Reverse outsourcing?

The Obama administration’s recent moves to curb outsourcing of American jobs are just a temporary setback to the move towards a globalised world where time, distance and other barriers disappear and every person/ country does what he/she is best at. This is inevitable if the economic theory of “Comparative Advantage’ holds true. And actually it wouldn’t be too bad for the US either. It is better than others at a lot of things. India, for one, could outsource a lot of things to the US

For a start we could hire US investigators to probe crimes in India. Indian police would pass on all the evidence related to a case to the US team which would analyze it and report back with their recommendations. Next we could outsource implementation of law and order to them. They need not be present in India. They can monitor us from their base in the US using hi-tech satellite imagery, etc and perhaps also use UAVs and other sophisticated weapons to hunt criminals just like in the movie ‘Enemy of the State’.

If this works fine we can let them patrol our borders. They seem to have a better understanding of our principal adversaries – Pakistan and China – and will be able to anticipate their moves better.

Our judicial system is overburdened and there are no indications this will ease anytime soon. The next step could be to hive off our judicial system and let the US manage it.

The last step can be the Parliament. Our legislators are simply incapable of formulating and passing much-needed laws. The US seems to do it much better than us.

All this will free up our citizens to work in call centers and back offices of American companies. So it will be a win-win deal for both sides. I’m sure Obama won’t mind :D And it won’t be something new for us either. We have experienced it before.

Implemet Swiss banking in India?

The recent incident where the US Govt got UBS to agree to reveal details of some 52,000 accounts of US citizens has been taken by some as a ray of hope that someday India would also get details of Indian money in Swiss banks. If US can do it, so could we. However, I don’t subscribe to that optimism. I don’t think our government will do it. Afterall, the illegal money of all our politicians, businessmen, gangsters and godmen (the lines between them are becoming blurred by the day) lies in Swiss banks. So why would they shoot themselves in the foot?

And, if through public pressure that miracle does happen, they will have shifted most of that money to some other banking haven by then.

Instead of dreaming about what can’t be achieved why don’t we think practically and implement Swiss banking secrecy laws in India? The bottomline is – if you can’t stop or outlaw something, legalize it. If we do so, most of the black money won’t have to go out of India and we won’t lose precious foreign exchange. We may even see an influx of foreign exchange from the crooks of the world. This would go a long way towards alleviating poverty. What say?