Who would have thought it, but Japanese firms are keenly adopting the trend by outsourcing services to India. The newest convert to outsourcing to India movement is Japan's Hitachi Ltd., who is in the midst of collaborating with Satyam, a business house based in Secunderabad, India and Intelligroup, a US company whose owner is from India. Together, they plan to open software development and systems maintenance centres in the Indian cities of Bangalore and Hyderabad.

Planning to expand its current workforce numbers in India from 200 to 1,000 in two years, Hitachi's Indian centres will focus on US and Europe based Japanese firms, providing software and engineering support to clients.

Expanding its outsourcing operations as a strategic step for its overseas business, Hitachi hopes to boost revenue from foreign operations by 40% of its information and communications business by 2007.

And, before Hitachi decided to jump on the outsourcing bandwagon, October last i.e. 2005, Nippon Yusen KK outsourced a part of an ocean liner business system development to Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the technical arm of India's Tata Group.

The placing of the order by NYK Systems Research Institute (NSRI), Nippon Yusen's information technology subsidiary handling systems development, calls for 25 to 30-TCS engineers to join NSRI's US-operation in New Jersey, while assigning work to around 10-engineers in New Delhi. Overall, TCS will be handling 10 to 20% of the project work.

Slated to begin operating in April 2006, the project entails building of a large-scale system that will oversee all aspects of the ocean liner business, from negotiating with clients to issuing cargo bonds and settling payments.

With Japan joining America and Europe in outsourcing information technology and business processing systems from India, India's outsourcing bandwagon, certainly, gets a tremendous boost. No one can deny the country has worked hard to prove it self capable of providing top quality work in record time, albeit cost effectively. Impressed, from the wary French to the hard working Japanese, everyone is keen to outsource to India.

While, the developed countries off-shore to the sub-continent, the undeveloped nations want to emulate its success story. Once again, India assumes its rightful place as the role model for the universal world. As French philosopher Pierre Sonnerat wrote: “Ancient India gave to the world its religions and philosophies: Egypt and Greece owe India their wisdom, and it is known that Pythagoras went to India to study under Brahmins, who were the most enlightened of human beings.”

Indeed, the people of the sub-continent who have worked hard for India's place in the sun deserve a standing ovation! As India assumes its rightful place in the world order, and becomes a truly global nation, it is to be hoped it does not lose sight of its historic and culturally rich ancient past, its rituals, its traditions, its innate spirituality that more than anything typifies the essence of India and its people.