The Story of the Nutcracker

You can probably guess how the story ended. “Top aides to then-Gov. Frank O'Bannon had signed off on the politically sensitive, four-year contract before his death [on] September 13, [2003],” the Star reported. But when word of the contract was made public, Republicans made it a campaign issue. It became such a political hot potato that Governor Joe Kernan, a Democrat who had succeeded O'Bannon, ordered the state agency, which helps out-of-work Indiana residents, to cancel the contract-and also to put up some legal barriers and friction to prevent such a thing from happening again. He also ordered that the contract be broken up into smaller bites that Indiana firms could bid for-good for Indiana firms but very costly and inefficient for the state. The Indianapolis Star reported that a check for $993,587 was sent to pay off Tata for eight weeks of work, during which it had trained forty-five state programmers in the development and engineering of up-to-date software: “'The company was great to work with,' said Alan Degner, Indiana's commissioner of workforce development.” So now I have just one simple question: Who is the exploiter and who is the exploited in this India-Indiana story? The American arm of an Indian consulting firm proposes to save the taxpayers of Indiana $8.1 million by revamping their computers—using both its Indian employees and local hires from Indiana ...»