India remains one of the poorest countries of the world, no matter how many Indians work for Microsoft or head petty little airlines in the US. India is so poor that the World Bank, which considers itself an authority on poverty, has been bringing out studies on Indian poverty every year. And who writes these studies? Indian economists, of course. And where do these economists work? In American universities. These economists have, of course, become very rich by writing on Indian poverty.

We Indians live from euphoria to euphoria. We need something to keep our adrenaline going from time to time, like some drug junkie. Last month, it was Vajpayee's visit to the US. The Americans didn't make much of it, for one prime minister or another is always visiting the US, some to check on their numbered accounts, others to impress their folks back home. We, of course, went to town on it, as if it was another Columbus who had discovered America for the second time.

This month it's the special visas to software workers from India and other Asian countries. Our columnists simply cannot believe that such a wonderful thing is happening.

One of them was beside himself the other day with stories of how Indians were conquering America, just because a few Indians are heading a few businesses over there.

America is a huge country with a GDP of nearly 10,000 billion and countless big corporations. If half a dozen of these corporations appoint some Indians at the top, I don't see why we should make such a big song and dance about it.

It is said that India is soon going to be an IT superpower. Superpower is a nice little word that we use casually as if it was there for the picking. And what is the basis for this superpower business? The fact that we are exporting software worth about six billion dollars a year and may raise that figure to $100 billion by he end of this decade.

What we do not know or are not being told is that our software exports are no more than one per cent of global software exports.

This is what Rahul Bajaj said in his recent lecture in Delhi at CSIR. Have we been told this? No. We have been led to believe that we have already captured the software world and shall soon be a software or IT superpower, elbowing all other countries out of the way.

One columnists believe that India's conquest of the world is just beginning. He argues that the Indians who will be going to the US on special visas to work in its software companies will soon take over the entire software industry in that country and possibly the world.

I pray that our Indians will succeed but the scenario is going to be entirely different. In any case, there is hardly a question of our being a superpower on that account.

Indians who go out to America will be working for American companies, not the other way round. Others work for superpowers, superpowers don't work for others. What we are witnessing is just another version of the old indentured labour that went out of India in the 19th century to work for plantations owned by Britishers. I don't see any difference between them and the new indentured labour that will be going out in the coming century. Of course, they will be better paid than they earn here, but that was the case with old indentured labour also. Otherwise, they would not have gone out thousands of miles away to work in plantations and coalfields!

The British were a superpower because at the height of the empire, they forced everybody to work for them.

The British didn't work for anybody. That was the case with Germans as well as the French. Superpowers make others work for them; they don't work for others.

It is true that times are different and so is the character of the new indentured labour. Our boys and girls will settle down in the US and Europe and some may set up businesses there. But this is also what the old indentured labour did. There is nothing new in that. But to argue that by settling down over there, they will take over their country - as some stupid people are saying in India - is nonsense.

Remember, software workers are like engine drivers. They drive the trains but have had no hand in the design of the locomotive or the permanent way. There was a time when most engine drivers in East Africa were Indians.

But they did not take over East Africa or any other part of Africa. They were actually thrown out of East Africa and had to take shelter in England. They are doing pretty well in England but nobody is saying that they have taken over the country. All western countries are being ruled by whites, though there are some Indians whom they allow to shine, just as the British did in India and disbursed knighthoods to their loyal subjects. But these knights did not rule India when the British left.

Let us have no illusions about what we are and what we can become. India will be a superpower not by working for Americans and helping US corporations make huge profits, but by getting our own country right. There is a great deal that remains to be done in India and that can be done only by Indians. The new computer coolies cannot do it from thousands of miles away.

Take the question of NRIs. We expected such a lot from them. After all, they are supposed to be our rich cousins. What have they done? They have put money in our banks because they get better returns here than in their own countries. They collect their interest regularly and visit India from time to time to send it. There are very few industries in which they have put money except through the stock market, but that is speculation. Ofcourse they make convenient noises just to show off their patriotism, especially anything to do with fundamentalism, or seen as attacking the crazy mouthings of some fanatics who are having a field day under the right-wing dispensation at the Centre, wreaking trouble across India in the name of `Swadeshi'.

We have had nearly ten years of liberalisation but has it really made much difference to the life of the average Indian? The number of the poor has actually gone up since 1991.

There has been no great increase in our growth rates and Indian industry has actually suffered.

Thousands of small and medium industries have been closed down and millions of workers have been thrown out of jobs.

So we are in a peculiar situation. While millions of Indians are without jobs in India, a few hundred Indians will be going to the US and other countries of the west in search of jobs. Of course, they will earn more than what they did in India, but does that mean that India will gain? India will gain only when Indians in India have work and nobody is starving.

It is ridiculous to think that a few hundred Indians or even a few thousand Indians working abroad can change the face of India. The so-called coolies - I hate the word - who went out of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar a hundred and fifty years ago did not change the face of these two states. They are still the poorest states of India. Why should a few more collies, what other word can I use for them, from Mumbai or Delhi change the face of Mumbai or Delhi ?

India has to be built by Indians. Indians going out of India cannot do it for us. I remain totally unimpressed by the fact the head of McKinsey & Co is an Indian or a professor in a business school in London or Harvard is an Indian.

They can contribute more to India's development by working here than working outside, just as Indian software workers in India are more useful to us than their counterpart in Microsoft or anywhere else.

India remains one of the poorest countries of the world, no matter how many Indians work for Microsoft or head petty little airlines in the US. India is so poor that the World Bank, which considers itself an authority on poverty, has been bringing out studies on Indian poverty every year. And who writes these studies? Indian economists, of course.