Outsourcing industry

Dr. Carol Upadhya and colleagues have conducted a considerable number of interviews in India’s IT industry in order to understand the culture and social economic structures of this industry. The fundamental aspect of the IT business in India is that it is mostly an outsourcing industry.

The Indian companies, which work mostly for larger clients outside India, have developed the so-called ‘Global Service Delivery’ model in which they take advantage of various time zones around the world. Collaborations and work move from one place to another, so that 24 hours a day the work in India is going on. In addition to the big multinational companies operating in India, and the large Indian software services companies such as Infosys, there are also small start-up companies, so-called high end product companies. Some of these companies self-consciously replicate the Silicon Valley model of management. It is not that they are doing this replication, but they think of themselves as doing a kind of replication, which is to Carol Upadhya, being anthropologist, very interesting. Upadhya argues that the idea of cultural difference actually has become a mechanism for control over labour. She supports this argument in a variety of ways.

CN