Human capital is a more complex matter. The existence of 17 officiallanguages magnifies the challenge of providing basic education in informationand communication technology skills. At the university level, the demandfor skilled ICT engineers and managers is outstripping the capacity of theeducational system. Low labor costs continue to be an Indian advantage, belying thefact that more Indian companies than U.S. companies have earned the toprating from Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute. India's 1 billion people are only beginning to be affected by this change.
Progress is slowed by a difficultworking relationship between the public and private sectors.
As a result, the private sector has moved forward where there are fewerobstacles. Call centers, a leading service export, are assisted by coststructures for overseas connections, but held back by regulation in domesticmarkets. In the meantime, Indian companies and the U.S. companies who have partneredwith them are weathering the slowdown in the global information technologyindustry better than many of their peers. The opportunity that this situation creates should not go unexaminedby the United States, the world's largest buyer of programming services.