This thought crossed my mind while reading a recent jobs report about nearly 16% US unemployment and also an article about India based IT services companies hiring US residents.
While it is good to know that Indian companies are increasing their local hiring, I feel there is one dimension that remains largely unexplored when it comes to addressing the growing US unemployment.
And that is for the India based training institutes like NIIT, Aptech and others to set up shop in the US.
It is a lesser known fact but it wasn't only the IITs that led to the Indian software revolution. A lot of credit goes to the training institutes that made it easier for chemical, civil, mechanical and other engineers and also science and commerce graduates in remote towns of India to become computer software engineers in 3- 9 months. This engine delivered when the world required hordes of engineers to fix the Y2K problem and in many ways launched the Indian software services boom.
So the thought goes that with the high unemployment rates in the US, there may be an opportunity to do a reverse flow.
Train the large number of unemployed but English speaking population especially in the US heartland states and export them to countries like India, China, Brazil which otherwise have a shortage of skilled white collar workers.
One important thing has to happen though. These countries need to become attractive enough for US nationals to relocate there.
The US government can help here. They should work with India, China and Brazil to make these countries attractive destinations , much like US made itself attractive to immigrants from these countries.
Combine that with the prowess of the Indian training institutes we may have a good deal going..
