 "Photo: PTI")
Karnataka on Monday offered British students opportunities to do internships at Indian technology services firms in Bengaluru, even as it seeks relaxation of visa norms by the United Kingdom for software professionals from the country.
"Just as London is concerned about passport rights for its financial service industry after Brexit, we are concerned about the difficulties in cross-border work. Technology is global today and restrictions like this, which prevent talent from working globally, will inhibit competitiveness of UK industry," said R V Deshpande, Karnataka's Industries Minister a day ahead of British Prime Minister Theresa May's visit to Bengaluru.
"What the IT industry needs is a visa that enables their engineers to travel to the UK, work on projects from 3 to 12 months and come back. They are not looking for immigration visa but for projects as such work is global."
Last week May approved new visa norms that increased the threshold of salaries paid to IT professionals who are on work to the UK and also tightened language norms for their family members. The timing of issuing new visa norms, ahead of her three-day India visit had miffed the Indian technology services industry, which warned that the move would backfire and hurt the UK economy.
May however defended her move in a joint conference with Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying that more Indian nationals were given visas than those issued to nationals of US, Australia, Canada and China put together.
"We have a visa system for countries outside the European Union which ensures that the brightest and the best are able to come to the United Kingdom. The figures show that we issued more work visas to India than, I think, the US, Australia, Canada and China put together," she said.
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Deshpande also reiterated a demand made by Modi to allow more visas to Indian students, offering a reciprocatory deal of providing young British students internships at local technology service companies.
"We hope the UK government will look into our requests. Together we can create a competitive partnership to address global markets, together we can create large tech jobs for both the countries. We welcome UK engineers to come work freely in Bengaluru. We want thousands for students to come and intern with our tech companies, " he said.
May will arrive in Bengaluru on Tuesday for a seven-hour packed trip, which includes visit to a school, a temple, and Dynamatics Technologies, an aerospace company which has a model that provides local jobs in UK, while taking advantage of India's traditional strengths.
