Silicon Valley thought India was its future, now things have changed
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Re: Silicon Valley thought India was its future, now things have changed
#2I see this as a propaganda piece.
The unique problem with India is that, a decade ago, it had a small but highly educated, privileged urban population, spread across a handful of cities, who are the most vocal in national media and social media. This was the situation when SV companies made inroads to India.
Then came the mobile revolution and the availability of smartphones coupled with dead cheap internet. The rural population jumped on the bandwagon. Then social media saw a lot of voices being raised against perceived in-sensitivity of liberals (I too agree that there is a disproportionate bias in news, towards one political leaning) or portrayal of India in international arena.
This is when SV started complaining.
And when the population speaks against SM, the elected representatives will act.
Take the most recent case of raids against Twitter. Twitter did a major mistake by labeling a piece of content "mis-information", while there was an active investigation was underway by the highest investigative authority in India on the same content. That is blatantly illegal. It should have said something like "these facts are being investigated" or something like that.
When an investigation is going on, media is not supposed to pass judgements. Twitter fumbled and India govt. took the opportunity.
Now you have Twitter agreeing, in writing, that it will follow the law of the land.
Silicon Valley is pushing limits. India, as a developing country with a mass of gullible rural population and culturally sensitive to perceived dominance of foreign culture, has ample number of politicians who will make use of every opportunity to gather followers.
Re: Silicon Valley thought India was its future, now things have changed
#3I see this as a propaganda piece. The unique problem with India is that, a decade ago, it had a small but highly educated, privileged urban population, spread across a handful of cities, who are the most vocal in national media and social media. This was the situation when SV companies made inroads to India. Then came the mobile revolution and the availability of smartphones coupled with dead cheap internet. The rura…
> I see this as a propaganda piece.
I tend to agree. I've worked in SV a long time, and a majority of non-US-born coworkers remain Indian. I see no evidence of this changing, so I find it implausible that slate has it's finger on the pulse of tech and is detecting a weakening of the role of Indian programmers, nor have I observed any decline in the quality or usefulness of Indian programmers, which is ultimately what matters.
Re: Silicon Valley thought India was its future, now things have changed
#4[deleted]
Re: Silicon Valley thought India was its future, now things have changed
#5This downward trend has long been in the works.
The current government came into power riding on a wave of popularity, largely driven by their "IT cells". Now comfortably in power, they are probably dismantling the path, to avoid others who might try to follow.
The government is not just in a stand-off with big-tech companies. It continues to view its own citizens as adversaries with frequent internet shutdowns [1].
Re: Silicon Valley thought India was its future, now things have changed
#6Oh good. Maybe they can come back to India and develop the indigenous software industry.
Re: Silicon Valley thought India was its future, now things have changed
#7This is a theme that will apply in a variety of different areas, well beyond Silicon Valley. There was a sense in the late couple of decades that India will become a faithful follower of US practices (if not policies) with its easily accessible population for everything from movies to ecommerce, food chains to apparel brands and more. The implied sense was that the rapidly growing middle-class would want to mimic (or at least, consume) American lifestyle and values. This did hold when the numbers were small. When this number becomes a few hundred million it is absolutely unsurprising that this mass of users will have their own views and not blindly adopt what others say.
Clearly the changing political landscape has a role to play, but then the cause and effect are usually reversed. The reasons why the political landscape changed, why the current party came to power, are the more fundamental reasons why things are changing.
As India finds its own voice, as a substantial economy, market and an independent identity lots of companies and countries will have to rebevaluate heir views. Good or bad, who knows, but the change is inevitable.
Re: Silicon Valley thought India was its future, now things have changed
#8I see this as a propaganda piece. The unique problem with India is that, a decade ago, it had a small but highly educated, privileged urban population, spread across a handful of cities, who are the most vocal in national media and social media. This was the situation when SV companies made inroads to India. Then came the mobile revolution and the availability of smartphones coupled with dead cheap internet. The rura…
> Twitter did a major mistake by labeling ....
They did not, Twitter has brandished its political leaning.
They pay very little to no taxes, it might be flexing or testing the waters to prevent a global tax as proposed in the G7.
Twitter in particular has double standards dealing with India vis-a-vis EU.
Re: Silicon Valley thought India was its future, now things have changed
#9This is a theme that will apply in a variety of different areas, well beyond Silicon Valley. There was a sense in the late couple of decades that India will become a faithful follower of US practices (if not policies) with its easily accessible population for everything from movies to ecommerce, food chains to apparel brands and more. The implied sense was that the rapidly growing middle-class would want to mimic (or…
India is arguably faithfully following the US here, because Modi's populism has more than a few parallels to Trump.
Re: Silicon Valley thought India was its future, now things have changed
#10This is a theme that will apply in a variety of different areas, well beyond Silicon Valley. There was a sense in the late couple of decades that India will become a faithful follower of US practices (if not policies) with its easily accessible population for everything from movies to ecommerce, food chains to apparel brands and more. The implied sense was that the rapidly growing middle-class would want to mimic (or…
India is arguably faithfully following the US here, because Modi's populism has more than a few parallels to Trump.
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