It's magic in Bangalore

Indian Express, 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 puff about complex issues - like out sourcing job 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 hundred of Indian young people doing services job via long distance- answering the phone for U S firms, providing technical support for US 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% of the shares in 24/7 are owned by US investor. This explain why, although the US has lost some service jobs to India, total exports from US companies to India have grown form $2.5 billion in 1990 to $4.1billion in 2002. What goes around comes around, and also benefits Americans.

Consider one of the newest products to be out sourced to India: animation. Yes, a lot of your Saturday morning cartoons are drawn by Indian animators like Jadooworks, founded 3years ago here in Bangalore. India, though, did not take these animation jobs from Americans. For 20years there have been out sourced by US movie companies, first to Japan and then to Philippines, Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The sophisticated, and more lucrative, per production, finishing and marketing of the animated films, though the always remain in America. Indian animation companies took the business away form the other Asians by providing 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 artist had two advantages, explain Ashish kulkani, COO of Jadooworks. 'They spoke English, so they could take instructions 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 artist are the children of Hindu temple sculptors and painters. Explain Mr. Kulkarin: "We train them to transform their traditional skills to animation in a digital format". But to keep up there traditional Indian painting skills, jadooworks has a room set aside because the two skills reinforce each other. In short, thanks to globalizations, a whole new generation of Indian traditional artist can keep up their craft rather then 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 child hood of Krishna. To write the script though, It wanted the best story teller it could find and out sourced the project to an Emmy Award winning US 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 gobal market but out sources all the design concepts to US and British game designers . All the computers and animation software at jadooworks have also been imported form America( HP and IBM) 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. Kulkari, "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 a increasingly networked world, where every company India or America will seek to assemble the best skills from around the globe. And we must cushion those American hurt by the out sourcing 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, its also making them.