Death, Disruption and Dollar Impact
With so many technology companies in the silicon valley of India, I’m wondering what would be the dollar impact of one day’s disruption in work!
There has been an overdose of this. Nonetheless, this entry is about the economic impact of the incidents that followed Dr.Rakumar’s death.
Services companies like Wipro or Infosys can make up their quarterly targets by making their employees work one more day in the following weekend. But look at product companies and BPO organizations – time lost is money lost.
My favorite technology news site “The Register” has an article about the Bangalore riots. Its list has biggies like Microsoft and HP being impacted.
I also heard a lot from my friends and colleagues about targeted attack on IT professionals. Apparently, the mob had showed their anger on the people responsible for the ever-increasing cost-of-living, over-crowded city and worsening traffic.
Are these claims true?
Anyone got statistics?
I also heard a lot from my friends and colleagues about targeted attack on IT professionals.
I seriously doubt this.
I did not hear anything about IT professionals being targetted specifically. But now that it has been reported, it would obviously have to do with their frustration of not being able to live a life that they were able to live in the 90s. Many of them are simply doing it because they get a kick out of it, which is absolutely sad. Like Bhaskar mentioned in one of his previous posts, education is the only answer. Education leads to self-actualisation and therefore an awakening amongst the people.
Kanth… Yahoo India has an article on its portal that says the loss for software firms will run upto for US$ 40 million. I guess it us a very conservative figure. It would be a lot more. Let us say – for one company, for one account with 500 people on board, and accounting for 8 hrs per head costing, say, 90 US$ an hour – with 1.5 days of work lost – this would amount to 540,000 US$ of loss. Not to mention all the overheads of resources and real estate. 40 million is then just the tip of the iceberg!
IT professionals weren’t targetted. Why would they be targetted?
Most of the losses are only notional. They can made up by working a compensatory day, which most companies would. And its terribly unfortunate that people are spreading canards that the riots were against non-Kannada folks and IT professionals. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact most of the IT hubs (Koramangala, Indiranagar, Whitefield, Airport Road, Electronics City) and linguistic minority dominated localities like Ulsoor , Srirampuram etc were almost entirely peaceful. Sure, socio-economic divides could be behind the venting of ire by the rioters but if anyone was targetted specifically it was the administration in the form of the police and state transport buses.
To add to Sachin’s comments, the brunt of the damage was borne by areas concentrated with a Kannada population, like Sadashivanagar, Seshadripuram, Rajajinagar, Yeshwantpura and Peenya. Several homes were stoned here. So, that alone should send any “linguistic motivations” theory out of the window.
Hi,
Though I do not know that the unruly mob targeted IT people and their offices, I can definitely say that there will be simmering anger among the locals against outsiders who are flourishing in THEIR locality, simultaneously depriving them opportunities and rising THEIR cost of living. If left unchecked, this could lead to, I am afraid, a civil war. We will hope that the authorities, Government and people work together and make the best for everyone.
Happy Blogging !
Regards
Rajkumar. B