge bets on AI based on the hype floating around. The phenomenon shares its characteristics with the dot com bubble of the early 2000s when every startup would attach a ‘.com’ after its name to get a higher valuation. Eventually only a very few players survived who came to be known as the Big Tech.

Startup India Link to heading

Indian IT giant TCS, which reportedly announced a lay off affecting 12000 employees, seems to have taken advantage of the AI hype and use it as an opportunity to shed off excess fat. The looming mass unemployement caused by such decisions coupled with corruption and predatory taxation (GST cuts are inadequate) is a recipe for Nepal like GenZ protests which has inspired similar events in France and Peru.

New Delhi is seen championing the likes of Zoho which has a reputation of leading CRM (Customer Relationship Management) sector. Apart from UPI led by government through PPP (private public partnership) model, the startup ecosystem is yet to produce a profitable product independent of foreign aid which can compete on the global stage. There is a dearth of indigenous servers which can replace AWS or Google Cloud and an indigenous smartphone brand premium enough to be gifted to sitting MPs in the parliament instead of the latest Apple iPhone PRO or Google Pixel PRO models.

India on the global map

Photo by Lara Jameson

Given that AI does not bother consent when it comes to divulging data - a hacker’s dream, it poses a huge risk when integrated into India Stack. There is a need to curb AI penetration across systems and contain its spread. It is after all, till date, a system under test.