India diary: Day three - Meetings in Mumbai

silicon.com reporter Andy McCue was on assignment in India from 14 to 23 April investigating offshoring efforts in Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and New Delhi. This is his diary. Articles and commentary on IT offshoring and BPO in India and elsewhere will be appearing on silicon.com over the coming weeks. You can find them all here.

16/4/04: Anand Pandey, the editor of ZDNet India, a partner of our parent company CNET, meets me at the hotel in the morning. He's already been on the road for an hour on his Kawasaki motorbike, which everyone gets around on in India, and it's another hour in the air-conditioned taxi to his offices. It's my first sight during daylight of the bustling city. During the journey to New Bombay my knuckles are white from gripping the seat after nearly being crushed by a lorry and numerous close scrapes with auto-rickshaws and motorbikes.

At ZDNet's modern glass and steel offices that would not be out of place in the City of London or some out-of-town business park, Anand and some of his fellow editors are bursting with opinions on the offshore outsourcing and BPO market and are also keen to know how it is viewed in the UK.

From an Indian perspective their concerns are that many of India's universities are just churning out graduates to fill repetitive and monotonous call centre and programming jobs. And although they earn good money relative to other careers in India there is a social impact.

Most still live with their families and the long and unsociable hours worked to suit the working hours of UK and US clients is having an impact on traditional family life in India. They ask where the real leaders, innovators and entrepreneurs are going to come from if India is to progress up the IT food chain to more complex and higher value services.

An interesting theory raised by Vijay Ramachandran, editor of the IT publication CRN in India, is that there is also a strategic aspect to India's dominance in offshore outsourcing. Becoming the back office for the world's biggest multinationals will ensure India's strategic importance to the US – and with it the protection of the west should a real military threat emerge from Pakistan.

A car picks me up to take me to my afternoon briefing with Mahindra BT. It still seems to be rush hour (something you quickly get used to is that it's always rush hour – although again the rotating shift patterns of IT workers means there's always people going to work or coming home).

The daily papers in India make the most of the symbolic passing of the $1bn revenue mark by Wipro and Infosys this week. They're also obsessed with the foreign - and in particular US - backlash with a story about Arizona deciding that all future state contracts will be awarded in the US.

Mahindra BT is a mixture of old Indian industry and the new wave of services, having formed from a joint venture with BT and now specialising in BPO for the telecoms sector. The place seems at odds with the preconceptions I had of high-tech India as it is in a slightly dated concrete block. But the COO says the firm is looking to open up a base, possibly in Bangalore, where there is more space and land and staff are cheaper.

Motorbikes are a popular way to get around in Mumbai.

The car takes me back across town again in the still mad traffic and we are slowed en route by a procession or demonstration with a large group of people with Indian flags banging drums. My driver says it's an election campaign event ahead of the first round of voting which is about to get underway during my trip.

The TV news is also dominated by the election and it becomes apparent that IT is going to be one of the key issues for voters. The ruling BJP party is running on an 'India Shining' ticket that says the high-tech growth is good for everyone. But opposition parties are appealing to the poor and rural voters who remain untouched by the riches of the new economy. Tomorrow I will start to find out for myself when I visit the heart of 'India Shining' – the high-tech city of Bangalore.

Oh, and just as I was thinking of future modelling assignments I get a message saying I've not been chosen for the jeans advert – I look too young. My first casting rejection.