Rising Elephant: The Growing Clash with India Over White-Collar Jobs and Its Meaning for America and the World

by Ashutosh Sheshabalaya

Now doing to IT what the Japanese did to cars, India's rapid emergence as the West's back office, favorite location for white collar jobs and most recently as a hot medical center for Americans needing surgery( ) is shaking up the world.

From CBS's "60 Minutes" to the front cover of BusinessWeek, India is headline news. Not just another argument against exporting jobs to poor countries, Rising Elephant documents the surprising...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 156751295X
• ISBN13: 9781567512953
• Release Date: September 2004
• Publisher: Common Courage Press
• Length: 322 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Must read...and must have book!

Where's a 6th star to rate this book?! Not only excellent (well-written, well-organized), but an eye-opening ouvrage which should be required reading at any university's economics department worthy of the name. Ditto for businessmen interested in outsourcing, an inevitable fact of modern-day economic growth. There are many oponents of outsourcing (if one sees what is happening currently in China, one understands), however what this has done to boost local growth in a positive manner in India is simply short of phenomenal. To not have this book, if anything, simply as a reference book, would be a mistake. Highly recommended...

At last, some real perspective - would have given 6 stars

If this book has drawn comments about its "aggrandizement" of Indian culture, that surely is a compliment. This is especially true when the commentator has nothing at all to justify this criticism, other than the laughable idea that India did not exist in the "9th to the 13th centuries". More than its age as a civilization, what is important as this book's author explains with its arsenal of annotated references, is the unique continuity of India, its very 'Indianness'. Mark Twain understood that and is quoted for this by the author. Secondly, we hear about the success of Indian IT being explained by the disparity between the dollar and the rupee. Much of Rising Elephant IS about the artificial exchange rate system, which is described as a Moebius strip, and analyzed (incidentally, without ever once attacking the 'quality' of American IT people) in the section: Whose Goalposts ? Cheap India or Overpriced West ? No, the reasons for India's IT stardom are different. The third chapter explains what exactly was happening and who was doing the 'real stuff', amidst the 'frenzy' of Silicon Valley's casino players. In a world where CNN, BBC and Yahoo News have Top Stories (in their global editions) about 'Florida boy escapes alligator attack', an explanation about the quiet but steady rise at the highest-value end of the global economy of a onetime (and still for many in the West) Third World basketcase is surely disturbing, especially when one imagines it did not exist until (I assume) the British arrived. It is a pity that the book was written before the famous Cope India airforce exercises between the US and India (which it does refer to as being planned), where the Indians registered a 9-1 victory. I have just read a piece in a US defence publication that the Indians were simply out-thinking the USAF, which was running a textbook drill, and "did not expect" the Indians to be as good. There is a parallel here with what Rising Elephant explains was why Netscape and Silicon Graphics' Jim Clark preferred to work as far as possible with Indians alone, because of their "imagination" and their "lust for the kill", mental of course. This is a good way to show the interconnected nature of India's emergence - the same process at work in the software industry as in the military. This is what I learned from Rising Elephant: the 'Indianness' of India is its strength. Interesting that neither the New York Times or Washington Post has yet reviewed the book, since there is so much evidence in the footnotes to show how badly wrong they have always got India.

The Future is Here and it Tastes of Tikka Masala

Though I have no pretensions of being a scholar, I believe Rising Elephant will ten years along be noted as THE seminal work of our time. Everyone knows how successful Indians in Britain are and the emphasis they place on education (I just read they are going to introduce the Theory of Relativity in Indian schools, and kids there are making money providing Americans with online tuition !) But India also has most of the ingredients in place to displace America. As this wonderful book explains, both India and China are impacting on the world like America itself did at the turn of the 19th century, but the key lies in the difference between the two Asian giants. This is not just about technology (lots of comparative data on IT, biotech, space programs, nuclear technology etc.). It is also about society, culture and more. When I visit Africa or the Middle East, I do not see a Chinese parallel to Bollywood's influence. I have not heard of Chinese fashion or car designers beginning to strike gold in Paris, Milan and New York. Nor have I heard of a Chinese parallel to people like Ravi Shankar or Ali Akbar Khan (which may explain why other than Zubin Mehta, India has produced no world-class Western musicians, unlike the Chinese). And who can argue that China's model of political and religious freedom will inspire anybody ? So this is not about just IT, or economics and business. As our rich, self-satisfied societies here begin to age, India's influence will be far-reaching. This book explains it with remarkable sophistication and readability, and just in case you have doubts, check the 30 pages of footnotes. But get prepared for India's arrival. And if, like me, you have just visited Sri Lanka and seen whose military very quickly but quietly did most of the work there, while the Americans took the credit (at least on TV), spend a lot of time studying the chapter which speaks of the Great Indian Absence.

A unique effort

What I like most about this book is the way it connects, explains and provides evidence about a lot of different but major developments: the software jobs crisis in America, the role of Indian-Americans in technology and now in business and finance, the excesses of the dotcom boom, the development of India and its fight against poverty, its huge historical role in developing mathematics and making some of the biggest breakthroughs in science, and of course its continuing rise to eventual superpower status as well as the key differences between it and China. As an Indian, I have learned a lot about my country and its rich history (from Nalanda to World War II and the Belgian Congo), and understood that some of these unique features explain why it is succeeding in a knowledge-intensive field like IT. I also advise American colleagues to read this book because it explains that they are not victims to job stealers. I think no discussion on international economics should leave out purchasing power parity any more, and there is a lot on this concept in the book. I believe the first chapter alone is a better explanation of the whole jobs crisis in the US than any one else has done so far, and the list of notes shows how carefully the author has done his homework.

Scholarly without being boring

More than the job losses of some of my IT community friends, my real eye-opener to the growing Indian challenge was when I was doing a little Internet research on Thunder and System X, America's two most powerful supercomputers (Thunder runs at our top nuclear lab Lawrence Livermore), and saw that the manufacturer California Digital was founded and run by Indians. This book has hundreds of such examples. Even though I was, at first, a little put off by its India-feelgood tone, I believe the author is simply stating facts, and his sometimes strong tone is probably because such facts should have been evident long ago. The Indian IT jobs challenge is clearly not recent, and tomorrow's India with its satellites, rockets and rural broadband will definitely impact massively on the world. I agree with what the author calls the Emperor's New Clothes and the Rip Van Winkle effect - that those responsible for our future have either been blind with prejudice (oh, those snake charmers !) or playing a game. I like this book. It is scholarly (there is a massive list of references at the back) without being boring; in fact, the writing style is superb. I also learned a lot about India's rich history and its leading place in the world of science and mathematics, and its huge cultural contributions. These do explain why India is now doing so well. As an American who still believes in freedom, democracy and human rights, I also feel comfortable to know that India has some major advantages over China, including stability and military strength. This book may have answers to the urgent need for Americans to understand the powerful faraway forces, which are (and have been) shaping our lives. As the author says, India is only doing its job, as it has to. I still wish the final chapter was a little more detailed, but there are solid recommendations for both our government and American IT workers like myself.