Outsourcing not an Indian plot to steal US jobs: McCain

WASHINGTON - Outsourcing is not an Indian plot to steal American jobs and the US should not condone any unfair punishments to Indian workers, senior US Senator of the opposition Republican Party John McCain has said.

“We cannot allow our anxieties about globalisation to cause us to demonise India for crass political gain. Outsourcing is an inescapable feature of today’s global economy, not an Indian plot to steal American jobs, and we should not condone any unfair punishments of Indian workers,” McCain said at the Carnegie Endowment for Internatioanl Peace Friday, hours before President Barack Obama left for his maiden visit to India.

The Republican politician said both India and the US are committed towards a strategic partnership but, “it is the domestic pressures of our democratic politics that pose perhaps the single greatest danger to our emerging partnership”.

“On the Indian side, relations with the US cannot remain a political club, which the party out of power uses to beat up the party in power for doing exactly what it would have done were it governing,” McCain said and urged leaders of both the countries to build the public support needed to sustain the strategic ties.

The Republicans won majority in the US House of Representative in the Nov 2 mid-term elections. Outsourcing of US jobs to India and other countries was one of the major issues during the election.

Obama’s Democratic party, during its campaign, opposed the shifting of domestic jobs abroad and vowed to stop providing tax breaks to such companies.

Obama, who arrived in India Saturday on his four-day official visit, is accompanied by a large group of CEOs.

In a signed article in the New York Times, Obama said the US wants “to be known not just for what we consume, but for what we produce. And the more we export abroad, the more jobs we create in America. In fact, every $1 billion we export supports more than 5,000 jobs at home”.