Rising Elephant

Building on a clear understanding of the myths and realities of globalization, Rising Elephant blows past the current diet of clichés that inevitably lead to alternating paroxysms of puzzlement, indignation and complacence, forging a compelling strategy to get Americans back in the game of global competition.Sheshabalaya musters an arsenal of facts and arguments to provide a powerful sketch of India’s history and culture, showing how its very Indianness has given the county the wherewithal to not only challenge the West at its highestvalue economic frontiers, but maintain an overwhelming lead over rival wannabees.India has also been quietly leveraging its fast-growing strengths to position itself on the road to world power status-economically, technologically and militarily. For those enraptured by the Middle Kingdom, Rising elephant provides good reasons for caution, about both the content and longevity of the china Dream.Packed with sometimes surprising findings, the reasoning is backed by rigorous research. Such an effort is crucial, given the uniqueness of white-collar jobs relocation, particularly in the uncharted context of a fast-globalizing new world.Amidst the rhetoric about globalization and sweatshops lies a far more complex challenge to American white-collar jobs, a force that is remaking the world. While Americans fret about cheap labor abroad, the real issue has become not one of lower price but quality and scale-India is on the move to outmaneuver its US competitors on a stunning array of fronts.As more and more U S firms turn to India, outsourcing has begun to shake the foundations of the American upper middleclass. In a twist that highlights the new era, Americans are now even beginning to select India as the place for quality medical care, at a much better price.Meanwhile, as author Ashutosh Sheshabalaya explains, India itself is undergoing a remarkable transformation as its middle class sells to become larger than the entire US population.Rising elephant shows that the roots of job relocation are deep, dating back to the 1980s and early 1990s, and have become entangled within a complex set of new, fast-moving economic and geopolitical equations. As a result, moves to cap the process will be short-lived, especially with higher-value technology jobs. This structural shift is being masked by new, low-wage jobs and under-employment in the West-at least for now.Awareness about such a rising tide has been handicapped, firstly by the frenzy of the dotcom Boom years, and more importantly, by hugely out-of-date perceptions about India-the principal driver of white-collar job relocation. The author squarely addresses such misperceptions and explains India’s changing place in a world it has begun to reshape.