David Willetts relates how an Austrian minister rubbed his hands in glee on hearing the UK’s restriction measures. Britain’s loss, he averred, would be Australia’s gain. Indeed, within the Commonwealth, Australia, New Zealand and Canada are becoming destinations of choice for growing numbers of Indian and Chinese students. The bonds created at university translate eventually to lasting goodwill and myriad advantages for both parties. Prime Minister David Cameron and his Conservative colleagues and Lib Dem coalition partners are dead set on winning the next general election this year. The Conservative party gamble that their latest will convince the country of their seriousness in tackling immigration is not likely to yield significant dividends simply because public concern on immigration (top priority, according to opinion polls) barely touches foreign student numbers. The government appears to have misread the signs. David Cameron and Home Secretary Teresa May may rue their decision and its possible consequences.
Indian tech firms shine in UK
There is no stopping the march of Indian firms in the UK. Top of the list is Tata, whose Chairman Cyrus Mistry took an engineering degree from Imperial College London. Tata, which owns Jaguar and Land Rover (JLR), among the best automobiles in their class in the world, is the UK’s biggest manufacturer, and its ambitious expansion plans guarantee no change in this position in the near future. Beyond this, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the company’s software firm, is today a global player with a large footprint in every continent. So successful are TCS, Infosys, Wipro and other Indian IT-BPO firms in their UK operations that they have outpaced their American and European rivals in the British market. Their collective market share for IT-BPO has grown six times in less than a decade. “In the commercial world in particular, we have seen substantial growth in the market-share of India-based providers (up from 4 per cent in 2002-05 to 25 per cent since 2010); this has come at the expense of other foreign providers, particularly those based in the US and Europe, rather than domestic (UK) providers,” according to the NASDAQ-listed Services Group. The research firm IDC, says the UK’s enterprise IT services market was worth $ 38.5 billion in 2013. Indian IT firms generated 27 per cent of their UK revenue from the financial services sector.
“There was a time when some of our UK-based clients would look at Indian firms and for smaller projects and the American vendors for big-ticket deals. But now, Indian companies are competing head- to-head on all levels with their global counterparts across applications, consulting, infrastructure and other technology areas,” said Ganersh Natarajan, Vice Chairman and CEO of RPG group company Zensar Technologies. Arun Jain, Chairman of Polaris Consulting and Services says that the top Indian IT companies (TCS, Infosys, Wipro) deserve credit for leading the way and creating a positive brand image for Indian IT as a whole. Analysts see Indian providers as tough competitors for their American rivals not only in the UK but also in Continental Europe and Asia. “Our closed-door strategy meetings with 200 top customers in the UK, US and Asia underscore that Tata Consultancy Services is now being seen as the most formidable challenger to IBM Global Services,” said Peter Schumacher, Chief Executive Officer of management consultancy firm Value Leadership Group. That’s progress for you. Time was [in the late 1980s] when Indian IT exports to the UK earned a mere $10 million in revenue. In less than two decades these have galloped past $100 billion in global sales – a wakeup call for the West not to rest on its past laurels.
Two cheers for Dhoni
Cricketers, like all figures in the public eye, have their entrances and exits from the national and international stage on which they displayed their mettle. It was no different for India’s cricket captain Mahinder Singh Dhoni, who called it a day after the drawn Test between India and Australia at Melbourne. Two cheers for Dhoni as captain of the Indian side that won the ODI World Cup on home soil in 2011 and the Twenty/20 Champions Trophy in England in 2014. The third and loudest cheer, usually reserved for success at the highest level of cricket, namely, Test matches, must be withheld as Dhoni’s record in this the most testing format of the game has been abysmal since 2011. In the first phase of his career, he took India to the top spot in Tests, but the subsequent freefall tarnished his reputation as a Test match leader. While the Indian media gushed with choreographed adulation of his leadership skills, and too many former Indian stars followed suit, the evidence and the statistics – 15 Test losses and two wins in 22 games abroad – told a starkly different tale. True, the team was in transition, but this, surely, was the situate that required that Dhoni lead from the front. An anonymous leader by then, he had become a slave to routine. But Dhoni meandered on mouthing rancid clichés at post-match press conferences on the “positives” when there were none that were visible to the naked eye during a series of humiliating defeats. The Indian cricket board’s poster boy should have been relieved of his Test captaincy, but is to misunderstand the reality of board politics. The unseemly struggle for power by board president N. Srinivasan, and the scent of scandal have brought Indian cricket into disrepute. Indian cricket is as much a game in distress as it is a Byzantine exercise in a hall of mirrors. That said,the young man from Ranchi has opened the way for cricketers from the country’s small towns to think big and reach for the sky. Dhoni’s departure hopefully will usher in a new era for India’s beleaguered, lack lustrate Test cricketers, not least for for Virat Kohli, the new captain, who has set Australia alight with his rousing performances with the bat, and can now showcase his leadership skills. For a start, his new broom can sweep away the dead wood that clogs Team, India those on life support from cracen selectors in hoc to the to the cricket board.
