Indian companies learn the Washington lobbying game
Indian companies learn the Washington lobbying game
Date: Thursday, August 16, 2007 3:25 AM
<<<<< JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER No. 1741 -- 8/16/2007 >>>>>
India's efforts at lobbying in Washington DC are getting more aggressive and
sophisticated.
Executives from the Indian firms visiting the United States,
including on a trip organized by Nasscom in May, have met with
aides to all the major presidential hopefuls, including
Clinton, Obama, the former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani
and Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona.
What I found most interesting in the first article is the way Indian lobbyists
are using home grown American organizations as proxies to push their agenda.
Case in point:
And most strikingly, they have mastered the Washington art of waging
proxy battles through local front organizations, which spare them
from appearing to be foreigners with an agenda. They provide facts,
figures and arguments to trade groups like the Information
Technology Association of America and to Indian-American
political groups.
Many of us were hoping the ITAA would fade away after Harris Miller left.
Apparently that was wishful thinking.
Jobs aren't the only thing Indians are after, as this statement in the second
article below illustrates.
Groups such as the United States India Political Action Committee
played a major role in helping members of both houses of Congress
understand that any vote against the nuclear deal would be perceived
to be a vote against India, something that would not sit well with
Indian-Americans.
The lobbying paid off for India big time. If you recall, Bush and Congress
gave India nuclear technology in a trade for Indian mangos. Be sure to see
these youtube videos -- the first one might get you in the mood for Indian
mangos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liqMCE8zrvc
US goes gaga over Indian mangoes
Yummy! Yummy! But wait, but before you bite into one of those juicy mangos
watch this video to find out about how they are irradiated:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgukFLIzOCw
Mangos that Glow in the Dark
All of that radiation stuff might upset your stomach, so be sure to watch this
soothing video so that you can sleep tonight:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thBefxorwrE
Mangoes from Goa
Robert Blackwill was a major factor in that lobbying effort. Blackwill is a
former ambassador to India appointed by Bush. If you want to find out more
about Blackwill's coziness with India, a good place to start is the article
called: "I am honoured to be called a friend of India". To read more go to the
following link:
http://in.rediff.com/news/2006/jun/27bobdb.htm
Robert Blackwill has his own organization to lobby Congress. It's called the
"Indian American Center for Political Awareness" (IACFPA). You can go to their
half-finished website at:
http://www.iacfpa.org/
I couldn't find out much about IACFPA because the "about" page wasn't working.
The "donations" page was up though, so at least their cash register is up and
running.
Robert Blackwill has a bio on the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) website.
It figures Blackwill would be one of them, most free traders are.
Read all about him at:
http://www.cfr.org/bios/6/robert_d_blackwill.html
The American middle class doesn't have anyone lobbying on their behalf to stop
the outsourcing, H-1B giveaways, and destructive trade deals like the recent
agreement to give India more nuclear technology. Under the circumstances I see
no reason to be optimistic that Congress will resist the pressure being put on
them by aggressive Indian lobbyists. Certainly nobody seems to think American
voters will make a difference.
India's power brokers have the money and the willingness to spend it in order
to promote their agenda and they have very powerful allies in our
midst:
Indian-Americans' vision of India's future is generally in line
with that of corporate America.
I don't think either one of them envision a middle class America that makes
high salaries. Do you?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/15/business/outsource.php
Indian companies learn the Washington lobbying game By Anand Giridharadas
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
MUMBAI: In the heat of the 2004 U.S. presidential race, John Kerry likened
outsourcing to treason, Lou Dobbs harangued against it from his CNN anchor
chair and the Indian outsourcing vendors were left scrambling.
Engineers to the core, their leaders fired back with data-packed PowerPoint
presentations. Outsourcing is good for the economy, they said; it increases
efficiency; it creates more jobs than it costs. But in the eyes of many
Americans, those arguments proved no match for vivid tales of laid-off
software engineers.
"Telling someone who loses their job in North Carolina or Jacksonville that
this is good for the economy doesn't work," said Phiroz Vandrevala, an
executive vice president at Tata Consultancy Services, one of the largest
Indian vendors, who serves as an in-house Washington strategist for Tata and
other Indian firms.
But if four years is a lifetime in Washington, it is an eternity in Bangalore.
And as the 2008 U.S. election starts to sizzle, the Indian outsourcing firms
have returned to win Washington over as veritable insiders, slicker and better
connected than ever.
They have hired a former high official in the administration of President
George W. Bush as a lobbyist. They are humanizing the issue by bringing
Americans they have hired into meetings with politicians.
They work with research firms like the Brookings Institution to generate
sympathetic research. They host cocktail hours on Capitol Hill. They have
learned to play politics, urging members of Congress whose districts benefit
from trade with India to support them on outsourcing.
And most strikingly, they have mastered the Washington art of waging proxy
battles through local front organizations, which spare them from appearing to
be foreigners with an agenda. They provide facts, figures and arguments to
trade groups like the Information Technology Association of America and to
Indian-American political groups. Then they watch as those groups arrange for
seemingly neutral voices to champion their causes in the newspapers or before
Congress.
"The moment Nasscom says something, it is a vested interest," said Lakshmi
Narayanan, the chairman of Nasscom, a trade group that represents the Indian
outsourcing industry. "In the last few months," he said, Nasscom decided "to
provide the data, work behind the scenes, but really to be fronted by the
local organizations."
The Indian companies are mounting this effort out of fear that the pressures
of the U.S. presidential election, and of the Democratic primary especially,
will induce candidates to lash out at the Indian vendors. Their business model
is a perpetual lightning rod: the companies carve out tasks from their
American clients and perform them more cheaply back in India or other low-cost
locations.
The Indian vendors' main worries are the Democratic candidates Senator Barack
Obama of Illinois, whose campaign has flirted with anti-outsourcing rhetoric,
and John Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, who is running an
explicitly populist campaign. The Indian executives believe that Senator
Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, also a Democrat, is more sympathetic to
their cause, but they are concerned that she would be compelled to match the
others' statements in a tight contest.
Meanwhile, new Democratic majorities in Congress have swept into office on a
wave of anti-free-trade rhetoric. To the Indian firms, a recent attempt in
Congress to crack down on skilled-worker visas underscored that a storm is
gathering.
"People are trying to make it an issue again," said one Washington lobbyist
who represents some of the Indian companies and spoke on the condition of
anonymity because of company rules.
But if the anti-outsourcing movement rouses itself again, it will find itself
jousting with a changed foe. The Indian vendors have in no way strayed from
their belief that outsourcing benefits both India and the United States. But
they have found smoother ways to get the point across.
Vandrevala, the Tata Consultancy official who also works for NASSCOM,
described 2004 as "a fantastic learning experience."
Nasscom has hired as its chief Washington lobbyist Robert Blackwill, a former
senior White House adviser and U.S. ambassador to India in the Bush
administration. As the president of Barbour Griffith & Rogers International,
an arm of one of the most powerful lobby shops in Washington, located three
blocks from the White House, he is a heavy hitter on Capitol Hill.
In the past year, Blackwill, the unnamed Washington lobbyist and the Indian
firms' own executives have, among them, met with members of the staffs of more
than 100 U.S. representatives and senators, the Washington lobbyist said.
Executives from the Indian firms visiting the United States, including on a
trip organized by Nasscom in May, have met with aides to all the major
presidential hopefuls, including Clinton, Obama, the former New York mayor
Rudolph Giuliani and Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, Vandrevala
said. Several months ago, he said, Nasscom hosted an evening reception for
members of the House of Representatives' India caucus that drew 40 to 50
people.
But the heart of the Indian vendors' new strategy appears to be to remove
themselves from the limelight. Outsourcing is not about us, goes the new
Indian mantra to lawmakers: it benefits living, breathing Americans, including
ones in your district.
The Washington lobbyist said that a focus of the campaign was to collect data
on Indian companies' investments in the United States, and then to lobby
members of Congress from districts where those investments had created jobs.
Tata Consultancy Services, for example, may be funneling some San Francisco-
area technology jobs to India. But it belongs to an Indian conglomerate, Tata
Group, that recently acquired the Campton Place Hotel in San Francisco and
thus has hundreds of U.S. workers on its payroll.
The Indians have also begun to use their own customers, which include the
largest U.S. companies, as proxy soldiers. Both the vendors and the clients
belong to trade groups like the Information Technology Association of America,
which help to coordinate lobbying campaigns in which an American chief
executive will write a newspaper article or make a statement to Congress that
is in his or her own company's interest but also benefits the Indian vendor.
"We don't want to be seen as very active there, because it can seem that India
is trying to poke its nose into the debate," said Kiran Karnik, the president
of Nasscom. "We would prefer that the active effort of working the Hill is
done by U.S. companies."
A successful example of getting a heavyweight to help their case, according to
the Indian companies, was recent congressional testimony by Bill Gates, the
Microsoft chairman, in which he called vigorously for expanding the H-1B
skilled-worker visa program. While Microsoft does use the visas heavily, 8 of
the 10 largest H-1B applicants in 2006 were outsourcing vendors with their
major operations in India.
Indian-American political groups in the United States are also effective
proxies. The U.S.-India Political Action Committee has defended outsourcing
vendors, most of whose employees are in India, even though the group
represents Indian-Americans living in America. In a profile of Clinton on the
group's Web site, it notes admiringly that "even though she was against
outsourcing at the beginning of her political career, she has since changed
her position."
Narayanan, the Nasscom chairman, said: "Much of the difference between four
years back and now is that many of the Indians who are influential, who are
contributing, are in the technology industry. So clearly they are aligned with
the cause."
In a sign of their changing approach, the Indian vendors are also imitating a
tactic used against them in the last election: putting a human, and preferably
American, face on the issue.
In meetings in Washington with members of Congress and with the presidential
campaigns, the Indian companies are bringing in American employees they have
hired locally. The employees typically serve as liaisons between the Indian
firms' American clients and their back-office workers in India, but to the
Indians, they illustrate that outsourcing can also create American jobs.
"Our opponents have been very good at spreading a lot of myths, and we have to
counter that," said the Washington lobbyist. "And part of it is by putting an
American face on it."
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2007/08/05/india-us-relations-oped-cx_mka_0813us.html
India And The United States
Mira Kamdar 08.13.07, 12:00 PM ET
As India's external affairs minister, Jaswant Singh, famously quipped after
his country exploded a series of nuclear devices on May 18, 1998, in defiance
of the international nonproliferation regime, India's in a "dangerous
neighborhood." India never signed the nonproliferation treaty and never
expressed any regrets about acquiring the bomb.
Today, not even a decade later, the U.S. has fully pardoned India's nuclear
faux pas. The Bush administration has pushed aggressively--and, critics say,
too generously--to recognize India as a de facto member of the exclusive
nuclear club, and to guarantee that it can develop its civilian nuclear
capacity while preserving its military nuclear program. The U.S. is betting
big on India. Why? And what's in it for India?
In Pictures: India At A Glance
With a series of spectacular foreign policy debacles, the Bush administration
simply cannot afford anything but success with this much ballyhooed agreement.
The administration has made India the most important emerging U.S. strategic
partner in the face of a rising China, the unabated growth of Islamic
militancy in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and India's convenient location between
the shipping lanes of the South Pacific and the Persian Gulf.
India's accelerating economic growth has attracted huge investment by major
U.S. corporations. Conversely, the U.S. is the largest market for India's
information-technology outsourcing industry and potentially for a host of
"made in India" items ranging from automobiles to agricultural products.
Trade and investment between the two countries is booming. American
corporations expect to earn between $20 billion and $40 billion as a result of
the nuclear agreement alone as U.S. manufacturers compete to supply this
growing new industry. Indian corporations, increasingly flexing international
muscle and actively seeking to expand exports, in turn are coveting the U.S.
market as intensely as their U.S. counterparts are examining India.
Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has complimented India on its new maturity
in recognizing the need to leave behind such unproductive efforts as the
Nonaligned Movement and a commitment to multilateralism in favor of a much
more sensible place under the U.S.'s vast security umbrella.
Certainly, India can look to Japan's relationship with the U.S. as a model
that shows how hitching oneself to the American mothership can bring economic
success and regional respect.
But India's history is quite different from Japan's, and even if India is
eager to reap the benefits of a closer relationship with the U.S., it is
unlikely to relinquish much of its zealously guarded independence, or
sacrifice other important relationships it enjoys with Russia and China, not
to mention Brazil or even Cuba and Iran.
If there is one thing India wants as much as an end to what it calls "nuclear
apartheid," it is a permanent seat on the Security Council of a reconfigured
United Nations. As the world's second-most populous nation after China (which
has such a seat), India's case for inclusion is quite strong. Yet the United
States (along with China) has so far shown no inclination to support this
ambition, so India must look to other friends.
India's great foreign policy challenge going forward is to manage a rapidly
growing partnership with America as the reigning superpower while at the same
time preserving ties with old powerful friends, such as Russia; improving
relations with new powerful friends, such as China; and maintaining a strong
position of leadership among the nations of the developing world.
Moreover, India will now need the good graces of all 45 members of the Nuclear
Suppliers' Group, whose approval of the agreement just clinched with the U.S.
must be unanimous, as well as that of the 35-member board of governors of the
International Atomic Energy Association, if it is to begin a rapid expansion
of its nuclear power network across the subcontinent.
A test of how successfully India can manage its new relationship with the U.S.
may come soon over Iran. India desperately needs as much energy as possible in
any form if it is to keep its economic growth engine humming along at 8% a
year or better. It has centuries-old historical ties with Iran and decades-old
plans for a pipeline to deliver Iranian natural gas to the subcontinent. If
the Bush administration makes good on quashing Iran's nuclear ambitions as
forcefully as it has worked to realize India's, India may find itself faced
with something of a dilemma.
Indian-Americans will play a large role in the future of the India-U.S.
relationship. The nuclear deal benefited from intense lobbying by business
interest groups such as the Confederation of Indian Industry and the United
States India Business Council. Their efforts, and those of the administration,
were bolstered by Capitol Hill's newest lobbying force:
Indian-Americans. Groups such as the United States India Political Action
Committee played a major role in helping members of both houses of Congress
understand that any vote against the nuclear deal would be perceived to be a
vote against India, something that would not sit well with Indian-Americans.
Now numbering more than 2.2 million, Indian-Americans have average household
incomes topping $70,000 and are one of the most affluent immigrant groups.
They are also one of the most highly educated. As the recent flap over a
document, released by the Barack Obama campaign, outlining Hillary Clinton's
close ties with the Indian-American community demonstrates, Indian-Americans
have become a factor in the 2008 U.S.
presidential election. Committed both to a resurgent India that can take its
place with pride among the most powerful of nations and to the entrepreneurial
values and skills they have honed in the U.S., Indian-Americans' vision of
India's future is generally in line with that of corporate America.
But perhaps the biggest challenge India faces is one the U.S. appears ill-
equipped to assist: how to "grow equity," as one of India's corporate leaders
told me. The gap between rich and poor in India is widening. While Forbes now
counts 36 Indian billionaires, the nation also accounts for 40% of the
malnourished children in the world.
Some 800 million Indians live on less than $2 per day. India's environment is
also stressed to the breaking point. And India is likely to be hard hit by
global warming. India, and the world, simply cannot afford to have all its 1.2
billion people (and counting) consume at American levels. And India s rise
means that the U.S. will be forced, at some point, to check its own
disproportionate levels of consumption and pollution.
India must find a way to do what the U.S. has so far failed to do: invent a
market-based model of equitable, sustainable development. If India succeeds,
we will all win. If, as the world's largest non-Western democracy and open
society, it fails, then we will all lose. What happens during the next 60
years of India's independence will be crucial not only to its own future but
to all of ours.
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