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NRI workers in Dubai sleep in cars as rents become unaffordable |
Bachelors are being forced to camp out at nights failing to even rent bed space in dingy and cramped residential buildings in Dubai. The only establishment charges they need to pay are “house facilities” which, at Dh 50 to Dh 75 (US$ 20) a month, are far below the going rate for bed space, which ranges from Dh300 to Dh500 (US$135) in those areas.
“One of my friends told me that if I want to grow in Dubai I should have a driving licence [and get a car,” said Dilip Sen, an Indian secretary. Now the licence has led to his home, quite literally.
‘I get up as early as 5am and make use of all the house facilities,” said Sen. “I then head for breakfast in a nearby cafeteria. Getting back from work at four again leads me to the house facilities, depending on access,” said Sen. The house facilities include an area to store luggage, bathing and washing facilities, and possibly an ironing board with an iron.
The bachelors said they do not park in the same area twice for fear of being rounded up by the police. It is illegal for residents to permanently live or sleep in their cars, a police source said. |
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In UK, 85% of foreign IT professionals are Indian |
In the UK, 85 percent of foreign IT professionals are Indian, as per figures announced by the Association of Technology Staffing Companies (ATSCo). American IT experts came a very distant second with a paltry five percent. That 85 percent works translates into no less than 18,248 people from India taking up IT jobs in the UK in the past twelve months.
ATSCo chief executive Ann Swain gave her reasons for the high number of Indian workers travelling to Britain: “Skills shortages continue to be a major pull factor in bringing foreign IT workers to Britain, but the concern is that some organisations may be taking advantage of the visa system to import cheap labour from abroad”.
Overrall, according to the Home Office, some 22,000 foreign IT workers came to the UK in 2005, as opposed to a mere 1,827 back in 1995 and, now, IT is the second favourite profession for work permit allocations after nursing.
The kind of projects that the IT experts from India are working on include the more than six billion pounds upgrade of the National Health Service IT system and the four billion pounds upgrade of the Ministry of Defence computer network and, as Ann Swain said: “The transfer of jobs between Britain and India is now very much two-way traffic: while low-skilled IT jobs continue to be shipped to India, highly trained Indian IT professionals are coming to Britain in managerial roles.” |
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MNCs scout for Indian brains for their global operations |
As global majors grapple with a severe crunch for top-level talent, India is fast becoming a hunting ground for global companies. While MNCs have been moving Indian managers through internal transfers for assignments abroad, top Indian leadership talent is today being sought directly by companies abroad. Not only are headhunters being told to look at Indian managers, they are also being told which Indian companies to look at.”We are seeing a situation where multinationals like Citigroup, Axa, ING, Merill, Colgate and DHL, among others, are seriously looking at hiring external Indian talent for leadership roles, especially in the Asia-Pacific region. We expect this activity to be more pronounced in the coming months and it could perhaps further accentuate the already serious talent crunch in the local market”, a global executive search firm said.
“Analytical capabilities of Indian managers are on a par with the best,” says Venkat Shastry, partner at Stanton Chase India. Indian operations for various global companies have reached significant scale with India contributing close to 60% of Asia-Pacific revenues and approximately 20% towards global revenues.
As the job market in India has been hot most professionals bag lucrative assignments within India itself, thereby reducing global offers but that is set to change “It’s a question of pure talent, but we are more competitive because of our education,” says Shubhro Mitra, who recently joined
Axa. |
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Indian schools gear up to attract NRIs kids |
NRIs who want their children to get the Indian experience firsthand, are increasingly sending their wards to international schools back home for education.
Cashing in on the trend, international schools are wooing overseas parents with squash courts, laptops and wi-fi enabled campuses.
To cope with the steady increase of students from countries like the US, UK and Africa, some high profile schools are increasing their intake. “From 80 students in 2005, our campus strength has increased to nearly 135 this year,” says the International School of
Hyderabad. |
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Dubai’s Taj Mahal attracts large crowds |
| The Taj Mahal at the Global Village in Dubai is drawing huge crowds. The replica is close to the one at Agra in grandeur and almost three-fourths the size of the original. Spread over a massive 400,000 square feet, this unique structure is sponsored by Zee Television and the NRI-owned Dubai Hotel Grand. “While the original Taj took 23 years, 20,000 people and 1,000 elephants, its smaller replica in Dubai has been created in just three months by 600 people, of which 270 artisans were flown from India.’’ Special stone was specially flown in from Jaipur. The landscaping of the original monument has also found their way into the new creation. |
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NRIs to launch search engine to challenge Google |
Two Indian computer wizards who studied along with Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University are now launching a start-up to compete with the world’s best known search engine.
Anand Rajaraman and Venky Harinarayan are betting that ‘Kosmix’ with its deep search technology can challenge Google by gleaning more about the overall content of webpages searched instead of their popularity.
Google basically searches pages based on a sort of popularity contest and not necessarily its content but Kosmix’ creators says they took a different approach and developed a new kind of ‘categorisation’ technology.
The two Indians, who were among the co-founders of web database company ‘Junglee’, hope their deep search technology can improve upon Google’s one-size-fits-all approach.
Kosmix asks users to define a category for a search. If a search term is related to health, users can make a query in a health-related search box. That way, it can find webpages closely associated in meaning with the search term.
It then looks at what webpages linking to other pages say - to take a bigger stab at judging the page’s subject.
If a webpage is saying something similar to the page it links to, you can get enough information to categorise it by topic, says
Harinarayan. |
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Olympic debut for Canadian NRI |
Indo-Canadian figure skater Emanuel Sandhu, chosen to represent his country at the Winter Olympics in Italy, is hoping to cut a fine figure. Sandhu, 25, is one of the three figure skaters from Canada.
Sandhu’s ballet training as well as his half-Indian and half-Italian heritage has given him a unique style and look. He secured his berth for the Olympics, winning the silver in the senior men’s category at the Canadian Championships.
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