[Reader-list] Thomas Friedman (NYT) in Bangalore

[geert lovink]

http://www.nytimes.com

Thomas Friedman (NYT) in Bangalore

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.