Indian Technology Workers Worry About a Job Threat: Technology
By NIDA NAJARJUNE 25, 2017
PUNE, India — Last month, Sudhakar Choudhari took the company bus as usual from his one-bedroom apartment to the suburban offices of Tech Mahindra, a major employer of workers in India
that powers the global technology machine behind the scenes.
How to pay the home loans?”
Mr. Choudhari is one of a number of Indian technology workers who have lost their jobs in recent months as many in India debate whether an industry
that has long served as a gateway to the middle class is preparing to shed jobs en masse.
But some in the Indian tech industry worry that many of the new jobs will be created outside India, in places like the United States, in part because President Trump has pledged to tighten visa laws
that allowed many Indian nationals to go to that country to work.
A 2015 study released by the National Association of Software and Services Companies, the Indian technology industry trade group known as Nasscom, and McKinsey India found
that 50 to 70 percent of workers’ skills would be irrelevant by 2020.
“Even if these companies don’t have huge net losses, there’s a person who will suffer, and that’s a person with a limited skill set in India.”
Such job losses could be politically damaging to the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who won an
electoral mandate in 2014 on the promise of development and employment for a bulging youth population.