quote:
Interference could cook India's golden goose
By Andy Mukherjee
October 21, 2005
COMMENT
India'S computer-software exporters are slowly sinking into the quagmire of disruptive politics, in the process losing one of their key advantages over traditional businesses such as manufacturing and banking services.
A former Indian prime minister, H.D. Deve Gowda, this week questioned the rationale behind allotting government land in and around the hi-tech city of Bangalore to major companies such as Infosys Technologies, warning such "favours" could attract public criticism and discredit the government.
Another challenge to India's $US22 billion ($A29.3 billion) technology services industry came last week when Prakash Karat, general secretary of India's main Marxist party, argued that workers had a universal right to strike.
Karat's commentary, published in his party's newsletter, isn't specifically about the software industry. It only says that "the working people will rebuff all attempts to put restrictions on the right to protest and the right to strike."
But the commentary provided left-wing politicians enough ideological ammunition to go after governments in provinces such as West Bengal that have banned strikes by software code-writers, because they provide an "essential service"
Political interference in the software industry, the mascot of India's economic resurgence, is inevitable and risky. The Indian information technology industry now employs more than a million people.
Political meddling is dangerous because of the estimated $US35 billion global investors have sunk into Indian equities since 2000. These investors may start worrying if India's highly profitable knowledge industry is threatened.