Mumbai police question NASSCOM’s Pakistani guests
By Bala Shah

Pakistan has a population of 200 million and its scientists and techies have the same high quality skills as India.  Pakistan has cutting edge nuclear technology and is highly wired with about half its citizens (approx 95 million) owning mobile phones.  Despite the recession, it had a growing IT/BPO industry. 

Pakistanis, like Indians, have settled in large numbers in US and Europe and in that sense it is a connected country. And whatever happens there affects India.  And vice versa. In my opinion, techies and managers of both these countries have the same great skill sets much sought after in USA, Europe and Middle East.  And that the vast majority in India and Pakistan want to live like good neighbors.

NASSCOM held its Leadership Forum in Mumbai between Feb 9 – 11, 2010. This 3 day NASSCOM leadership forum, which cost about Rs. 30K per person, had the theme of ‘New Times, New Ideas, New Directions’. It had about 300 foreign guests including 4 from Pakistan.

On Feb 13, I had written about how NASSCOM and the Home Minister Chidambaram had pulled all stops to ensure our guests from Pakistan could make it to the NASSCOM Leadership Forum in Mumbai.

But it seems that the local Indian police thought that these representatives from Pakistan’s IT-ITES sector needed to be double checked despite being invited by NASSCOM. 

Pakistani delegate Jehan Ara has blogged about the unnerving experience of getting an unannounced visit by the Indian police.

“
Last week in Mumbai, something happened that has never happened before. I received a call from the reception desk asking me to go downstairs with my passport and papers because there were some gentlemen from the CID who wished to see me. I was a bit taken aback but of course the request could not be ignored so I sauntered downstairs and came face-to-face with three CID types.

They asked us why we were India, how long we had been there, when we were leaving, etc etc.

I thought they had asked enough questions so I started asking them some questions. Yeah yeah that is one way of dealing with a situation one has not been trained to handle. I asked them if we had the honour of their visit because of what had happened the night before. They pretended not to know what I was referring to. I wasn’t going to let go so easily so I persisted “You know – the Pune blast!” They responded by saying that it had nothing to do with that and that this was just routine standard operating procedure. I smiled and said “Well, I have been coming to India on business for the past 8 years and I have never had the pleasure of seeing you or your colleagues before.” They smiled slightly and ignored my remark. After they had gone through all the papers and asked their questions, they thanked us and left. And that was the end of an encounter that none of us wanted to go through again. It was an uncomfortable situation at best.
“

Yusuf Jan is the CEO and co-founder of Mixit Technologies and Chairman of the Pakistan Software Houses Association (PASHA).  Yusuf was also a guest at this NASSCOM conference.  In his blog, Yusuf praises the venue, event management, food, entertainment and the NASSCOM hospitality.  But Yusuf was less impressed by the NASSCOM conference when he blogged

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However, I was not too impressed by the discussions in the sessions and workshops I attended.  The”wow” “game changing” factors were not there in the content – at least not for me.

I also realized that despite the unbelievable”in your face” “on the sidewalk” “clearly unavoidable” poverty all over Mumbai, the global executives seemed comfortable being in India and transacting business in India.

I guess safety and consistency in business policy are the key motivators for global players to be in India (not to mention the availability of the talent pool).

Seems like the only (or the primary) hurdle we have to overcome at the moment is to make Pakistan a safe place for foreigners to come and conduct business.
“

(Techgoss had published the following story on Feb 13, 2010)

Home Minister helped Pakistani delegates get visas
By Bala Shah

Pakistan has a population of 200 million and its scientists and techies have the same high quality skills as India.  Pakistan has cutting edge nuclear technology and is highly wired with about half its citizens (approx 95 million) owning mobile phones.  Despite the recession, it had a growing IT/BPO industry. 

Pakistanis, like Indians, have settled in large numbers in US and Europe and in that sense it is a connected country. And whatever happens there affects India.  And vice versa.

NASSCOM held its Leadership Forum in Mumbai between Feb 9 – 11, 2010. This 3 day NASSCOM leadership forum, which cost about Rs. 30K per person, had the theme of ‘New Times, New Ideas, New Directions’. It had about 300 foreign guests including 4 from Pakistan.

Techgoss had always felt that the vast majority of Indians and Pakistanis want to live in peace and harmony.  Sadly, some extremist forces are hell bent on shattering good neighborly relations.  There are many in the Pakistani IT-ITES sectors who are equally interested in the positives of both countries. Jehan Ara was born in Karachi but moved to Hong Kong as a child.  Jehan is the current President of P@SHA (Association of Software Houses Association, Pakistan) and hopes for good long term relationships between the peoples of both countries. She is one of the key figures in Pakistan’s booming tech industry.

Jehan Ara and 3 others from Pakistan were also invited to the NASSCOM conference in Mumbai. Apparently, the NASSCOM leadership had to personally ring Home Minister Chidambaram to ensure that Visas were given on time to our guests from Pakistan. She has blogged about the challenges in getting Visas to India and the warm reception by their Indian hosts.

“
The flight itself was a very short one – one hour and 25 minutes and although take-off was 10 minutes late due to air-traffic control, we landed in Mumbai at 12 noon. We were excited about the upcoming conference and happy that the visa had been granted. It had been a real hassle this time with Home Ministry clearance, NoCs from the Ministry of External Affairs and the Maharashtra State Government all being part of the requirements. The President and Vice President of Nasscom, and several friends within the Association, had put in a lot of effort to ensure that we got our visas at the 11th hour. Unfortunately our visas were single entry, Mumbai-only conference visas for a 10 day period, instead of the multiple-entry business visas that we had requested, which would have included cities like Bangalore, Delhi and Hyderabad.

…………..

Anyway, at our level, we continue to try and meet, to exchange views and to learn from each other. Som Mittal, President of Nasscom, warmed our hearts when during his inaugural address at Nasscom 2010, he said that he specially wanted to extend a warm welcome to the delegates from Pakistan. There were 1700 delegates at the Nasscom event this year. This included around 300 foreign delegates. Som was one of the key people who was responsible for processing our visas as quickly as he could. He called the Home Minister himself to ensure that it was done. Thanks Som.
“