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Indians, then, both within the national context of an emerging economy, and as an ethnic minority halfway across the world in the United States, offer the researcher of globalization an immediate entry into understanding how changes in a global industry impact local communities separated by geographical distances but united through new means of technological communications.
In popular perception, the term “immigrant” connotes a position of disadvantage. When the term “immigrant” is overlaid with the process of immigration from a developing country, the picture is one of displacement, lack of alternatives, and the attendant worries about incorporating oneself into an alien culture. Even if the migration was that of highly skilled personnel, the description was pessimistic, obvious in the term “brain drain.” I am not suggesting that these images were incorrect. Indeed, the loss of skilled engineers, doctors, and technologists, trained at government expense, was not insignificant for India. However, the successful entrepreneurial activity of Indians in Silicon Valley distorts the picture. To bring the moving reel of images back into frame, one has to view India as a new, emerging economy, the immigration process as transnationalism, immigrants as a transnational capitalist class, and the software sector as a global industry, where Silicon Valley and Bangalore are but two inextricably interconnected nodes. This book takes such a view. Using a historical analysis, coupled with field research in Silicon Valley and Bangalore, the book highlights the changing nature of immigrant incorporation of Indians within an increasingly globalized software industry.
Chapter 1, titled “From ‘The Valley of Heart’s Delight’ to ‘Silicon Valley’: The Creation of a Technical Community,” attends to two issues. The first is to highlight the development of the region of Silicon Valley as a unique combination of elements, one that simultaneously nourishes technical talent and rewards an Entrepreneurial spirit.