Ambassador Meera Shankar urges Indian IT companies to move up in skills

New Delhi, May 21: The protectionist policies followed by the US and other advanced countries plus the emergence of ever new technologies had brought up ‘reskilling’ as the new mantra for the Indian IT professionals and the industry.
Former Indian ambassador to US Meera Shankar has cautioned the Indian IT companies against being satisfied with providing low end jobs in the global market.
Her warning follows that of Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian who has also expressed great concern over the proposed legislation on the popular visa regime aimed at putting a curb on American companies outsourcing jobs to India.
‘If there are serious actions taken it’s something going to kind of worry us a lot because remember that our exports of services are about 40 to 45 per cent of the total exports,’ Mr Subramaniam said at an event in the US recently.
Ms Shankar, taking part in a panel discussion on Indian diplomacy this week here said the H1 B visa on which skilled India IT professionals were hired was proposed to drastically regulated by the Trump administration, and that happened Indian companies would be in trouble.