India’s sun is setting

Wired News reports on the Jobs Squeeze for Indian Workers:

U.S. companies such as IBM, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle and PeopleSoft are already exploring countries with even cheaper sources of technical labor, says a report from research firm IDC. The new destinations include Romania, Russia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Back in 1990, when I helped some members of an Indian religious cult set up a software company in South India, I predicted this would happen, just as it has in the Little Dragons and in Malaysia. A developing country can only attract business on the basis of cheap labor for so long until it’s choked on its own success and the cheap labor market moves elsewhere. Indians still have an advantage over other Asian countries because of widespread English usage among the educated class, but Indian culture is basically anti-capitalist and anti-Western, so they won’t be able to compete with New Europe for long unless they can deal with their BJP problem and the arrogance of their Brahmin caste.