A new world in the making

"Sir, please don't say this openly... we will lose half our revenue if our key clients hear that!"

- AJIT BALAKRISHNAN

This was the anguished response from a friend who had started a software company in the 1990s, when I suggested that I could help design an algorithm to perform marketing analysis in one-tenth the time it was taking at that time. His business was then to conduct marketing analysis, a service that his company provided to blue-chip clients in India and the United States (US).

His revenue was generated by charging clients in accordance with the number of hours spent by his team on this analysis, as well as the number of people employed to perform it.

This incident from a time nearly three decades ago comes rushing to my mind, in effect telling me that banking on cheap Indian labour, which I had apprehensions about even in the 1990s, may soon come to haunt us and more so when I see the current headlines flooding the world media: "More than 130,000 IT employees have lost their jobs so far this year as the tech industry continues to lay off workers".

Or, more shocking to me, "Work for designers and photographers in their 30s drying up..."

Then, when I dig a little deeper, I am led to believe that these problems in India seem to originate in problems with the US economy: "The US could run short of money to pay its bills by August this year..."

When I see these reports about the US situation stating that the US spends more than it collects in taxes and, to cover the gap, the government borrows money through treasury bonds and then the cumulative borrowing over decades has resulted in its national debt exceeding $34 trillion as of early 2025, I can't help but feel shaken.