John Ribeiro

Despite protests in Europe and the U.S. against outsourcing and the moving of jobs to India, the country's software services and business process outsourcing (BPO) services business is booming, according to data released Thursday by the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) in Delhi.

Microsoft Corp. is planning a number of moves that will increase and potentially consolidate its development activities in India, according to company officials and sources.

India may be closer to getting an important jewel in its technology development crown: a semiconductor fab set up by a multinational company. A number of companies have announced tentative steps towards setting up fabs in the country.

India's stock markets plunged Monday, on investor panic that leftists may pressure the incoming government led by the Congress party to derail economic reforms. The Bombay Stock Exchange's index in Mumbai plummeted more than 700 points Monday, a 15 per cent drop, before recovering some ground by mid-afternoon and closing down 564.7 points, or 11.14 per cent.

The fall of Atal Bihari Vajpayee's government in India surprised the IT industry there, particularly because most exit polls predicted that the prime minister's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies would cobble together a majority in parliament.

The government of Chandrababu Naidu, the tech-savvy chief minister of the South Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, was defeated Tuesday by a landslide, making the IT industry, including a number of multinationals with operations there, a trifle jittery.

Unisys Corp. announced Wednesday that it is setting up a technology development centre in Bangalore, India, which will increase to 2,000 employees over the next five years. The company plans to spend US$180 million on the centre during this period for employment and related expenses

Aiming to quell concern from Western users of outsourcing services, India is likely to have a tighter data protection and privacy regime in place later this year. The National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) in Delhi is confident that new measures will be passed as law in the coming session of India's parliament, said Kiran Karnik, president of NASSCOM which is working closely with the government on the new rules.