H1B visa curbs will hit India's growth story

IT companies are India Inc's biggest foreign exchange earners

By tightening H1B visa rules, the Trump administration is hitting at the core of India's growth story for there is a one-to-one correlation between growth of software exports and India's economic growth in the last two decades.

An acceleration in India's economic growth in the early 2000s was accompanied by a spurt in services exports, especially information technology. Similarly, a slowdown in gross domestic product (GDP) growth since the 2008 Lehman crisis was preceded by a deceleration in services exports. (See the adjoining chart).

A clampdown on H1B visas will make it tough for Indian IT majors such as Tata