‘Heads they won, tails he lost’: How ‘desi consultancies’ prey on Indian grads in America

Manu rushed through the John F. Kennedy International Airport, hoping to reach the college as soon as possible. He had refused the pick-up offer from the Indian Student Association, thinking he’d take a bus. But, outside the airport, New York overwhelmed him, so he asked a middle-aged American about the Bridgeport shuttle. ‘You know what,’ he said. ‘I’ll take you.’ Manu didn’t get him. The man asked whether Manu wanted to use the restroom. He did; it was a long flight. Did he want to drink water, eat something? No, thank you. He picked up Manu’s suitcases and loaded them in the trunk. Crap, a cab driver! Manu couldn’t say no. His first conversation in the US cost him $350.

The cab settled on the I-95. In less than two hours, it’d reach Bridgeport, a booming industrial town a long time ago, but now struggling with crime and poverty. Its university, too, had experienced a simultaneous decline. It had 9,100 students in 1970; by 1992, it dipped to 1,300. College buildings languished empty. Bars, restaurants and stores had shut shop. Illegal drugs ruled the local economy. In 1990, the university announced an end to its liberal arts programmes, severed links with the law school, fired around fifty tenured faculty and ordered the rest to take a pay cut of 30 per cent. This caused a two-year strike—the longest in the history of American higher education—driving away thousands of students. The ones on campus, fearing gunshots and mugging, considered it ‘depressing’ and ‘dead’.

A $22 million debt threatened to shut the university. But then it met a saviour. The Professor Religious Academy, an affiliate of the Unification Church, a ‘cult’ founded by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, accused of brainwashing followers, splitting families, evading taxes. By paying the school over $100 million, it could nominate 60 per cent of Bridgeport’s trustees for the next ten years. In 2002, with the church stopping its major donations, Bridgeport needed a fresh financial fillip.

In August 2008, however, Manu headed to a changed university. It had ‘more than 4,750 students’ in 2007, its annual report puffed with pride, an ‘increase of more than 18 percent over the last year’. From 2005 to 2007, enrolment had increased by ‘115 percent in mechanical engineering’, ‘178 percent in electrical engineering’ and ‘196 percent in computer science’. By 2008, Bridgeport became the ‘fastest-growing university in New England’. The School of Engineering ‘continued its impressive growth, enrolling more students in its master’s degree program than any other university in New England, including MIT, Harvard, and Northeastern’.

In the same year, a satirical outlet, Radar, published the list of ‘America’s Worst Colleges’. The University of Bridgeport ‘swept the competition in every category’ for not only its ‘meager academics, post-apocalyptic campus and downright shady administration’ but also its ‘ghetto-type atmosphere’, where students feared ‘for their lives’. The city’s crime rate, increasing by 11 per cent over the last two years, was 162 per cent higher than the national average. Yet enrolment had continued to rise, benefitting from the ‘aggressive recruitment of international students’, who constituted one-fourth of the student body. Indian hustlers had saved an American university.

Manu reached the electrical engineering building to register for classes. His batchmates surrounded a senior who, in ‘thick Gujarati’ and snatches of English (‘this course is good’, ‘this professor will give you A’), gave them advice. Manu chose his own courses. Accustomed to following instructions—from parents to teachers to educational consultants—many young Indians found the freedom in America unsettling. So their seniors acted as surrogate parents—suggesting courses, jobs, internships—freeing the juniors from independent thinking. A loner by choice, raised amongst conformers, Manu vacillated between the two extremes.

The accents troubled him most, making lectures hard to follow. While talking, he masked his incomprehensibility with an obedient nod accompanied by an ‘okay’. The education loan made him cut costs. Manu bought frozen masala rotis, cooked Maggi and hardly went out.

He also joined a non-profit Christian organisation, Bridges International, hoping the conversations with American students would solve his accent problem. As a member, he attended a church, Black Rock, every Sunday. He was a silent presence, but his friends—James, Kane and Riley—drew him into chats. After praying, they wound up at another member’s house. Those meetings had banter and board games. Manu sat alone.

Over the last six months, he hadn’t fallen sick. Diseases hounded him in India: asthma, TB, fever, stomach disorder, throat infection. But in Bridgeport, he never visited a doctor; his stack of medicines remained untouched. In the new world, technology manifested magic: buses’ dollar-ingesting machines released tickets; portable alarms summoned the cops in less than two minutes; labs stayed open the entire night. Fewer bullies, too. He didn’t miss his Hitler Family. America provided freedom, not restrictions. The freedom to choose his own courses, for instance, from not only electrical engineering but any programme, unlike P. Indra Reddy, where the principal selected the electives. No one sat on his shoulders, judging and mocking. Manu could finally breathe.

The next semester, he met an acquaintance who was about to quit his gig at an Indian restaurant. Would Manu like to replace him? He hadn’t found a part-time job. Submitting resumes to the library, dorm and dining hall had yielded nothing. The extra money would pay for his food expenses.

Manu worked during the weekends. He joined as a server but discharged diverse responsibilities: wiping glass tops, cleaning the restroom, washing dishes. His shift lasted for twelve hours, from nine in the morning to nine in the night, and three such days earned him around $300. But after some weeks, the owner hardly called. Manu lost interest and quit.

He needed a full-time job to clear his loan. But for someone unable to bag an on-campus gig, a corporate career looked like a mirage. Manu shared a recurring worry with his friends on online chats: ‘If I don’t get a job, I’ll have to return to India.’ His life could transform, though, at the start of the fall semester when Bridgeport hosted a career fair. It would give him a rare chance to meet recruiters, make contacts. His last chance.

Wearing a suit and holding resumes, he entered the career fair. He approached the booth of an IT company. An electrical engineering student, he had no background in IT. But a job was a job. The recruiter, an Indian man, asked no technical questions and said, ‘We are looking for candidates in SQL and UNIX.’ Manu spoke to several such desis and dropped his resume.

Later, in his room, he picked up a company’s brochure. Much of it made sense—technical requirements, contact details, comforting help (‘free training in Java, Bootstrap’)—but one assurance did not: ‘100 per cent job guarantee’. Manu had sought a job for months, and failed, but this firm promised one?

But a job was a job. He had submitted his resume, fulfilled his dharma. If those promises were true, then he’d get a call or an email. Manu had no reason to be suspicious: America wouldn’t allow fraud. He uploaded his resume on Dice, Indeed and Career Builder. Waited for weeks. Applied for jobs.

Nothing.

Time raced past. An international student had to find a job within ninety days of graduating. Failing to do so risked deportation. Manu had no close friends on campus. Nobody to guide him through the job hunt. So he turned to a familiar recourse: Mamaji. He introduced Manu to his friend Gyan Prakash, an IT professional in New Jersey.

They spoke over the phone. Gyan told him to join a ‘desi consultancy’. The latest buzzword in his life, it often popped up among conversations with peers. A consultancy meant an IT firm that provided training, a job and ‘rent money or something like that for a year’. What else? No clue.

Gyan came to Bridgeport in December 2009, after the last semester’s finals, to pick up Manu. An assertive figure, he would help Manu find a job and teach him American life. He pointed towards a speeding vehicle on the highway. ‘What’s that?’

‘A car.’

‘It’s an SUV. Sport Utility Vehicle.’

Gyan’s car—yeah, not an SUV—stopped outside an apartment complex in Piscataway, New Jersey, Manu’s new home. An Indian man, in his late twenties, opened the door. An empty living room, except for a few chairs and a table. A staircase, adjoining the dining room, led to the first floor. After Gyan left, he checked the bedroom upstairs. A crumpled comforter on the floor, some pillows on it. Nothing else in the rest of the room. Manu entered the bathroom: it didn’t even have a bar of soap.

The DMNT Solutions office, comprising a few employees, looked just as bleak. In a vacant room, he watched SQL tutorials every weekday for eight hours. He didn’t know anyone in the company; no one knew him. DMNT Solutions covered his accommodation, and an employee dropped off groceries every few days. It wouldn’t pay him till he got a client, and Manu, with no IT experience, couldn’t find one without training. Weeks passed. No sign of training.

‘I’m fed up,’ he pinged his Bridgeport friend, Ramesh. He shared his worries with his mother. She blamed him: ‘Why did you go to the US if you did not do anything?’ The loan stress fogged his brain. Only three things mattered: a job, a job, a job. Any job. Grocery store, shoe shop, desi consultancy. Any salary. $25, $20, $15 per hour. Manu would do anything to save his ancestral house.

Gyan often met him at the DMNT guesthouse. Every conversation cleared and created confusion. ‘You can’t apply directly for a position. These websites, Career Builder and all, won’t work.’

But if he got a job, it’d be in IT. Manu had studied electrical engineering. It wouldn’t be easy, said Gyan, to find an electrical engineering job. Even there, he’d run into MATLAB and VLSI codes. All worries met the same answer: desi consultancy. ‘You’re a fresher. Nobody will look at your resume. They need experience.’

One day, he asked, ‘You’ll have to put five to six years of experience on your resume. How do you feel about that?’

‘But it’s a lie, right?’

‘Then you are on your own. You will not find a job in the United States.’

This shocked Manu. Working off-campus (illegally) for some cash was one thing; adulterating his resume with six years of experience, something else. A coin toss: play the game, pay the loan, lose himself; or, return to India, earn a pittance, lose the property. Heads they won, tails he lost.

Excerpted with permission from “Wild Wild East:  Exiled Americans, Enslaved Indians and the Systemic Abuse of the H-1B Visa Programme”, by Tanul Thakur, Westland Context/Westland.