Are Indian chickens CMM certified?

Sometimes casual surfing ends up in serious thinking. That’s what happened to me after I read this interesting comment by a concerned Parent to Steve Hamm’s article regarding Math outsourcing.

It is true, given the same skills; labour arbitrage is the no. 1 reason for shifting jobs from one end of the world to the other. Well, may be one day rupee – dollar advantage will go out and Americans will be able to compete on an even basis. However, there is no point in waiting for that day as some other country will have the advantage by that time and jobs might go their way. Even if the Government steps in and framed new policies to protect against outsourcing, such paper walls won’t stand the test of time, as the economics of outsourcing will force the Govt. to change the law sooner or later. Companies have learned to survive, sustain and succeed in this flat world. Now it is high time for the individuals to learn and compete in the globalized world and parents here have more responsibility in helping their children to face the flat world without fear than casting their votes to parties which supports anti-outsourcing movement.

As far as India is concerned, even if the Math graduates do not find any job related to their field, they would find a whole lot of opportunities in IT/ITES, retail or finance sectors, thanks to the booming economy. I have seen my friends who are Mechanical engineering graduates, working as Testing Engineers in IT industry, Electrical engineers doing image designing instead of circuit designing, Instrumentation engineers working in call centers. I haven’t heard anyone complain about not being able to work in the areas they have studied. Of course they are getting more salary in this new field than what they would have earned in their respective fields of graduation. That might be the reason for their silence.

However, this was not the situation twenty years ago. People were reluctant to try new jobs outside their domain as in most cases they would have earned less if they opt for any work forgetting their degrees. You can see the films in the 80’s to get to know, how hesitant people were to think outside their degrees. Of course opportunities were also very limited those days. This economic boom will not be permanent, so this new found attitude to work outside the domain they learnt should help the individuals, but they should not be blind folded by salary figures or color blinded to the collar colors (white) in the future.

I remember those days, when any announcement by the Govt. regarding retirement age has made national headlines and was widely discussed by my neighbours and relatives, in their forties, working for Govt. organizations. However, the days when you join a company and work there till your retirement age are almost over. One should be alert and flexible to take new opportunities in this ever changing world. It is good to note that the present working generation in India does not have this retirement age fix now. How many IT/ITES employees actually know the retirement age of their company? (Hey, but don’t remind about their home loans which run for the next 20 years.)

Well, India will also have their share of unemployment problems in the globalization era, as access to better technologies will make lot of manual jobs redundant. Instead of politicizing those issues and forcing the Govt. to follow protectionist policies, individuals should take the effort to learn new things in order to survive in this flat world.

Now coming back to the chicken question, as I try to find the answer, why Indian chickens are cheaper?, I can hear an Indian farmer saying – Even with this rupee – dollar exchange rate differentiation how Washington apples are selling widely in India? Will the farm world ever go flat?