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The actions of Indian entrepreneurs make this group of immigrants akin to what Sklair (2001) terms the “transnational capitalist class,” a class that originated in a developing country but was nourished in a developed one. As a group, the Indian entrepreneurial community in Silicon Valley expresses allegiance to the global capitalist system, over and beyond specific affiliations to nation, region, or locality. It is also a class that uses its considerable influence to take on the political project of spreading ideas of free trade, both among the Indian diaspora of Silicon Valley and among the ruling political class in India. Finally, software professionals are exerting, to complete Sklair’s definition of the term, their own interests, sometimes against those of foreign interests. The chapter concludes by examining how the ideology of “transnationalism” is perceived and propagated by the actors themselves. Specifically, borrowing from Anderson’s (1991) ideas on the development of the “imagined community” in the rise of nationalism, I show that likewise, transnationalism is “invented” by the Indian software community. The invention occurs through the usage of print media that serves to circulate mainstream ideas of the global capitalist system and the internationalization of professions that provides a shared language, a “jargon,” through which ideas can easily transfer across national borders.
Thus, highly skilled Indian immigrants do not view themselves as victims of the global capitalist system or pawns of a larger structural chess game that they do not control. They are active and willing agents, who, having turned entrepreneurial themselves, are pushing in favor of the governing principles of global capitalism, and, true to their transnational calling, they are doing so in both their “home” and “adopted” countries.