WEBVTT - how the tech boom is killing India’s best coders 0:00:10.039 --> 0:00:12.680 Hey, it's Dexter. Before we get in today's episode, just 0:00:12.680 --> 0:00:14.840 the heads up that we're going to be talking about suicide. 0:00:15.200 --> 0:00:17.840 So if that's not something you're comfortable hearing about, no worries, 0:00:17.920 --> 0:00:19.120 and we'll catch on the next one. 0:00:20.160 --> 0:00:24.600 Nikol was a star student. His parents are farmers and 0:00:24.920 --> 0:00:27.560 comes from a humble family. In fact, when he landed 0:00:27.560 --> 0:00:30.920 a job at Ula Crutrem, which is a high profile 0:00:31.480 --> 0:00:35.479 AI company, banners went up in his village because nobody 0:00:35.479 --> 0:00:37.520 had gone as far as he had in that village, 0:00:37.520 --> 0:00:42.360 you know. But then he started working at the company 0:00:42.440 --> 0:00:44.519 and he realized that the work culture is not what 0:00:44.640 --> 0:00:45.560 he expected. 0:00:47.880 --> 0:00:50.560 Part MN is an independent journalist who recently wrote a 0:00:50.600 --> 0:00:53.320 piece for the publication Rest of World and the title 0:00:53.360 --> 0:00:56.320 of that article is death of an Indian tech Worker. 0:00:56.760 --> 0:00:59.680 It's about Nicol Simwanci, a twenty four year old machine 0:00:59.720 --> 0:01:02.560 learning engineer in Bangalore, a city that some people were 0:01:02.640 --> 0:01:04.639 nicknamed India's Silicon Valley. 0:01:05.240 --> 0:01:07.400 His family members told me that he had started working 0:01:07.400 --> 0:01:11.080 fifteen hours a day. His manager was kind of abrasive, 0:01:11.560 --> 0:01:14.280 which was not something he was used to. He was 0:01:14.280 --> 0:01:17.080 a very soft spoken, polite sort of a guy. When 0:01:17.080 --> 0:01:19.679 he had come home for a couple of weeks he 0:01:19.720 --> 0:01:21.800 had met his close friend. They caught up and he 0:01:21.840 --> 0:01:24.399 basically told him that he's feeling a little lonely in 0:01:24.440 --> 0:01:28.480 Bangalore and he was considering a move back. But his 0:01:28.480 --> 0:01:31.119 family and the friend I spoke to said that it 0:01:31.160 --> 0:01:33.080 was not easy for him to come back and just 0:01:33.560 --> 0:01:36.560 abandon the job that had brought so much pride to 0:01:36.600 --> 0:01:39.640 his parents. Right, it would have spread a bit of 0:01:39.840 --> 0:01:42.800 negativity around him in the village, and he would have 0:01:42.840 --> 0:01:46.120 thought that I've made my parents proud. I can't just 0:01:46.280 --> 0:01:50.920 leave that and come back. And one evening he sent 0:01:50.960 --> 0:01:54.200 a message to his roommate which tell my family it 0:01:54.240 --> 0:01:57.360 was an accident. A few hours later, his body was 0:01:57.440 --> 0:01:59.720 found in a lake in Bangalore. 0:02:00.520 --> 0:02:07.520 Tell my family that it was an accident. Yeah, Nicol 0:02:07.680 --> 0:02:09.960 was someone that people looked up to. This is a 0:02:09.960 --> 0:02:12.120 young man from a tiny village who got out and 0:02:12.160 --> 0:02:15.520 got himself a job at a respected, big company. What 0:02:15.639 --> 0:02:18.200 happened to him there is a really long story and 0:02:18.240 --> 0:02:21.560 a really sad story, but it's not a unique story. 0:02:22.000 --> 0:02:24.400 Cross reporting shows that there is an increasing trend of 0:02:24.440 --> 0:02:27.080 people leaving poor upbringings only to go die in the 0:02:27.080 --> 0:02:35.079 big city, and the connection is India's tech industry from 0:02:35.160 --> 0:02:46.400 Kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcasts. This is kill Switch. I'm Dexter Thomas. 0:02:49.800 --> 0:02:50.360 I'm all right. 0:03:17.919 --> 0:03:20.760 India has always had a suicide problem. In fact, that 0:03:21.120 --> 0:03:24.320 suicide rate is more than the global rate. But some 0:03:24.400 --> 0:03:27.440 of the suicides that have happened in India are largely 0:03:27.919 --> 0:03:29.200 suicides of farmers. 0:03:29.560 --> 0:03:31.959 India's farmers have been in international news for the past 0:03:32.000 --> 0:03:35.280 few years. Back in twenty twenty, farmers and unions representing 0:03:35.320 --> 0:03:39.040 over two hundred and fifty million people staged the largest 0:03:39.080 --> 0:03:42.200 protest in recorded human history. You might have seen some 0:03:42.240 --> 0:03:44.920 of the footage of this. Farmers driving tractors from northern 0:03:45.040 --> 0:03:48.480 India down to Delhi demonstrating against proposed laws that they 0:03:48.520 --> 0:03:51.040 said would make it impossible for them to make a living. 0:03:51.760 --> 0:03:54.920 More than half of India's population relies on agriculture for 0:03:54.960 --> 0:03:58.360 the livelihood, and things have gotten so bad economically that 0:03:58.520 --> 0:04:01.440 people are getting desperate. Part has been reporting on this 0:04:01.520 --> 0:04:03.120 topic for over a decade. 0:04:03.680 --> 0:04:07.640 Farmers have been dying by suicide, especially since the nineteen nineties, 0:04:08.000 --> 0:04:11.240 in huge numbers. I mean, between nineteen ninety five twenty fifteen, 0:04:12.080 --> 0:04:14.480 more than three hundred thousand farmers have died by suicide 0:04:14.480 --> 0:04:17.840 in India. The Indian government has stopped counting, like tide 0:04:17.920 --> 0:04:20.640 data fudging of farmer suicides because the numbers started looking 0:04:20.680 --> 0:04:23.040 really bad, but the trend has only worsened. 0:04:23.600 --> 0:04:24.680 Stopped counting. 0:04:25.080 --> 0:04:28.920 Yeah, they're bearing bodies in other columns basically, so there 0:04:28.960 --> 0:04:32.479 are certain states that will show no farm suicides, but 0:04:32.680 --> 0:04:36.000 certainly other suicides quote unquote, other suicides would have shot 0:04:36.040 --> 0:04:38.680 through the roof. But the farmers are not the only 0:04:39.080 --> 0:04:42.400 profession that is struggling right now. It's also pilled over 0:04:42.440 --> 0:04:43.680 into the white collar jobs. 0:04:44.760 --> 0:04:48.200 Part reporting takes him to rural villages across India, talking 0:04:48.200 --> 0:04:50.719 to people who live there about the pressures they're dealing 0:04:50.720 --> 0:04:54.320 with that lead to this increase in suicides. But recently 0:04:54.320 --> 0:04:57.240 he's been noticing another trend outside of the villages and 0:04:57.279 --> 0:05:00.839 instead in the big cities, specifically in these tech hubs 0:05:00.880 --> 0:05:05.000 Bangalore and Hyderobar. Or rather, he's been noticing the same 0:05:05.120 --> 0:05:09.239 trend just in a different demographic suicides among white collar 0:05:09.360 --> 0:05:10.080 tech workers. 0:05:11.040 --> 0:05:15.400 Over the past few years. As someone who follows news 0:05:15.400 --> 0:05:18.559 in India, you keep coming across stories of tech workers 0:05:18.600 --> 0:05:22.160 few sides, and these are isolated suicides and then there 0:05:22.160 --> 0:05:26.000 are maybe Twitter threads and Twitter hashtags that follow for 0:05:26.040 --> 0:05:28.839 a couple of days, and then it goes quiet for 0:05:28.920 --> 0:05:31.840 a few more days until there's another suicide. So we've 0:05:31.880 --> 0:05:34.360 been seeing quite a few of them over the past 0:05:34.360 --> 0:05:37.679 few years. In fact, when we analyzed the newspaper reports, 0:05:37.720 --> 0:05:40.560 we found there were two hundred and twenty seven techworkers 0:05:40.600 --> 0:05:43.040 suicides in the last eight or nine years, and that's 0:05:43.040 --> 0:05:46.520 a fairly big number. India doesn't maintain data for it 0:05:46.800 --> 0:05:53.080 worker suicides specifically, but the last recorded number for white 0:05:53.080 --> 0:05:56.520 collar workers was ten percent of the suicides that have 0:05:56.560 --> 0:05:59.680 happened in India for years. 0:05:59.680 --> 0:06:02.320 In the tech industry has been thought of as a 0:06:02.360 --> 0:06:05.040 path out of the village, getting out of the farming village, 0:06:05.040 --> 0:06:07.280 going to a big city, getting in the tech industry. 0:06:07.560 --> 0:06:10.080 That's the dream for a lot of people, and for 0:06:10.120 --> 0:06:13.480 a poor person, a tech job in Bangalore could lift 0:06:13.560 --> 0:06:17.200 your entire family out of poverty. But Paths Reporting is 0:06:17.240 --> 0:06:20.520 finding that instead these workers are essentially going to the 0:06:20.520 --> 0:06:22.479 big cities and dying there. 0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:26.320 Some of the stories that you come across in newspapers, 0:06:26.760 --> 0:06:29.520 you see tech worker suicides in say it, hubs of 0:06:29.600 --> 0:06:32.920 Bangalore or Pune or Hyderabad, but when you look at 0:06:33.040 --> 0:06:36.000 some of the people who have died by suicides, they 0:06:36.000 --> 0:06:41.440 are not from Bangalore or Hyderabad. They come from marginalized families, 0:06:41.680 --> 0:06:45.640 farming families, you know, working class families, and they are 0:06:45.680 --> 0:06:49.040 sort of looking to, you know, uplift themselves and their families, 0:06:49.120 --> 0:06:52.520 bring their families out of financial trouble and basically breaking 0:06:52.560 --> 0:06:53.360 their back over it. 0:06:54.720 --> 0:06:57.960 For Nichols Sawacci, this was the game plan since he 0:06:58.040 --> 0:07:00.840 was a young boy. His family did everything they could 0:07:00.880 --> 0:07:04.120 to get Nico educated so that he could have opportunities 0:07:04.240 --> 0:07:05.359 that they never had. 0:07:06.000 --> 0:07:08.640 His parents had to sell a portion of their farmland 0:07:08.720 --> 0:07:13.119 and their house to get his son and his elder 0:07:13.160 --> 0:07:17.640 sister educated. In fact, when he was nine years old 0:07:17.720 --> 0:07:21.200 or ten years old, his father enrolled him in a 0:07:21.240 --> 0:07:24.080 school which was forty minutes away from his village because 0:07:24.120 --> 0:07:27.080 it was an English medium instruction village, and that's something 0:07:27.120 --> 0:07:30.800 that they wanted him to study in and cultivate naturally 0:07:30.840 --> 0:07:33.080 if he had to go out and do something that 0:07:33.120 --> 0:07:36.280 they couldn't do. So his parents worked really hard, very 0:07:36.360 --> 0:07:39.920 humble family. He worked really hard to get where he 0:07:39.960 --> 0:07:40.440 had gotten. 0:07:41.000 --> 0:07:43.760 When Nico landed a job at an Ai infrastructure company 0:07:43.800 --> 0:07:47.239 called Ola cruture. It was a really big deal. He'd 0:07:47.280 --> 0:07:52.240 made it. What does it mean for a kid from 0:07:52.280 --> 0:07:55.320 a rural village to go out and make it in 0:07:55.360 --> 0:07:57.200 a place like Bangalore and. 0:07:57.160 --> 0:07:57.920 It's a huge deal. 0:07:58.000 --> 0:08:01.000 His first salary was ten times more than what his 0:08:01.040 --> 0:08:04.960 parents earned from farming, so you can imagine what a 0:08:05.040 --> 0:08:08.360 huge deal it was for his parents. And villages are 0:08:08.400 --> 0:08:11.480 generally a tight knit community, so when someone from the 0:08:11.520 --> 0:08:13.240 village does well, the entire village sort of. 0:08:13.240 --> 0:08:18.080 Celebrates, and he does mean celebrating. People back home in 0:08:18.160 --> 0:08:20.840 nichols village put up banners all over town to show 0:08:20.880 --> 0:08:23.960 how proud of him they were. But less than a 0:08:24.040 --> 0:08:26.960 year later, Nichol would take his own life. Not even 0:08:26.960 --> 0:08:29.560 the police seem to have any real answers. But the 0:08:29.640 --> 0:08:32.680 story of Nichol's death shows us a lot about India's 0:08:32.720 --> 0:08:36.280 tech industry and about how people in other countries, including 0:08:36.280 --> 0:08:40.959 the United States, are influencing that toxic work culture that's 0:08:41.160 --> 0:08:51.880 after the break. What is the work culture like right 0:08:51.920 --> 0:08:54.000 now in the tech industry in India? 0:08:54.040 --> 0:08:54.880 It's quite toxic. 0:08:54.960 --> 0:08:58.640 Having spoken to a bunch of it professionals, eighty three 0:08:58.640 --> 0:09:01.400 percent of them say they've burnt out and one in 0:09:01.679 --> 0:09:05.760 four like twenty five clock seventy hours a week, which 0:09:05.800 --> 0:09:10.000 is a lot. And even then you have some titans 0:09:10.000 --> 0:09:12.880 of the industry saying there should be atrs and ninety 0:09:12.920 --> 0:09:13.600 hours work week. 0:09:14.679 --> 0:09:17.560 This is a trend amongst tech companies in India. The 0:09:17.640 --> 0:09:20.319 founder of one company says that he expects a seventy 0:09:20.360 --> 0:09:23.160 hour work week. The chairman of another says he wants 0:09:23.240 --> 0:09:25.800 ninety hour work weeks. The founder of the company that 0:09:25.880 --> 0:09:28.800 Nickel worked for refers to the concept of work life 0:09:28.800 --> 0:09:30.959 balance as a Western import. 0:09:31.320 --> 0:09:33.760 I don't agree with this work life balance concept. I 0:09:33.760 --> 0:09:36.680 think that's an outcome of again a Western thought process, 0:09:36.679 --> 0:09:39.520 of a post industrial, of of the industrial era. But 0:09:40.040 --> 0:09:42.920 our interesting ari thoughts was never that. 0:09:42.920 --> 0:09:46.240 That's bubbish Augerwald, the CEO of OLA, on a podcast 0:09:46.240 --> 0:09:49.040 in the summer of twenty twenty four. On that same show, 0:09:49.160 --> 0:09:51.800 he said, quote, I have a strong belief that one 0:09:51.920 --> 0:09:54.880 generation will have to do penance so that we can 0:09:54.920 --> 0:09:58.400 build the number one country in the world, the largest economy. 0:09:59.000 --> 0:09:59.600 End quote. 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:02.000 I mean, one tech worker told me that he's worked 0:10:02.040 --> 0:10:04.760 through the night at some point in his job, got 0:10:04.800 --> 0:10:07.840 home at six thirty and still reported back at ten thirty. Jeez, 0:10:08.200 --> 0:10:10.960 there was one tech worker who told me that these 0:10:11.000 --> 0:10:14.080 long guards make sure that he has very little time 0:10:14.120 --> 0:10:17.439 for his family, his health. He started seeing a psychologist 0:10:17.440 --> 0:10:19.880 because he's no longer in the right ream of mind. 0:10:20.120 --> 0:10:24.360 One tech worker told me that there's obviously regular unpaid 0:10:24.360 --> 0:10:25.240 overtime that they. 0:10:25.160 --> 0:10:25.600 Have to do. 0:10:26.040 --> 0:10:29.160 And beyond the stress in psychological pressure, this culture is 0:10:29.200 --> 0:10:32.520 also having physical effects on the workers. In Karnataka, that's 0:10:32.559 --> 0:10:34.959 the state in India that's home to Bangalore. 0:10:35.520 --> 0:10:39.320 Bangalore is known as the Silicon Valley of India and 0:10:39.400 --> 0:10:43.960 in Karnataka, you have a lot of patients looking for 0:10:44.280 --> 0:10:46.920 organ donations and organ transplants, and a lot of them 0:10:47.160 --> 0:10:50.080 are tech workers. In the ita Ab of Hyderabad, there 0:10:50.120 --> 0:10:52.760 was a survey and study which came out recently. It 0:10:52.840 --> 0:10:56.720 said that about eighty four percent of tech workers struggled 0:10:56.760 --> 0:10:59.600 with atty liver disease, which is associated with stress and 0:10:59.600 --> 0:11:03.640 long eay of sedentary work. They're overworked, they're overwhelmed, and 0:11:04.240 --> 0:11:07.240 they have very little time for themselves and their families. 0:11:08.160 --> 0:11:11.320 For someone like Nikos Suwanci, the stresses of his new 0:11:11.400 --> 0:11:13.400 job were on top of the fact that he was 0:11:13.400 --> 0:11:15.920 already living in a place that was culturally and even 0:11:15.960 --> 0:11:17.920 linguistically different from where he grew up. 0:11:18.800 --> 0:11:21.560 In his village, he spoke Marati, which is his native 0:11:21.640 --> 0:11:25.640 language his mother tongue, something I speak as well. In Bangalore, 0:11:25.720 --> 0:11:29.480 nobody speaks Marati. He had to have been engaging with 0:11:29.520 --> 0:11:32.160 people in English, something that he was fine with because 0:11:32.280 --> 0:11:36.200 he had learned in an English medium school. But still 0:11:36.240 --> 0:11:39.640 that change matters, and when you don't have anybody around you, 0:11:40.040 --> 0:11:43.760 it becomes difficult to settle down in an unfamiliar territory 0:11:44.200 --> 0:11:46.480 right and at a time like that, when you have 0:11:46.559 --> 0:11:50.840 a workplace that kind of toxic and abrasive, it makes 0:11:50.880 --> 0:11:51.880 it even more difficult. 0:11:52.400 --> 0:11:55.880 But according to Part's conversation with family and friends, Nico 0:11:56.200 --> 0:11:58.880 never let it show he knew people back home were 0:11:58.880 --> 0:11:59.760 depending on him. 0:12:00.240 --> 0:12:03.120 I think one of the biggest things is the responsibility 0:12:03.280 --> 0:12:06.320 right because parents, even though it even the parents or 0:12:06.320 --> 0:12:09.160 families may not say that to their kids that we 0:12:09.200 --> 0:12:13.520 are looking at you for financial security, the kids are 0:12:13.880 --> 0:12:16.760 mature enough to understand that their parents are not earning 0:12:16.760 --> 0:12:18.880 a lot of money. The kids are mature enough to 0:12:18.960 --> 0:12:23.000 understand that the parents have sacrificed a lot to make 0:12:23.040 --> 0:12:26.800 sure that they get educated. And so there's a lot 0:12:26.840 --> 0:12:30.520 of pressure to succeed, and it is not easy. In 0:12:30.559 --> 0:12:34.320 a country like India, which is inherently a labor surplus economy. 0:12:34.800 --> 0:12:37.520 There are far too many people and far too few jobs, 0:12:38.040 --> 0:12:40.240 and so when you land a job, it becomes very 0:12:40.240 --> 0:12:42.320 difficult to walk away from it because you don't know 0:12:42.360 --> 0:12:45.760 what the future holds. Right and someone like Nikol, who 0:12:45.760 --> 0:12:47.520 came from the family that you did, who came from 0:12:47.559 --> 0:12:52.080 the village of North mara Astra and did not have 0:12:52.360 --> 0:12:56.240 financial security, we would have felt that pressure ten times 0:12:56.240 --> 0:12:58.160 more than like someone like I would have felt, who 0:12:58.200 --> 0:13:01.120 was born and praised in Mumbai. And I don't have 0:13:01.160 --> 0:13:04.120 the kind of financial responsibilities that Nikl has, so I 0:13:04.160 --> 0:13:08.280 can maybe take a lot more chances, and Nikkeil couldn't 0:13:08.280 --> 0:13:09.520 afford to take any chances. 0:13:11.640 --> 0:13:14.240 Part has come across a lot of stories like this, 0:13:14.760 --> 0:13:18.200 highly educated college graduates who get stuck in a toxic 0:13:18.240 --> 0:13:21.480 work environment but feel like they can't leave because they 0:13:21.520 --> 0:13:24.760 have to provide for their family back home, or increasingly, 0:13:24.840 --> 0:13:27.360 people who can't find work at all because there are 0:13:27.400 --> 0:13:30.240 too many people competing for too few jobs. 0:13:31.000 --> 0:13:33.640 I read a recent report in Economic Times which said 0:13:33.679 --> 0:13:36.719 that in this current financial year, the top five it 0:13:37.240 --> 0:13:40.640 companies in India have added a net seventeen employees one 0:13:40.679 --> 0:13:44.920 to seven employees, whereas last year it was seventeen thousand. 0:13:45.400 --> 0:13:46.880 So there's a hiring freeze as well. 0:13:47.320 --> 0:13:49.760 I'm sorry, can you say that number again? You said 0:13:50.440 --> 0:13:51.280 one seven? 0:13:51.720 --> 0:13:55.560 Yes, top art firms added just seventeen stuff in nine 0:13:55.600 --> 0:13:57.520 months and hiring has nearly. 0:13:57.280 --> 0:14:02.840 Frozen seven seventeen across all those companies. 0:14:02.880 --> 0:14:04.760 This is an Economic Times report I have in front 0:14:04.800 --> 0:14:07.240 of me right now. And I met a family of 0:14:07.320 --> 0:14:11.120 a twenty year audio old tech graduate who was looking 0:14:11.160 --> 0:14:13.560 for a job, who had been looking for a job 0:14:13.640 --> 0:14:16.360 for months. He had made his CV again. Came from 0:14:16.400 --> 0:14:20.000 a small town. His father had passed away. His mother 0:14:20.280 --> 0:14:24.960 and his grandmother had taught him up by running an 0:14:24.960 --> 0:14:28.160 iron shop. They would press people's clothes and work as 0:14:28.160 --> 0:14:31.600 domestic help, and that's how they raised this boy. He 0:14:31.600 --> 0:14:34.640 would have also felt the responsibility to bring his mother 0:14:34.680 --> 0:14:38.800 and mother some sort of financial stability. He was one 0:14:38.840 --> 0:14:41.800 of the brighter students, but he couldn't get a job 0:14:42.280 --> 0:14:45.640 for months. He ran from one place to another, asked 0:14:45.680 --> 0:14:49.040 a lot of people about it. Eventually he also died 0:14:49.080 --> 0:14:51.880 by suicide. And I met his mother. I met his 0:14:52.160 --> 0:14:54.840 elder brother, and his elder brother told me that I'm 0:14:54.880 --> 0:14:57.600 not as intelligent as in and we all thought that 0:14:57.640 --> 0:15:00.360 he would go places, and now we may same all 0:15:00.360 --> 0:15:04.280 the time, because he ended his life abruptly out of 0:15:04.320 --> 0:15:09.200 depression and just feeling worthless because he was worth so 0:15:09.280 --> 0:15:11.800 much and he wasn't getting anything. And his mother made 0:15:11.800 --> 0:15:14.200 a very heartbreaking point when I spoke to her, she 0:15:14.240 --> 0:15:17.080 said that I regret making sure that my son got 0:15:17.160 --> 0:15:21.080 educated because if he had not studied, he wouldn't have 0:15:21.160 --> 0:15:22.239 had those ambitions. 0:15:22.560 --> 0:15:22.760 Wow. 0:15:23.080 --> 0:15:26.840 And because he couldn't complete those ambitions, he ended up 0:15:26.880 --> 0:15:29.400 dying by suicide. There are so many people out there 0:15:29.560 --> 0:15:32.120 who are not educated. They work as laborers. They make 0:15:32.160 --> 0:15:35.080 ten thousand rupeza a month, five thousand rupie a month, wow, 0:15:35.120 --> 0:15:38.680 and they don't have the ambition of working in a 0:15:38.680 --> 0:15:42.280 big office. And he had the ambition because he knew 0:15:42.280 --> 0:15:44.840 he was worth a lot more. And because he couldn't 0:15:44.880 --> 0:15:47.200 he fell short of that ambition. He went into depression 0:15:47.240 --> 0:15:50.120 and ended up killing himself. And it was one of 0:15:50.120 --> 0:15:52.560 the most heartbreaking conversations I've had as a reporter. 0:15:55.040 --> 0:15:57.680 This wasn't always the case. From the nineties to the 0:15:57.720 --> 0:16:00.880 early two thousands, tech employees were in demand in big 0:16:00.960 --> 0:16:05.000 cities like Bangalore and Hyderobar and the jobs would good jobs, 0:16:05.360 --> 0:16:08.440 fair hours, good salaries, and a chance to build a 0:16:08.480 --> 0:16:09.520 good life for yourself. 0:16:10.320 --> 0:16:14.320 They could work eight hours, help their families, give them time, 0:16:14.480 --> 0:16:17.680 build a house, pace of family, and still make a 0:16:17.680 --> 0:16:22.200 decent living. That is no longer possible. Twenty ten eleven onwards, 0:16:22.240 --> 0:16:28.160 it started getting increasingly competitive. There's this one ceo I 0:16:28.200 --> 0:16:31.960 spoke to. He said that in the early two thousands, 0:16:32.400 --> 0:16:36.120 the tech industry was growing at a scorching pace. As 0:16:36.240 --> 0:16:39.520 the industry got more and more competitive, companies started making 0:16:39.600 --> 0:16:42.840 more and more competitive demands. And then that sort of 0:16:42.920 --> 0:16:45.200 changed the nature of the industry. And over the past 0:16:45.720 --> 0:16:48.880 I think five years, especially six years, especially since the pandemic, 0:16:49.440 --> 0:16:52.560 that work culture has become even more toxic. Work from 0:16:52.560 --> 0:16:57.040 home lurned, the boundaries between personal space and office hours, 0:16:57.520 --> 0:16:59.880 and workers became answerable sort of. 0:17:02.320 --> 0:17:05.560 The main driver of the Indian tech economy is outsourced work. 0:17:05.960 --> 0:17:09.199 At one point this meant call centers. Now it's morphed 0:17:09.200 --> 0:17:12.879 into housing specialists for all kinds of technology needs. This 0:17:13.000 --> 0:17:16.440 kind of work already requires Indian companies to provide services 0:17:16.520 --> 0:17:19.000 around the clock in order to service the rest of 0:17:19.040 --> 0:17:21.960 the world, and the companies pass those twenty four hour 0:17:22.040 --> 0:17:27.360 obligations onto their employees. So this culture is encouraged by 0:17:27.359 --> 0:17:30.160 the CEOs of some of these companies, But the pressure 0:17:30.359 --> 0:17:33.560 that turns the gears of that culture machine isn't just 0:17:33.720 --> 0:17:37.399 coming from the few executives. It's coming from outside. To 0:17:37.400 --> 0:17:40.840 be more specific, it's also coming from the United States. 0:17:43.119 --> 0:17:45.120 I think a lot of people say from the States 0:17:45.280 --> 0:17:48.000 when they think of the tech industry in India. I 0:17:48.000 --> 0:17:50.320 think they think of a couple of things. The first 0:17:50.359 --> 0:17:54.160 would be outsourcing, or they would think of call centers. 0:17:55.200 --> 0:17:57.879 I think another thing that people might think of is 0:17:58.920 --> 0:18:01.920 people who immigrate from India and work in Silicon Valley. 0:18:03.119 --> 0:18:06.359 But your reporting is showing that that's also changing and 0:18:06.400 --> 0:18:08.960 putting a lot of pressure on workers also, Right, So the. 0:18:08.880 --> 0:18:10.359 Are three things you just alluded to. 0:18:10.359 --> 0:18:12.919 One is the call centers, which are getting more and 0:18:12.920 --> 0:18:15.760 more automated because of AA, so a lot of those 0:18:15.840 --> 0:18:19.520 jobs have gone away. Secondly, outsourcing, which is the backbone 0:18:19.520 --> 0:18:23.120 of India's tech industry. I think around sixty two percent 0:18:23.160 --> 0:18:28.199 of India's tech revenue is driven by US. Outsourcing remains 0:18:28.240 --> 0:18:31.159 India's backbone and that is why experts have told me 0:18:31.240 --> 0:18:35.240 that IT remains more vulnerable to AI disruption. Traditional product 0:18:35.240 --> 0:18:39.359 development companies won't be as affected as much as traditional 0:18:39.560 --> 0:18:42.919 outsourcing companies. So a lot of these jobs are endangered, 0:18:43.000 --> 0:18:45.760 and many of the workers also see it coming. One 0:18:45.800 --> 0:18:48.000 IT worker basically told me that a lot of the 0:18:48.040 --> 0:18:51.400 mid level managers are being laid off and when that happens, 0:18:51.840 --> 0:18:55.520 they are not being replaced. Their work invariably falls on 0:18:55.680 --> 0:18:58.159 employees below there. And the last thing you spoke about 0:18:58.359 --> 0:19:02.320 is the immigrant population in the US, and that is 0:19:02.680 --> 0:19:06.800 the Donnertrump hiking fees recently and the entire campaign at 0:19:06.800 --> 0:19:11.040 an make America Great Again and anti magadation sort of campaign, as. 0:19:10.880 --> 0:19:14.000 A president signing a proclamation that now requires this one 0:19:14.080 --> 0:19:17.359 hundred thousand dollars annual fee for this H one B 0:19:17.560 --> 0:19:20.440 visa for highly skilled foreign workers. Now, this could be 0:19:20.760 --> 0:19:24.000 a huge blow to big tech firms that rely heavily 0:19:24.280 --> 0:19:26.919 on highly skilled forward workers to fill key roles. 0:19:27.840 --> 0:19:30.320 Historically, the H one B visa program had been a 0:19:30.320 --> 0:19:32.600 path for Indian tech workers to move to the US, 0:19:32.800 --> 0:19:35.359 and it was a win win. Immigrant workers get a 0:19:35.440 --> 0:19:38.440 high paying American job and their employers the US tech 0:19:38.440 --> 0:19:42.040 companies really liked having this extra source of foreign talent. 0:19:42.680 --> 0:19:46.359 But now the Trump administration has astronomically raised the fees 0:19:46.359 --> 0:19:50.440 for those visas and American companies can't afford to hire 0:19:50.440 --> 0:19:53.400 them anymore. So a lot of Indian workers who otherwise 0:19:53.520 --> 0:19:56.639 might have gone to the US are staying in India 0:19:56.720 --> 0:19:59.040 and they're competing for the very few jobs that are 0:19:59.080 --> 0:20:02.479 available at home. They're getting thrown back into that pressure 0:20:02.520 --> 0:20:05.760 cooker where the work culture is terrible, the hours are extreme, 0:20:06.080 --> 0:20:09.000 and the jobs that are available are on the AI 0:20:09.080 --> 0:20:12.800 shopping plot. Basically, the tech workforce in India is being 0:20:12.840 --> 0:20:15.160 squeezed from every side. 0:20:15.119 --> 0:20:18.919 And if somebody pushes back, they are basically told to 0:20:19.000 --> 0:20:21.560 fit the job and they can be easily replaced by 0:20:21.560 --> 0:20:23.840 somebody else because there are hundreds of people waiting in 0:20:23.880 --> 0:20:27.320 the wings. So that's the situation of tech workers in India. 0:20:27.359 --> 0:20:29.879 They're sort of trapped. They have nowhere else to go. 0:20:30.520 --> 0:20:33.800 And when the alls are stacked so much against you, 0:20:33.800 --> 0:20:36.320 you can't really push for better conditions. You can't really 0:20:36.320 --> 0:20:38.720 push back for paid over time and so on and 0:20:38.760 --> 0:20:42.199 so forth, because the companies clearly hold all the chips. 0:20:43.280 --> 0:20:46.160 After the break India's union leaders get into the streets 0:20:46.240 --> 0:20:49.560 to fight back against the tech industry. But will it work. 0:20:56.600 --> 0:20:59.440 What are employees even able to do in these situations? 0:20:59.520 --> 0:21:01.920 Because it's sounds like, even just from reading your articles, 0:21:01.920 --> 0:21:05.800 so many people are anonymous. Is it that people are 0:21:05.800 --> 0:21:06.679 afraid to speak up? 0:21:07.359 --> 0:21:12.280 Absolutely, most of the employees are afraid to speak up. 0:21:13.760 --> 0:21:16.480 There. They are scared for their jobs. 0:21:16.200 --> 0:21:18.040 Because if they are cooted in my piece and their 0:21:18.080 --> 0:21:21.719 employee reads it, they're done. Not only will they lose 0:21:22.359 --> 0:21:25.800 their job from that employer, they will not get a 0:21:25.920 --> 0:21:30.480 job anywhere in the industry. Other employers will also find 0:21:30.520 --> 0:21:33.800 excuses to not employ those people. So they are petrified. 0:21:33.840 --> 0:21:37.520 They have very few legal protections. The cases basically drag 0:21:37.560 --> 0:21:40.040 on for years, so by the time you get any 0:21:40.160 --> 0:21:44.760 kind of justice, decades have passed, and so there's very 0:21:44.760 --> 0:21:47.600 little one can do. So a lot of people flatly 0:21:47.640 --> 0:21:50.080 refuse to speak to me, and the ones who agreed, 0:21:50.119 --> 0:21:52.320 I had to go through some people who already knew me, 0:21:52.560 --> 0:21:55.359 and they could sort of assure them that this person 0:21:55.440 --> 0:21:58.879 is a llegitimate, credible journalist who won't disclose your identity, 0:21:59.000 --> 0:22:00.800 and that's when they agree to speak to me. Even 0:22:00.840 --> 0:22:03.479 the cases of suicides. A lot of family members were 0:22:03.480 --> 0:22:06.200 reluctant to speak to me because many union leaders told 0:22:06.240 --> 0:22:09.520 me that they're afraid. Many of them basically sign non 0:22:09.560 --> 0:22:13.480 disclosure agreements with the companies. Many of them get paid 0:22:13.800 --> 0:22:16.320 by the companies through a life insurance policy. 0:22:16.760 --> 0:22:19.720 According to union leaders, these companies will use corporate insurance 0:22:19.720 --> 0:22:23.399 policies to compensate the families of the suicide victims. The 0:22:23.480 --> 0:22:26.239 compensation comes with a catch. 0:22:25.960 --> 0:22:28.600