American foreign policies and India's fortunes

The United States of America is a very rich country, and it is a well known fact. It is a country that has framed extremely intelligent foreign policies to keep itself in the top of the list featuring the superpowers of the world. Cotton is being imported from the Asian countries, namely India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Electronics and every other domestic product (including a safety pin) are being imported from China. The call centre jobs are outsourced to India and most of the software applications used by the Fortune 500 companies are a product of software giants in India. If India, China and other Asian countries stop their supplies and services, the United States would be in despondency by now! I strongly agree that considerable amount of manufacturing and production is done in the USA, but from the angle of a common man, all we see in the tags and prints of products is not what is made in USA.

A lot of citizens of the US are not very pleased with the policies and decisions taken by Mr. Bush and his subordinates. But at the end of the day, I guess he has won the vote of the people in effectively handling the economic recession by using some of his selfish and clinical methods. His ideas seldom care for the welfare of other countries and their economy. But, India’s case with the effect of US policies has been different. Even though I would not completely agree on the export of cotton, most of the policies have been influential in effecting the Indian economy.

Let’s take an example of a call centre that operates in a metropolitan city in India. There has been a mushroom growth of these call centers all over India in the last 3 years. The average salary of a person working in a call centre is around Rs.10000 (app. 200-250 USD) and you have a million call centre jobs around India! Suppose the same position existed here in the USA and considering the stress factor involved in the call centre jobs (Being awake all night), no American citizen would settle for a pay toting up to less that $2000 a month.

People in America would argue on losing millions of jobs, but on the positive side, look what they have gained! On the other hand, the sudden openings of jobs (software and BPO’s) have exterminated the mass redundancy and the economic struggle which have existed in India for years. The standard of living seems to have gone up and there seems to have been a new element of fortune that has been inducted into the nation. The conservative attitude of people has also begun to change, but since that is of a totally different dimension to what we talk now, I’ll discuss it in detail during some of my blogs in the future.

Right now, both USA and India seem to be doing extremely well in terms of economy. India should give a big salute to the American government which has played a big part in changing its fortunes. While America tries to maintain its position being economically stable, India is trying to rise up like a phoenix to feature among the top ranks. With both the nations being interdependent on each other, this might be the beginning of the struggle for preeminence between the two nations.

Life of a pampered kid to get into the United states

I had always remained a homegrown boy. My dad and mom never let me do a single thing by myself until I was 21. I could play Cricket, ride my motorcycle, mimic (anybody including a new guy whom we met in the street before 2 mins) and of course, manage to study for my exams and get decent grades. In simple terms, I was nothing except a pampered brat. Getting into the United States is a dream for any person like me. After all, anything and everything that happened in the United states was what we guys grew up when watching the Tv and heard about in the News. For the first time in my life I was put forth with the task of writing my GRE, TOEFL, selecting the univ's and the whole list of painful things that you need to do for getting into the USA. Things in India are never as simple as what these tasks are in USA. I somewhat am envious about Americans in certain aspects.

All these things took me about 8 months-1 year to complete. If 'I was' what 'I am', I wouldn't even dream of repeating this process again. The guilt of being in USA often haunts my mind. I always think about this again and again when my inner conscience keeps echoing to me. It's the greed for money that made you do leave ur cherished homeland! The greed for better living! The greed to have the ill desire of being called a NRI- Non residential Indian!( although people back home don't know how we struggle here doing menial jobs that we wouldn't do even if we were offered millions of rupees back home) Before I deviate and take this conversation to a different domain, I guess I'd return back to my story and my former desire to get into USA.

Even after the completion of these processes and getting accepted into the universities, it is not guaranteed that you might get into the US. The biggest hurdle to cross would be getting the visa to set ur step into this country. If you got the visa, most of the Indians would call it the best day in their lives. The sad thing was, until last year I was one of those Indians who rated it the best ever moment in my life!

The visa process is a painful one.( Specially for a man who loves his country) The people who go to the visas are treated in par to the criminals. We are looked at, shouted at, treated sarcastically and often accused of lying. None of the officers believe what we say! You have to dance according to the tunes of the officer and make way for his whims and fancies to convince him. Some are succesful and some are not. I was among the sucessful people who got the visa from the toughest officer in the embassy in record time! Was a surprise initially and I would refuse to believe it until I got my Passport back with the American Visa stamped on it. And when I did, my mom and dad saw me in a pose that was something similar to Kapil Dev with the 1983 world cup or like Michael Jordan lifting the NBA trophy.

I thought happy days in the USA had arrived.......but eversince i stepped foot into this country....things haven't been as happy as I thought it would be. My experiences and my present life in the USA.....will follow....in my next few Blogs.