Cyberabad

HITEC City.

Hyderabad Information Technology Engineering Consultancy City. This building houses software companies. This part of the city is called Cyberabad. When Bill Clinton visited Hyderabad (the first US President to do so) in 2000, there was a huge billboard which said "Welcome to the H1B capital of the world." H1B is the visa for working in the US. A large number of software professionals working in the US are from the state of Andhra Pradesh (of which Hyderabad is the capital), or many from other parts of India have got their education/training in Hyderabad. I hope to post some photos of some nice buildings in this area called HITEC City. There are an unbelievable number of classes available in Hyderabad for various computer languages and packages, and from what I understand they are running full. As with some other large cities in India, there are many BPO (business process outsourcing) offices providing call/support center, back office and medical transcription services. India is moving up from BPO into KPO (knowledge process outsourcing).

Although BPO and software industries have raised the living standards and contributed to a rising middle class, which in turn has stimulated consumerism and many MNCs (multinational companies) are opening their development centers and factories, young Indians have begun to pay the price with their health. Long hours of sedentary work, a change to fast foods, and the fact that Indians are genetically predisposed to diabetes and heart diseases, all contribute to younger and younger patients showing up at the doctors. And it does not help that India is moving in the same direction as the much criticized US healthcare system.

"They have computers, and they may have other weapons of mass destruction." - Janet Reno, US Attorney General in the Clinton Administration during an address at the Conference on Critical Infrastructure Protection at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.