Panama Verdict; US-India H1B Dispute; Trump NSA in South Asia

[Riaz Haq]

What are the implications of the split Pakistan Supreme Court verdict recently announced in Panama Case filed against Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif by PTI Chief Imran Khan, JI Chief Siraj ul Haq and AML chief Shaikh Rasheed? Why did 3 out of 5 judges not vote to disqualify Mr. Sharif from holding office under Articles 62 and 63 of the Pakistan constitution? Has the Prime Minister not committed perjury, a felony in Pakistani law, by offering multiple conflicting explanations for the source of funds used to buy London flats? Does the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) appointed by the Supreme Court have the independence and the skill set to find credible evidence of wrongdoing by Mr. Sharif? Will Nawaz Sharif survive the JIT and serve out his term scheduled to end in mid-2018?


Why has President Donald J. Trump tightened H1B temporary work visa requirements with an executive order calling for "Buy American, Hire American"? How will it impact India, the biggest beneficiary of the lion's share of the 85,000 US H1B visas issued each year? Are these visas being abused to bring in lower paid foreign workers to replace American workers? How will India respond? Will the Indian government retaliate against US products/services imported by India as suggested by the Indian trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman? How will India deal with similar other restrictions on temporary work visas recently announced by Australia, New Zealand and other industrialized nations?

What took President Trump's National Security Advisor General H.R. McMaster to Afghanistan, India and Pakistan? Why did Mr. Trump announce his request for increased US aid to Pakistan just prior to General McMaster's South Asia trip? Did General McMaster threaten Pakistan to "cooperate or else" as being reported by the Afghan and the Indian media?

Viewpoint From Overseas host Misbah Azam discusses these questions with panelists Ali H. Cemendtaur and Riaz Haq (www.riazhaq.com)

https://youtu.be/HR8JYfPgFOI




Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Panama Leaks: Did Musharraf Steal People's Money?

India Files H1B Visa Complaint Against US to WTO Amid Falling Exports

H1B Visa Abuse by Indian Body Shops

Gen H.R. McMaster's Appointment as NSA

Impact of Trump Appointment on US Domestic and Foreign Policy

Talk4Pak Youtube Channel

Talk4Pak Vimeo Channel

[Riaz Haq]

Indian IT industry’s past sins threaten its future
The inability of India’s IT services exporters, like TCS, Infosys and Wipro among others, to upscale their skills and their wares has led up to the current crisis

http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/iidSwdvmOyJNlkLS0gbA3L/Indian-IT-in...

India’s beleaguered $150 billion IT services industry is facing an existential crisis following its discovery that US president Donald Trump did mean to go through with his pre-election threats to review a critical tool of its trade, H1B visas. This comes on top of the erosion of its competitive edge by automation and robotics. Already, the layoffs have started as projects get trimmed and margins take a hit.

Predictably, India’s software services exporters are in a state of paralysis in the face of these threats. Lacking a well-honed, long-term strategy to cope with the political and economic forces aligned against it, the industry has responded timidly—petitioning and invoking contributions to the US economy and producing numbers to state its case. This hasn’t cut much ice with the Trump administration, which has gone through with an executive order even while promising more draconian measures to protect American jobs. Contrast that with his kids-glove treatment of China. All his threats of naming the country as a currency manipulator before the elections seem to have been silenced once the reality of possible Chinese retaliation hit home.

The Indian software services industry is a custodian not merely of its own fortunes but that of the future of an entire nation. Even as industry leaders Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd examine the impact of these recent setbacks on their bottom lines, concluding mostly that it will be marginal, there is a far bigger issue at stake. India’s success in software services exports has given it a unique competitive strength. In an increasingly digital world, India has the manpower and the head-start needed to build the kind of global position that, for instance, Germany has in engineering or before that Britain built with its naval fleet.

But as management guru Michael Porter warned, the competitive advantage of nations isn’t an inheritance on which a country has a perpetual lien. It is something a country needs to keep working on through innovation. In his original piece in 1990 for the Harvard Business Review, The Competitive Advantage of Nations, Porter wrote: “Ultimately, the only way to sustain a competitive advantage is to upgrade it—to move to more sophisticated types.”

By sitting back and continuing to rely on its cost-based arbitrage model for over two decades, the software industry has placed in jeopardy not merely its own fortunes but that of India too. Those who think that Trump’s executive order notwithstanding, it will be business as usual in the hallways of business processing offices in Bengaluru and Gurugram, might want to take a look at the recent and not-so-recent past.


The fate of India’s auto components industry, once touted as a potential world beater, is a good reminder. Despite its promising beginnings, India’s share in global exports has remained stuck below 1% over the last decade, as component makers failed to scale up and deal with the realities of a changing market. As a consequence, the value of auto component exports increased from $5.1 billion in FY09 to $10.8 billion in FY16 (according to data from the India Brand Equity Foundation), way below the sector’s Vision 2015 target of $33 billion set by the Auto Component Manufacturers’ Association back in 2003-04.