Communications and IT Minister Arun Shourie on Tuesday asked Indian IT industry to tackle the anti-outsourcing measures in US by adopting a multifaceted approach envisaging expansion into alternate overseas markets like Germany and China.
"The commerce minister has stated the government's position (in his talks with US Trade Representative) on the issue, and the country's position is well known. It cannot be that developed countries start putting non-tariff barriers against us in areas where we have strengths," Shourie said on the sidelines of a Gartner Summit in New Delhi.
Citing instances of such barriers in the past, he said: "It happened in case of bed linen, marine products, steel in the US and now it happened in BPO."
India's response needed to be multi-faceted, he said.
Shourie said Indian IT industry should expand in the domestic market, focus on innovation, get into new overseas markets and adopt a low key approach in its dealing with anti-outsourcing moves.
"This is an election year there (in US) so we should expect more of this," Shourie said.
Shourie said that India's offerings should be so useful to corporates that those companies in turn convince the US administration that not outsourcing to India would deprive them of competitive advantage.
Shourie said the Indian IT industry should tap alternate markets like Germany, China and Japan.
"Tatas have put 130 people in China of which only 20 are Indians. They also have a presence in Hungary," he said, adding that the German IT market was worth $66 billion, of which India had tapped only $200-250 million opportunity.
India had on Monday hit out at the US for its double standards on opening up of trade when it was banning outsourcing from India but Washington asserted that trade liberalisation was a 'two-way street.'
"It is strange that on the one hand, people are talking about opening of market, and on the other hand, banning Business Process Outsourcing. Our agriculture is fragile as it is not subsidised, like in the US," Commerce Minister Arun Jaitley had told US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick during an hour-long meeting on Monday.
