Infosys employees undergo training at the company's campus in Mysore.

India's chronic manpower shortage

By Anuj Chopra

MUMBAI - Across western economies, the name of Bangalore - India's showcase technology city and the world's back office - is frequently used as a verb.

"To get Bangalored" is a phrase uttered, often pejoratively, to describe the shipping of high-paying white-collar jobs to low-cost Indian call centres or technology parks.

In recent years, outsourcing of thousands of jobs to India has prompted criticism from figures including Barack Obama, the US president, who has implored US companies to "say no to Bangalore, yes to Buffalo".

While India is perceived globally as a monster devouring western jobs, in reality it faces an intractable skills shortage that bedevils economic progress.

How is that possible, baffled observers wonder, in a country blessed with a demographic dividend and an abundance of labour? Two-thirds of India's 1.21 billion people are below the age of 35. India's colleges disgorge more than 750,000 science and engineering graduates every year. But the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom), an industry lobby group in New Delhi, estimates that only 26 per cent of those graduates are fit for employment in India's US$60 billion technology sector.

READ MORE: http://www.thenational.ae/business/indias-chronic-manpower-shortage