The companies had signed agreements with our government whereby they would train 100 of our talents and absorb some of them as employees. Jobs with Infosys and Genpact do not grow on trees. The best graduates from various business schools, notably the Indian Institute of Managements across India get invited to join Infosys for huge salaries. But more than the salaries are the ESOPs, employees’ stock options provision. This system means Infosys issues their stock market shares to their employees as part of the pay package and earnings from these blue chip share dividends is many times the annual gross salary of the employees.
Just how big is Infosys? In 2008 December, Infosys revenue in dollar terms rose 32 per cent to $1,084 million and earnings increased 42 per cent, to $310 million from a year ago. At the end of the quarter the company had 88,601 employees, or more than one-tenth the population of Bhutan.
In the same year, Infosys won the Platinum Award (the highest) in the Vision Awards of the League of American Communications Professionals.
Similarly, Genpact is recognised as the leading global business intelligence and performance management service provider, which helps global corporations improve the ways in which they do business.
This was, as a senior university official put it, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And the youth of this country just threw out the offers, not just embarrassing the country but doing nothing to get employed.
Our reporters were astounded when they heard from some of the students that their parents were not allowing them. Then why did they at all go and waste time and money? What will companies like Infosys or Genpact think before doing further business with Bhutanese people? This is just like the irresponsible students and parents who take vocational training and refuse to get their hands dirtied in blue collar jobs.
In July we had sent some of senior staff to India, and they met some of the top journalists in the country. To one Managing Editor of a massive media house, we had asked whether we could send some of our reporters to work with them for a fortnight each to get better trained. The editor snided: “Some of your Bhutanese reporters had come earlier and they just wanted to have fun. We have no time for such people.” The shame was too much to even attempt to hide.
Now these 26 youth have done that all over again.
Supposing such a student does get a government job, the salary would still be insignificant compared to what they would earn with these global giants: the average annual salary for an Infosys software engineer is $104,000, or Nu 50 million. Besides, such companies promote talent and these Bhutanese graduates would get to see the world.
It is true that after a while, people feel homesick. But with the IT Park coming up soon, in which both Genpact and Infosys will play crucial roles, the Bhutanese students could have come back and done yeomen service to the country.
But do they care? We doubt!
