In America today, the O word that truly terrorizes the general populace (and the Democratic presidential candidates) is not Osama, but Outsourcing (or, if you prefer, Offshoring). Outsourcing is Owful! Worse that those H1B that were a deadlier disease than that brought on by HIV. We don’t care. We just the US has barely scraped the surface in outsourcing to India. And here’s our list of other activities that should head towards our country: 1) Lawmaking: Think of the overheads in terms of keeping Capitol Hill functional. Think of the overheads at evacuating Capitol Hill each time an envelope with remnants of some powder arrives in a mailbox. Think of paying for the filibusters. So, the best way forward is to send all lawmaking activity to India’s Lok Sabha. It’ll give the Indian Parliamentarians something to do in between walkouts and dharnas. And they’ll charge a hell of a lot less, even if you figure in the bribes that will have to be paid.
2) Hollywood Actresses: Millions upon millions of dollars are paid to Hollywood’s prima donnas to produce one dud after another. Think Jennifer Lopez and Gigli. Can you actually think of a major motion picture of 2003 that has been a box office success due to an actress? Nah! So, the easiest way out is to simply farm out all those female lead roles to Bollywood’s actresses, not only will they charge less, they’re a lot prettier too.
3) Baseball: Basically, the Yankees, who are into spending several millions into buying players in the hope of winning a Pennant. Yeah right! You can argue endlessly about whether Alex Rodriguez or Derek Jeter will prove better, but the fact of the matter is that the best batters and outfielders will come from India, even from the non-Test playing First Class cricket pool.
4) Magazine Covers: Since all of them feature Indian faces anyway, and have their correspondents write articles from Mumbai and Bangalore about how horrendous outsourcing is, the publishers can save costs by having hiring Indian journalists and designers.
5) The Presidential Elections: Why don’t they just contest from the world’s most populous democracy? Think of it, they’ll be approaching the elections with absolutely no baggage of recognition, no one is going to give a damn, that will just about level the playing field and even Ralph Nader may stand a chance at taking the White House.
6) Books: The bottomline is that not only Indians better educated than Americans, most speak far better English, and most importantly, write better English in terms of grammar and syntax (this column is an exception). Rather than read the mangled text of the Grisham’s and King’s and all those unread literary types, they can just hire Indian ghost writers to do all the hard work for a piece of the action.
7) The Mafia: The Italians, despite their promotion in The Sopranos, are turning into wimps, they are no longer the brutal hitmen they used to be, even the Chinese and Russian mafias are deadlier. But, the ones who can really make an offer that can’t be refused are the Indians, or, in particular, any Bihari.
This, of course, is just a short, short list, so much more can be added.
In return, India will repay the Americans by outsourcing poverty to the United States.