US's new Anti-Outsourcing offensive : Should India retaliate with a No-US IT product in E-Government response ?

Last week saw growing concern with the anti-outsourcing stance taken by the US. The latest being a couple of "new" statements by Obama + Ohio's blanket ban on outsourcing state government projects ...

What does India do ?
     - Obviously the first option would be to make the appropriate noises at the right levels (see the call upon PM to make a statement etc)
     - Next, we could petition the WTO / Trade agreement etc.


What surprises me is that there seems to be no voice at all at the Indian E-Government spend level ?
India's spend on E-Governance / IT for infrastructure will probably far outstrip the income for specific US states (put together). Would it be a good idea just to start saying a corresponding "NO" to the Microsofts, the HPs, the IBMs and the Oracle's ?

I'm not sure if we know enough to state if these will help / hurt us locally, given that IBM is probably the biggest IT employer in India today with possibly more people than TCS ?


Let us face it, the best way to tackle a commercial decision is to respond in the same space.
Do we not hear that China & India constitute the biggest markets for the world ?
Do we also not see China exercising a lot more "independence" in their decision process ?

Are we going to just a high level sabre rattling with things like Blackberry (Canadian though), Skype (US now - no longer European ?) etc ?

Who should take a lead ?

Rework on Infrastructure : Money down the drain

While there has been growing focus on the CWG preparedness, I was wondering if anyone watched over the amount of re-work that happens on Infrastructure projects in India. Surely, there is a whole LOT of money down the drain ?

A case in example is a drive down any of the Bangalore Metro building sites - esp the stretch around west-of-chord-road to mysore-road. I've noticed that almost every SINGLE casted pillar has been broken down either for faulty design or build-to-spec. You'll see big monstrous piles of concrete + steel all around the pits. In parallel, you'll also see new round of truss and casting going on.

Was the design spec wrong or was the build quality wrong ?
In either case, we seem to accept shoddy work from all infra projects and then do a post-mortem analysis on where the money went ?

Less said about BBMP's track record the better.
I still hang my head down / cringe while taking the crazy "U" near Cauvery theatre / while driving past the UAS wall that killed a teenager.....