National Skills Registry

Nasscom's skills and resume verification initiative is back as 'National Skill Registry'. Albeit in a diluted avatar (yet, they are only verifying factual information), it claims that it would raise the brand equity of Indian IT (How it would achieve that is unknown). What Nasscom has done for the IT industry over the years is laudable, but this step just smells of some thing else

It says this initiative would save cost of repeated background checks (by getting employees to pay and that too all of them and make it mandatory), given it will stop people from faking their experience (what is the percentage of people who do??). But it also gives them a lot of leverage over IT employees and over IT companies (even though them may not realize it now)

And for this alone, I do not like it. As Spidey says "With great power, comes great responsibility" i hope the powers that be at nasscom use theirs responsibly. Some guy from Cognizant call it the NSR as the virtual social security number for organizations.

Anyways my company too has made it mandatory for all employees to register and charging Rs 331 from everyone. Arrrfgggg.

Bangalore or Buffalo

While the industry debates whether or not Obama’s new proposal on tax is going to hurt IT outsourcing to India it is missing the forest for the trees. For the first time in recent history we have the President of United States talking openly about populist measures and proposing steps for greater protectionism. Given that US has virtually nationalized its greatest bastions of capitalism and free markets(read financial institutions), this development indicates a dangerous trend not just of the IT outsourcing industry in India but also outsourced manufacturing in China and from other developed countries.

Given that the unemployment rate is at record levels and rising, this (current proposal) could perhaps merely be more visible steps or simply rhetoric to boost the government’s popularity, what we need to watch out for is follow on actions.