Key Quote: “This is not their parents’ India”
The video is about the effects of outsourcing on India and how it changed the Indian society and economy. The bottom line of the video is that globalization took advantage of Indian labor market and created thousands of high-tech and call center jobs that contributed to the economic development of India. The new opportunities shattered the cultural and economic tradition of India, leading a significant generation gap between parents and young adults that are able to receive jobs for higher payments and move away from their parents.
There are both positive and negative effects of globalization on Indian society. On the one hand, new jobs created by Western companies allowed young adults to have the opportunities their parents never had. Young people received a chance to become independent of their parents, receive education, and have a higher quality of life. Indian women became more independent, and the ancient caste system that persists in India has been shattered.
On the other hand, globalization had a negative effect on India and its people. First, it affected the family values, which were the core of the Indian culture. Before globalization, family support was a kind of social security for older Indians. Since Indian people do not have the government social security system, they became vulnerable despite the economic advances. Second, globalization caused mass migration to the cities, making Indian villages unsustainable. Third, the economic segregation of the Indian society increased, as corporations took the economic niche of poor people. Finally, outsourcing spurred numerous anti-globalization movements, which created disturbances in Indian society. In summary, the effects of outsourcing on India are controversial, and it is difficult to say whether the effects were more positive or more negative. However, it is clear that outsourcing made the new-generation India different from what it was several decades ago.
Reflection
I learned that there is another side of outsourcing apart from stealing the jobs of Americans. Outsourcing created an opportunity for thousands and millions of people in India to have freedom, to receive better education, and to live a better life. However, such opportunity created a new force in the world that all countries need to acknowledge. India has become a part of the global supply chain due to outsourcing, and any disruptions in the country may lead to significant economic losses of companies around the world. Thus, outsourcing made the world a safer place, as the countries have become more inter-connected among each other, which made them try to leave in peace in order to avoid disruptions in the society and economics. I have never thought of the global effect of outsourcing and focused more on the local effects such as job losses. The video demonstrated that outsourcing not only about jobs; it is about globalization of the supply chain, social change, and opportunity for people from developing countries.