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 Every
family in the colony I grew up in, in Secunderabad, now has at least
one member in the US. The route was one of two standard approaches:
The first was to do your B. Tech., write your gre, apply, go abroad
for some random Master's degree, survive on whatever teaching assistanceship
the University threw your way, get some job in some technology function
of some company, get married (either to someone Mummy found back
home, or in rare cases, to a fellow h-1b), pay a mortgage for 30
years to buy a house in the suburbs, pay installments to buy the
standard issue Toyota or Honda blahmobile, have the 2.1 kids and
live the desi life.
The other was to do the NIIT/Aptech thing,
get picked up by some body shop/people exporter, get assigned to
some project abroad, hang on after the project, get some job in
some technology function and the rest as above.
I write this in the US now, at the fag end of
a business trip. The mood I sense in the Desi Division is one of
desperation. Not that we ever distinguished ourselves with oodles
of confidence, but I knew the strain was showing when one of this
contingent confessed during a nervous drive to the mall that he
was afraid of getting a traffic ticket because that could somehow
end up with the revocation of his h1-b status in the US.
I laughed aloud when I heard it, and immediately
shut up when I saw he wasn't being facetious, and instead spent
the next 10 minutes trying to tell him that a that a traffic ticket
had nothing whatsoever to do with his work status. I'm not sure
he was convinced, but I could see he was clearly living on the edge.
It's weird, virtually every desi in a technology
function here who hasn't yet gotten a green card (and that's a huge
number of them) is a nervous wreck right now. Even those with the
magic card are among the lot that ask me ''How things are in India.''
''Is it easy to find work?'' ''How much do houses cost?'' ''What's
a good salary these days?'' And ''How did you feel about moving
back to India?''
It may not be great in India, but it certainly
is better than this. We aren't living paranoid lives, waiting for
the day when the axe falls on our jobs, dreading the thought of
packing up and going back home, worrying about seeming like a loser
to those around us, worrying about giving up the good life, worrying
about the failure of the big migratory move.
In many ways this is a sobering lesson. This
was a generation that never knew failure, a generation that was
brought up on the idea that a job in technology is job security,
a generation that was urged to move abroad by their parents, who
in many cases followed them over. Oh, how the world has changed.
Technology jobs are being lost in the US by
the hundreds-guess why? They're all moving to India. There is no
such thing called job security. If you don't have a back-up plan,
or some entrepreneurial instinct, you're toast. Oh, and don't be
so sure that the good life is what you find out of India. Once you
get used to the idea of cooking, cleaning, shopping, doing the housework
all by yourself, in addition to all the debt you take up to pay
for your too-big house and the too-elite school and the too-new
car, you may find you don't really have the time to enjoy life-and
even if you do, you certainly don't have the money.
My partner and I were calculating what ''a
good job'' meant in the US and India in terms of a comparable lifestyle.
We felt it was an annual income of $100,000 in the US or about Rs
8 lakh in India. And also agreed that in the latter case you'd probably
be able to lead a far more bindaas (nonchalant) life with frequent
travel and partying than in the former.
Is there a solution? I'm not sure. If you do
want to work abroad, get used to the idea of coming back sometime,
or moving to other cities, countries and places, wherever the opportunity
is. Live a ''light'' life-go easy on the house, the car, the expenses-
rent instead of buying, for it can be a huge bother (and loss) to
sell your stuff.
The rolling stones will gather moss. The future
doesn't belong to dinosaurs. It will belong to bumblebees.
Mahesh Murthy, an angel investor, heads
Passionfund. He earlier ran Channel V and, before that, helped launch
Yahoo! and Amazon at a Valley-based interactive marketing firm.
Reach him at Mahesh@passionfund.com.
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