Ramzan; Pakistan Economic Survey; Indian IT Job Losses; Trump's Foreign Tour

[Riaz Haq]

What is Ramadan all about? Is it only about abstaining from food and drink in the daylight hours? What is the key message for this Ramzan? Isn't respecting Huqooq-ul-Ibad (human rights of others) as important as observing Huqooq-ul-Allah (Duties to Allah such as prayer and fasting) for each Muslim? What must Muslims do this Ramzan to fulfill all of their obligations to Allah and His creation?

What does the Economic Survey of Pakistan say about Pakistan's GDP, per capita income, infrastructure development, education and other important indicators? What must Pakistani leaders do to ensure greater focus on and investment in education and not just in infrastructure? What is the size of and the key priorities in Pakistan's budget for 2017-18? Should some of the $20 billion (out of the $50 billion budget) for infrastructure be allocated to education to boost Pakistan's stagnant literacy and school enrollment rates?

Why is India losing IT jobs at a rate of 200,000 jobs a year, according to McKinsey? Is it all because of Trump's H1B visa tightening? Or does it have more to do with the need for new skills to deal with new technologies such as cloud computing and digital services?

What was the objective of Trump's tour of the Middle East and Europe? Has he achieved any of the objectives? Was Nawaz Sharif's low-key presence at the Riyadh summit appropriate? Are Nawaz Sharif's critics right? Should he have had a more prominent role at the US-Arab-Islamic summit? How would that impact Iran-Pakistan ties?


Viewpoint From Overseas host Misbah Azam discusses these questions with Riaz Haq (www.riazhaq.com)

https://youtu.be/ojEvEICkimA




Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Riaz Haq's Ramadan Sermon

Pakistan's Lagging Literacy and School Enrollment Rates

Impact of Trump's H1B Visa Crackdown

Impact of Trump's Appointments on US Policy

Iran-Saudi Conflict

Talk4Pak Youtube Channel

Talk4Pak Vimeo Channel

[Riaz Haq]

India's Tech Firms Face Fundamental Shift From IT To More Advanced Tech

http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/06/13/530876721/...

Madeshwaran Subramani is the human face of IT disruption in India. He recalls being recently summoned to the HR office of his employer in southern city of Coimbatore at 11 a.m. By noon, the 29-year-old software engineer was out of a job. He worked for Cognizant Technology, a U.S.-based firm with offices in India.

"They give only two options," explained Subramani: Leave immediately and take four months' pay, or stick around another 60 days and leave with two months' salary. Subramani, who has a mortgage and a child, says he was given one hour to choose. He'd been with Cognizant since graduating from college.

"Nearly eight years' experience [as an] associate," Subramani says wistfully. "Within one hour everything is over."

He walked out and, days later, was ferrying customers in his car, which he turned into a taxi.

India is capping unprecedented success and expansion in its IT sector with something equally unprecedented: layoffs.

For decades India's IT talent has maintained the world's computers, databases and back offices. But new technologies are overtaking that old business model, and India's tech giants are scrambling to keep pace.

For 20 years, the nation's lucrative business model revolved around the idea that you can move work to low-cost locations, such as India.

But cheap outsourced labor that performs routine tasks is being eclipsed, says Peter Bendor-Samuel, CEO of the Dallas-based research consulting firm Everest Group. He says the demand now is for disruptive technologies, "like artificial intelligence, cloud [computing], big data analytics, ... robotic process automation."

These technologies require highly advanced skills, and to be competitive, India's IT firms will have to either replace or reskill their workers.

But, Bendor-Samuel says, "a significant proportion, perhaps as much as half, will struggle with their training."

Bendor-Samuel says 20,000 employees in India's 4-million-strong IT sector lost their jobs this year, and he predicts that will accelerate to hundreds of thousands of layoffs over the next few years.

"These companies don't only face the issue of retraining people, they face a fundamentally different change in their business model — how they make money — and it's going to cause them a lot of pain," he says.

India's tech industry isn't the only one affected, says Phil Fersht, CEO of the research and analysis firm HfS in Cambridge, England.

"This is a global problem where there's less need for routine transactional employees, he says. "And unfortunately for India their IT industry is caught up in this inflection point and this [long-term] shift."

But R. Chandrashekhar, president of India's National Association of Software and Services Companies, says it's not as if all the jobs that were previously there "have suddenly gone out of fashion."

"That's certainly not the case. These are shifts that are taking place and they are taking place incrementally," Chandrashekhar says. Tech firms are "aggressively" retraining staff, he says.

[Riaz Haq]

#Indian #Technology Workers Worry About a Job Threat: Technology. #H1B #ModiInUS

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/25/business/india-outsourcing-layof...

PUNE, India — Last month, Sudhakar Choudhari took the company bus as usual from his one-bedroom apartment to the suburban offices of Tech Mahindra, a major employer of workers in India that powers the global technology machine behind the scenes. Then a manager took him into a conference room and asked him to resign.

“It was a terrible scene for me,” said Mr. Choudhari, 41, who had been with the company for 11 years and most recently maintained software for a British client. As the manager spoke, he thought: “I have an 11-year-old child. My wife is not working. How to pay the home loans?”

Mr. Choudhari is one of a number of Indian technology workers who have lost their jobs in recent months as many in India debate whether an industry that has long served as a gateway to the middle class is preparing to shed jobs en masse.

India’s information technology industry grew at a breakneck speed over the past two decades thanks to the trend commonly called offshoring. The industry and related businesses generate more than $150 billion in annual revenue and employ about four million people to build and test software, to enter and analyze data, and to provide customer support for American and European companies looking for relatively inexpensive labor.

But the global tech industry is increasingly relying on automation, robotics, big data analytics, machine learning and consulting — technologies that threaten to bypass and even replace Indian workers. For example, automated processes may soon replace the kind of work Mr. Choudhari was performing for foreign clients, which involved maintaining software by occasionally plugging in simple code and analyzing data.

“What we’re seeing is an acceleration in shedding for jobs in India and an adding of jobs onshore,” said Sandra Notardonato, an analyst and research vice president for Gartner, a research and advisory company. “Even if these companies don’t have huge net losses, there’s a person who will suffer, and that’s a person with a limited skill set in India.”

Such job losses could be politically damaging to the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who won an electoral mandate in 2014 on the promise of development and employment for a bulging youth population. In January, near the three-year mark of his administration, an economic survey reported that job creation had stalled.

So far, the scale of the impact is not clear. T. V. Mohandas Pai, a longtime industry figure, estimates the cuts will encompass up to 2 percent of the work force by September, mainly from culling underperformers. A 2015 study released by the National Association of Software and Services Companies, the Indian technology industry trade group known as Nasscom, and McKinsey India found that 50 to 70 percent of workers’ skills would be irrelevant by 2020.

Of course, new technologies will create new jobs. The impact of automation and artificial intelligence still is not clear, and they could open up new areas that simply shift tech work rather than eliminate it.

But some in the Indian tech industry worry that many of the new jobs will be created outside India, in places like the United States, in part because President Trump has pledged to tighten visa laws that allowed many Indian nationals to go to that country to work. The subject is likely to pop up on Monday, when Mr. Modi is scheduled to visit the White House.

The Indian government has rushed to reassure the public that job losses will be minimal. Ravi Shankar Prasad, the Indian minister who oversees the technology industry, recently denied that major layoffs were occurring even as he encouraged the industry to speed up development. 

[Riaz Haq]

#Pakistan rupee rebounds to Rs 105.8 to US$ after shock plunge to 108 

https://www.ft.com/content/79895921-f381-37b3-ab3c-d814a943ff01

Pakistani rupee rebounds after shock plunge fastFT Read next fastFT Dollar takes a dip on US payrolls report 2 HOURS AGO Share on Twitter (opens new window) Share on Facebook (opens new window) Share on LinkedIn (opens new window) Save 2 HOURS AGO by: Mehreen Khan Pakistani’s rupee has recovered some poise after a shock plunge against the dollar that has escalated tensions between the government and central bank. The rupee nosedived more than 3 per cent on Tuesday to its lowest since at least 1989 – marking its first significant move in over two years. The central bank had been keeping the currency stable against the dollar for over three years with the surprise plunge immediately raising questions about the State Bank of Pakistan allowing the depreciation to help support the economy. Having weakened from Rs104.8 against the dollar to Rs108, the rupee is now trading around Rs105.8 but has still not managed to wipe out the week’s losses. Pakistan’s finance minister has since hit out at the central bank, accusing it of “exploiting” the country’s political troubles where prime minister Nawaz Sharif has been implicated in a corruption scandal over the Panama Papers. Ishaq Dar, finance minister, called the move in the currency “artificial”, and said he had “deep concern and indignation” at the central bank’s tactics. He has ordered a government investigation into the FX move. Pakistan has suffered from a drop in exports in recent years, as well as declining remittances from Pakistanis living overseas. Economists note that a weaker currency should help reverse both trends while also allowing the central bank to preserve its dwindling foreign currency reserves. The benchmark Karachi 100 stock exchange is up 1 per cent today after suffering a 4 per cent plunge on Tuesday.