Indian it could have done without these recent pictures: Malaysian policemen enacting a burlesque straight out of Kafka; BT employees protesting the company's involvement in two BPO projects in India; Siemens employees alleging that Indian firms are back to body-shopping; former Sun employees suing the company for allegedly being replaced with low-cost Indian workers; and legislative bodies in some parts of the world designing new laws or modifying existing ones to prevent Indian it from entrenching itself in their markets. The WTO is no closer to negotiating the prickly issue of services, leave alone reaching an agreement on it, and while the Malaysian incident can be passed off as a geopolitical arm-twisting exercise that went horribly wrong -Malaysia, apparently, didn't quite like India's stance at the last Non Aligned Meet-the others clearly constitute the beginnings of a backlash against the most global business India has ever known, it.

India's hubris may well have provoked the reaction. Spin doctors work overtime, pitching wondrous stories of wealth creation, governance, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness to the world's media. There are few happy business stories in the world today, and Indian it, despite the slowdown in its largest market, the US, is one of them. From Fortune to Fast Company to Forbes to The Economist, the global business press has sung, and continues to sing hosannas to India's it and it-enabled services businesses. If the companies had gone about it "very very quietly," as one exec suggests they do in a feature on the backlash in this issue (See Backlash, Page 102), things may have been very very different.

Then, in good times, no one would have noticed. Unfortunately, the great Indian it and it-enabled services story played out parallel to a global recession. Companies sought to reduce costs by laying off high-cost workers in the US and replacing them with low-cost ones in India (or sourced from India). Others outsourced entire processes off shore. Unions demurred, fired employees protested, and opportunistic politicos swooped. And suddenly India found itself in the exalted company of countries that inspire anti-globalisation protests.

Will this halt the Indian it and it-enabled services juggernaut in its tracks? Likely not. Globalisation, despite what an occasional Indian mob may do to a KFC or protests by American and British call centre agents whose jobs have been outsourced to India, will continue. It is the foundation on which several of today's Fortune 500 giants, Wal-Mart, Microsoft, and GE included have built their businesses. It seems a fair exchange. In return for being able to tap a country's market-and India has a potentially large one-these companies source products or services or both from them. And by doing this across geographies, these companies and others like them have built efficient organisations. GE, for instance, has steadfastly maintained that its US-based insurance businesses couldn't have grown without back-office support from facilities in Gurgaon.

None of these companies will be willing to do things differently now. And they shouldn't. Giving in to protectionist lobbies-that is what they are-and reserving jobs for locals goes against the spirit of globalisation. Governments can always pass laws requiring companies to do so but that would be mutually destructive. A company forced to employ locals at higher wages will soon become uncompetitive. When enough companies become uncompetitive, they will take down the local economy with them. Few governments will want to walk down that path of economic perdition.

The Indian it and IT-enabled services industry, then, will do well to wait out this night of long knives-and it promises to be a long one. Yes, things will become difficult in the short-term. Already elaborate visa procedures will become even more so. Protests will increase. And there will be talk, lots if it, of laws to curb outsourcing. Eventually, though, the fundamental principles of commerce will overcome all else. Just as it is natural for countries to protect the interests of their own (or to at least be perceived as doing so), it is natural for companies to do things that will maximise their profits.