India, creator of US jobs

President Obama comes to India at a time when the US economy’s inability to create jobs on the scale required to bring unemployment down has acquired a sharp political edge, and it showed in the President’s speeches in Mumbai. While speaking at a gathering of business leaders, he actually addressed an audience back home, explaining how his visit to India is designed to leverage India’s nascent fast growth for job creation by the tens of thousands in the US.

The $10 billion worth of deals signed between Indian and American firms shortly before the President’s arrival would create 48,000 jobs in the US, said Mr Obama. In fact, even outsourcing, that dirty word quintessentially symbolising the dangers that globalisation poses to a high-cost economy like the US, creates jobs in America.

Aegis, an Essar-promoted business process outsourcing company, employs 5,000 out of its 47,000 workforce in the US, said Aegis CEO Aparup Sengupta recently, while receiving the economictimes.com BPO Award for CEO of the year.

Whenever a fresh BPO seat is added and a new computer switched on, it creates software jobs in the US and adds to the profits of American computing companies. True, globalised growth puts pressure on the American workforce to move up the knowledge curve, calls for greater years of education and for more innovation but also lowers the cost of living by making everything cheaper than they would be if made in the USA, and by lowering the cost of doing business.

And as globalised growth pushes up incomes in economies like India, that would create yet more demand for goods and services that Americans are best placed to provide. President Obama articulated this logic well, speaking in Mumbai.

This falls short of ending ridiculous legislation in the US curbing outsourcing, but throws presidential weight in the campaign against protectionism.

For five decades after Independence, Indians looked up to the rest of the world for aid, technology and capital. Now, the world looks upon India as a dynamic creator of jobs and income opportunities, as a force for global progress and peace. President Obama’s words reflect the new reality, not the platitudes of a cultured guest.