Andy Mukherjee of Bloomberg News, writing about India's burgeoning software industry, warns that Political meddling could strangle India's golden goose:
Political interference in the software industry, the mascot of India's economic resurgence, is both inevitable and risky. It's inevitable because India's software industry is no longer a small dot on the politician's radar screen. Software and services exports account for more than a fifth of India's shipments of all commodities and products.
Including call centers, medical transcription centers and other back-offices, the Indian information technology industry employs more than one million people. The world media keenly watches its successes and tribulations.
Political meddling is dangerous because foreigners, who have invested an estimated $35 billion in Indian equities since 2000, may start taking a dim view of the country if its highly profitable knowledge industry is threatened.
...Skeptics might argue that the threat of political interference is unreal. After all, why should highly compensated engineers who get pay increases of 10 percent to 15 percent a year want to join left-wing political unions? The answer is simple. Since the communists dominate India's organized labor movement, workers seeking to get organized for collective bargaining have little choice. For the same reason, bank and insurance employees, too, are members of communist-affiliated unions.
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