Return to India Career Event: An observation

Attended a return two India career fair yesterday. This was very different experience than last event. Last event was disorganized, too many people and no structure. This was a well organized and well focused event.

Some interesting observations

1. Many people, who really are not sure about returning, demand that they be made managers
in India irrespetive of management express. Mostly they do not have any leadership
experience but believe that they can still manage, funny but true !

2. Too many middle managers from Sun Microsystems and HP looking to return to India
in Cognizant than their own Offshore Centers. I wonder, what's up with that.
Must have spoken to at least 20 of these people. Many were fishing, but most were very
serious and looking for options.

3. Twenty Graduates from Carnegie Mellon University attended the event. All of them were,
fresh gradudates looking to move back to India. Very interesting side benefit of H1-CAP,
Indian companies are benefiting by getting access to top talent quickly.

4. Met many old friends and contacts from SantaClara. Most of them are looking, fishing and
trying to understand what can they do at Cognizant type of companies.
It is so interesting see these MBA's amazed after realizing that more than 80% of Staff
functions are done in India. Cognizant do need MBA's but in Analyst role.

The experience was interesting and delightful, learned new things, overall a happy experience.

Bush : The next president

Bush won, in a close race. Kerry lost.

I was sure that Bush will win. Many people underestimate the "Re-Born Evengelical" status.
In America, in general people do not want to seen motivated by Religion, but American
politics for Bush is all about Religion & vote bank.

It is clear now that I am going to benefit from reduced taxes. He is going to support Outsourcing so I will have a stable, better and growing job. Not only that but he will start digging oil in Alaska, reducing the oil prices.

But I am not happy.

Why?

I am scared that the rights of aspiring citizens like me will not be respected. It is possible
to declare anybody as "terrorist" & put behind the bars. The residency and citizenship process
is going to become more cumbersome and difficult.

The huge budget deficit and lack of investment in universities is alarming. The situation to support universities is not going to change, now. The universities will detoriate further. The stem-cell, nano-technology & biology, all the controversial research areas will get lower attention and support. And, I hope that Bush's team do not update science textbook to remove references to Darwin's theory of evoluation. Overall, the American technical leadership will be reduced significantly.

The only reason I am in America, because I am guranteed of my privacy, my freedom of speech and my religion. This is the main difference between living in India and in America.
My friend John Ash-Croft is going to change all that. The immigration process is going to get
very very difficult and getting Green Card or Citizenship will be more difficult.

The War in Iraq -> a separate situation, will write more later,