Author: Thomas L. Friedman
Publication: The New York Times
Date: February 26, 2004
I've been in India for only a few
days and I am already thinking about reincarnation. In my next life, I
want to be a demagogue.
Yes, I want to be able to huff and
puff about complex issues - like outsourcing of jobs to India - without
any reference to reality. Unfortunately, in this life, I'm stuck in the
body of a reporter/columnist. So when I came to the 24/7 Customer call
center in Bangalore to observe hundreds of Indian young people doing service
jobs via long distance - answering the phones for U.S. firms, providing
technical support for U.S. computer giants or selling credit cards for
global banks - I was prepared to denounce the whole thing. "How can it
be good for America to have all these Indians doing our white-collar jobs?"
I asked 24/7's founder, S. Nagarajan.
Well, he answered patiently, "look
around this office." All the computers are from Compaq. The basic software
is from Microsoft. The phones are from Lucent. The air- conditioning is
by Carrier, and even the bottled water is by Coke, because when it comes
to drinking water in India, people want a trusted brand. On top of all
this, says Mr. Nagarajan, 90 percent of the shares in 24/7 are owned by
U.S. investors. This explains why, although the U.S. has lost some service
jobs to India, total exports from U.S. companies to India have grown from
$2.5 billion in 1990 to $4.1 billion in 2002. What goes around comes around,
and also benefits Americans.
Consider one of the newest products
to be outsourced to India: animation. Yes, a lot of your Saturday morning
cartoons are drawn by Indian animators like JadooWorks, founded three years
ago here in Bangalore. India, though, did not take these basic animation
jobs from Americans. For 20 years they had been outsourced by U.S. movie
companies, first to Japan and then to the Philippines, Korea, Hong Kong
and Taiwan. The sophisticated, and more lucrative, preproduction, finishing
and marketing of the animated films, though, always remained in America.
Indian animation companies took the business away from the other Asians
by proving to be more adept at both the hand-drawing of characters and
the digital painting of each frame by computer - at a lower price.
Indian artists had two advantages,
explained Ashish Kulkarni, C.O.O. of JadooWorks. "They spoke English, so
they could take instruction from the American directors easily, and they
were comfortable doing coloring digitally." India has an abundance of traditional
artists, who were able to make the transition easily to computerized digital
painting. Most of these artists are the children of Hindu temple sculptors
and painters.
Explained Mr. Kulkarni: "We train
them to transform their traditional skills to animation in a digital format."
But to keep up their traditional Indian painting skills, JadooWorks has
a room set aside - because the two skills reinforce each other. In short,
thanks to globalization, a whole new generation of Indian traditional artists
can keep up their craft rather than drive taxis to earn a living.
But here's where the story really
gets interesting. JadooWorks has decided to produce its own animated epic
about the childhood of Krishna. To write the script, though, it wanted
the best storyteller it could find and outsourced the project to an Emmy
Award-winning U.S. animation writer, Jeffrey Scott - for an Indian epic!
"We are also doing all the voices
with American actors in Los Angeles," says Mr. Kulkarni. And the music
is being written in London. JadooWorks also creates computer games for
the global market but outsources all the design concepts to U.S. and British
game designers. All the computers and animation software at JadooWorks
have also been imported from America (H.P. and I.B.M.) or Canada, and half
the staff walk around in American-branded clothing.
"It's unfair that you want all your
products marketed globally," argues Mr. Kulkarni, "but you don't want any
jobs to go."
He's right. Which is why we must
design the right public policies to keep America competitive in an increasingly
networked world, where every company - Indian or American - will seek to
assemble the best skills from around the globe. And we must cushion those
Americans hurt by the outsourcing of their jobs. But let's not be stupid
and just start throwing up protectionist walls, in reaction to what seems
to be happening on the surface. Because beneath the surface, what's going
around is also coming around. Even an Indian cartoon company isn't just
taking American jobs, it's also making them.
