India: The Temp Work Force: An Indian employment agency is training tens of thousands of workers in an effort to circumvent the country’s strict labor laws, which protect workers but make it difficult for employers to fire them
By Vikas Bajaj | 30 November 2011
NEW DELHI — Every three months, India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, meets with a special panel assigned the ambitious task of figuring out how to produce 500 million skilled workers over the next two decades.
The panel is a cross section of India’s power elite, including many of the usual figures like the education minister, the finance minister and the former chief executive of the country’s biggest software outsourcing company. Then there is a more curious choice: Manish Sabharwal.
Mr. Sabharwal runs TeamLease, a Bangalore-based agency that has created thousands of jobs by fielding temporary workers for companies in India that want to expand their work force while skirting India’s stringent labor laws, which businesses say discourage the hiring of permanent employees. Many labor leaders and left-leaning politicians accuse him of running the nation’s largest illegal business.
He does not completely disagree.
“We should not exist,” Mr. Sabharwal, a 40-year-old graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, said about his company, which has 60,000 employees. “The genius of India is to allow us to exist.”
Outsourcing Giant Finds It Must Be Client, Too
##### By Vikas Bajaj | 30 November 2011
NEW DELHI -- Every three months, India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh, meets with a special panel assigned the ambitious task of figuring out how to produce 500 million skilled workers over the next two decades.
The panel is a cross section of India's power elite, including many of the usual figures like the education minister, the finance minister and the former chief executive of the country's biggest software outsourcing company. Then there is a more curious choice: Manish Sabharwal.
Mr. Sabharwal runs TeamLease, a Bangalore-based agency that has created thousands of jobs by fielding temporary workers for companies in India that want to expand their work force while skirting India's stringent labor laws, which businesses say discourage the hiring of permanent employees. Many labor leaders and left-leaning politicians accuse him of running the nation's largest illegal business.
He does not completely disagree.
"We should not exist," Mr. Sabharwal, a 40-year-old graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, said about his company, which has 60,000 employees. "The genius of India is to allow us to exist."
