Mumbai Bombings Give Outsourcing Community Pause 248
theodp writes "eWeek reports that the big fear of offshore outsourcing customers has become a reality: a major bombing attack in an outsourcing hub. In the wake of the attack, companies are considering their resources and preparedness. Despite understandable fears, people on the ground don't seem to think these latest attacks will have a long-term effect on the growth of India's tech sector." From the article: "The terrorist attack in Mumbai--and conflict between Israel and Lebanon for that matter--raise a series of questions for companies sourcing technology globally. Do you know the disaster recovery plans of your offshore services provider? Are their plans integrated with yours? And how prepared are these providers? "
Re:Moral bankruptcy (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes. Specifically, they are people who have the responsibility to prevent or otherwise deal with IT outages.
The people who think the only moral thing to do in a crisis is to be emotionally overwrought are of no use to anyone when a crisis occurs. You can go sit in a closet and cry while the rest of us solve problems for the people who didn't get killed.
Sorry they got bombed - can I have my job back (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:And the Difference is? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Moral bankruptcy (Score:0, Interesting)
Where did you get that from??? Most of these 200 re regular office goers. Pulling numbers from my magical hat, maybe 10 or so of them could be related to outsourcing in some way and their offices can pretty much deal with it. The outsoucing hub in OP refers to Bombay and not a prticular location. The bombs were on local trains.
Re:Home sweet home (Score:2, Interesting)
It's not doublespeak; it's true. Automation would allow us to keep our trade deficits in check, increase per capita productivity, and avoid giving away our key skills gratis to those who might otherwise be paying us for them. Offshore outsourcing just piles up debt that we'll have to pay back one day (or actually more likely, just devalue our currency until the debt goes away), and it encourages the country's ability to create vital products and services to atrophy.
In the short term and on a local scale, the results of automation and offshoring look similar: reduced production costs. In the long term and at a national level, the results are very different.
Run for the Hills! (Score:3, Interesting)
But wait: One in 2,600,000 Americans die each and every day in automobile accidents! That can only mean we need to prepare for Armageddon!
Re:The High Costs of Muslim Populations (Score:2, Interesting)
The Indian Express [indianexpress.com]
Sunday, July 16, 2006 Tavleen Singh
It has long been my view that political correctness is dangerous and usually harms those people and ideas it seeks in a muddled liberal fashion to protect. But, even as someone who holds this view, I was astounded at the insane political correctness we saw in the response of the political class and most of the media to last week's ghastly bombings in Mumbai.
The issue is terrorism. Right? The issue is the terrible, needless deaths of 200 people and the awful tragedy of those who will forever be scarred by the murderous act of a handful of evil men. Right? The issue is the failure of our intelligence agencies and our criminal justice system and the inability of our government to understand that terrorism is undeclared war. Right? The issue is India's security in which both Hindus and Muslims have an equal stake. Right?
Yet, if you watched television coverage of the carnage on Mumbai's trains, read your newspapers or listened to the speeches of our political leaders, you would think that the only issue was to not hurt Muslim feelings. There were no communal riots after the 1993 Mumbai bombings or after the attacks on temples in Ahmedabad, Ayodhya and Varanasi but there was more talk of communal harmony than terrorism. Hardly anybody mentioned the words "jehad" or "jehadi" or that Islamist terrorist organisations openly talk of their "jehad" against Hindu India. Some journalists dared to mention that Pakistan was almost certainly behind the attack but our political leaders only did this after the Pakistani Foreign Minister was insensitive and shameless enough to say that terrorism would continue until there was a solution in Kashmir. Then, there was a sort of reaction from our External Affairs Ministry.
This wishy-washy, uncertain, irresolute response to a horrific event was inspired, it appears, to protect Muslim sentiments and calm Hindu anger but by doing this what was achieved was the impression that all Muslims are supporters of radical Islam. And, even more dangerously, the impression that all Indian Muslims in their heart support Pakistan against India. What was also achieved was licence for sectarian political leaders like Mulayam Singh Yadav to come out in open support of SIMI, which is not just a rabidly jehadi outfit but has direct links to jehadi groups in Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The Students's Islamic Movement of India has, according to terrorism experts in the Institute for Conflict Management, been directly involved in terrorist acts like the bombing of the Sankatmochan Temple in Varanasi and the attack on the Shramjeevi Express near Jaunpur. But, according to the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, SIMI is a fine organisation with a few bad eggs. How weird is that?
SIMI is a jehadi organisation that has been recruiting misguided young Muslims for its murderous jehad in states across India. Despite being banned by the Supreme Court since September 27, 2001, it manages to function covertly in states across India but particularly in Uttar Pradesh, Kerala and Maharashtra. But, Mulayam Singh's support for them comes not from political correctness but from political calculation and it's the former we need to talk about.
Political correctness caused the print media, a couple of decades ago, to come up with a code for reporting communal riots whereby the names of communities involved in an ethnic clash were to be concealed by saying "members of a particular community". Over the years this code has deteriorated into a code that only means Muslim. So, if the Bajrang Dal had burned alive those two policemen in Bhiwandi two weeks ago, we would have identified them happily as murderous thugs. But, because it was a Muslim mob that killed the unfortunate policemen, most newspapers chose either to downplay the killings or identify the killers as "members of a community".
Re:Home sweet home (Score:3, Interesting)
Not too long ago the general sentiment here was to send H1B workers as I then was 'back home'. Only I came over from CERN to help set up the Web consortium and bring the Web to the US. So net-net I think most people would say I created jobs here.
The point I was making is that most people only look at how these issues affect themselves, they are completely oblivious to what they are doing to the small guy themselves.
Some folk in this thread seem to think that their situation is somehow worse than the folk in the third world countries that the outsourcing is going to. Some even go on to suggest a policy of autarky for the developing world. Which is of course what India did for the first forty years or so after independence. They have done much better after realising this was a big mistake.
There are only two ways for large numbers of people to get richer. One is for the economy to make more, the other is to redistribute the wealth generated. Over the past six years there has been a deliberate effort to redistribute wealth in favor of the richest of the rich. But even if this was corrected it would have only a modest effect on the general population.
If we are to grow wealthier we must get more work from fewer people. Over the next decade or so a lot of people are going to be retiring and the workforce will shrink. Outsourcing is one way to adapt to that situation.
In the long term the Indian currency is going to grow stronger against the dollar and the benefits of outsourcing will decline. Already the advantage is much more marginal than it was five years ago. The wages are lower but so is productivity when your programmers are round the other side of the planet.