Society Japan looks at attracting more Indian tech workers

[thomas]

With the US, Europe, and Japan fiercely competing for global talent, the Japanese government is looking at ways to attract more Indian tech workers. It is estimated that the shortfall in workers will reach nearly 800,000 in the coming years as the country pursues a long-overdue national digitization effort. The pandemic, by pushing work, education and many other aspects of daily life onto online platforms, has magnified the technological shortcomings of a country once seen as a leader in high-tech.

Japanese companies, particularly smaller ones, have struggled to wean themselves from physical paperwork and adopt digital tools. Government reports and independent analyses show Japanese companies' use of cloud technologies is nearly a decade behind those in the United States.

And while most Indian immigrants are willing to adapt and praise their host country, some divides are hard to bridge.

Yet the Indian newcomers mostly admire Japan from across a divide. Many of Japan's 36,000 Indians are concentrated in the Edogawa section of eastern Tokyo, where they have their own vegetarian restaurants, places of worship and specialty grocery stores. The area has two major Indian schools where children study in English and follow Indian curricular standards. [...] "I mean, they are nice people, everything is perfect, but when it comes to person-to-person relationships, it's kind of not there," she said. [...] His own son, he said, was bullied in a Japanese school — by the teacher. Mr. Puranik said he repeatedly talked to the teacher, to no avail. "She would always try to make him a criminal," he said, adding that some teachers "feel challenged if the kid is doing anything differently." A similar dynamic can sometimes be found in the workplace.

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Japan Needs Indian Tech Workers. But Do They Need Japan? (Published 2022)

Recruiters call the push a crucial test of whether the world’s third-largest economy can compete with the U.S. and Europe for global talent.

www.nytimes.com