Give & take will keep outsourcing alive: Rothman

Richard Rothman, US trade commissioner to India, believes that a two way street will open up the bottleneck on outsourcing to India. "To stop political opposition in the US against outsourcing it is very important for India to increase its imports from America. It can’t be a one-way street. There have to be profits for America as well," Rothman, who was in the city to inaugurate an IT firm’s new office, says.
All the same, he accepts that talk about Americans losing jobs to Indians will die once the US elections are over.
He explains, "Outsourcing is an important phenomenon because this is the first time in US history that service jobs have been outsourced. Therefore, the ban in some states on outsourcing of government jobs will not be of economic, but political importance.
Politically, it’s a very important move, because this is an issue that bothers the common American."
Worrying about China, according to Rothman, is a waste of time. He analyses, "Unlike China, India is a far more politically stable country. There is a lot of uncertainty in China which is frightful for an American businessman.
Apart from that, India has an advantage over China because of English. It’s too simplistic to say that the Chinese can learn English." While India’s biggest problems are infrastructure and intellectual property right complications, trade barriers and high tariffs are other discouraging factors. "The government needs to make it easier for a person to invest here. Why are so many Indians doing so well in America?
Even there they start from scratch. The same is not happening here because of these loopholes. So just as several American companies are setting up in Pune, the city does need an international airport and better public transport," the Mumbai-based diplomat says.
Rothman’s wife, Tabu, is Indian. Married at 19, Rothman now has a nine-year-old son, Nicholas.
When he’s not being diplomatic, chances are he’s busy being social. "Mumbai has a ridiculously active nightlife and I end up going out every night of the week," he says.
Rothman is also perhaps the first diplomat to write a fiction novel, Intelligent Endings which was launched in 2003 by Amitabh Bachchan. He’s all set to write another book now. The topic? India!