The Indian IT story need not unspool

K V Prasad

It has been just about a month since Donald Trump assumed office as the President of the United States. Every country in the world and its leaders are watching with bated breath what the Trump presidency will mean for them and the country.

India is no exception. First signs of the way the wind is blowing across the Potomac came when President Trump picked up the phone and spoke to Prime Minister Narendra Modi drawing the broad contours of what the nature of engagement of his administration is going to be.

Since then other senior members of his Cabinet spoke with their counterparts Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj and Defence Minister Manohar Parikkar, respectively. The immediate takeaway is one of continuing the policy of deeper engagement with India.

Diplomatic decency and pragmatic attitude of the new US administration is not enough to calm down the great sense of uncertainty over the impending move to raise the bar in the grant of coveted H1B Visas for the highly-skilled technical persons from India's IT sector.

Over the past few weeks, the Indian IT majors and its huge battery of workforce are in an animated discussion on the future what with the new mandarins in the White House planning to raise financial barriers to make it difficult for this category of visa applicants. Remember, this is not the first time that the US built in measures to make the visa more expensive in the hope that the companies will be forced to offer jobs to highly skilled IT professionals available in the United States rather than import cheap labour.

The debate in the US on hiring of top overseas IT professionals is going on for a while. Interestingly, the then Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates had argued in favour of a lower visa fee. He emphasised that Microsoft hires top engineers from India or A category students, talent not available in the country. Responding to a question on jobs for the homegrown B and C category students, Bill Gates responded it was these A category foreign engineers who were creating jobs for the B and C category US students. In one of his last visits to the Capitol Hill as Microsoft Chairman, Gates told the Congressional members that the Government's stance towards highly skilled foreign technical professionals should be in response to the policy of neighbouring countries.

For instance, Gates said Microsoft opened an office just across the border in Canada to employ foreign born employees who could not get the US visa. So in effect the jobs for few top engineers created more for the local population albeit in another country and not America.

With a change of regime, the Indian IT industry is still to come to grips of what lay in store for them. The government is waiting for the companies to formulate their response to the emerging situation amid a strong voice from Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani that the protectionist move could well be a great opportunity for the India.

The hike in visa fee some years back remained unresolved during President Obama's tenure. According to American immigration, despite the last fee raise, there was no drop in number of applications from India.

Ironically, categorical assertions from the External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj notwithstanding that resolution of the visa issue remains a top priority for the Modi government, there was little movement on this front.

A change cannot occur that easily since it is the U S Congress that wrote the law which the Obama administration implemented. Now unless the members of Congress on the Capitol Hill are convinced, it cannot be reversed. The H1B law was enacted in 1990, and tweaked several times over by the Congress. It raise and lowered caps which is now stagnant at 65,000 per year since 2004 while the fee under another law, American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act, was raised to $4000. 

This fund goes to train the citizens in the sector. A single application fee could be anything up to $14,000. Between 2013 and 2015, the applications received by authorities in this category ranged from nearly 3 lakh to 3.48 lakh. Of these 65,000 get through the lottery system while 20,000 are for those who majored in the US. In the present case, the Trump administration's hints of doubling the wage for IT foreign professional from the existing $ 65,000 to $ 1,30,000 has scared the daylights of the Indian IT majors. Currently three separate Bills are under consideration in the U S Congress - one in the Senate and two in the House. These are now under referral to multiple committees.

PM Modi hoed the field by telling the Congressional delegation in India this week that they take a reflective, balanced and farsighted perspective on the movement of skilled professionals. Ironically, the delegation included Jan Schakowsky and David Cicilline, both leading proponents of Make it in America, offshoring prevention and working to reward companies that hire American workers.

Just as leading Indian industrialists sense an opportunity, the Indian IT majors should quickly organise themselves to have a forceful voice on the Hill both by marshalling the services of strong Indian-Americans and pool resources to hire professional lobbyists who know how to work inside the Beltway. There is enough scope and time to mould a favourable opinion among the lawmakers on the Capitol Hill. What is required is to craft innovative strategy and have a talk with the famed K Street boys in Washington DC.  It is time the industry started playing like big boys instead of relying solely on the government to push its case. Just a presidential order cannot change the way the Congress works. 

[email protected]