NEW YORK: Mum's the word for US companies exporting jobs to India and other countries in a presidential election year. But their silence isn't golden. It's rooted in fear. First, there's the fear of becoming the latest whipping boy for destroying American jobs as the campaign for the White House heats up.

Democratic presidential candidate Senator John Kerry has made US job losses to India and other low-wage countries a major theme of his campaign to unseat President George W. Bush.

And television news programmes such as "Lou Dobbs Tonight" on CNN, with its "Exporting America" series of reports, have condemned US companies that send work overseas.

"This is clearly an issue that is very highly charged, very emotional, very politicized and, of course, the backdrop is the national election," said Bruce Josten, executive vice-president of the US Chamber of Commerce. "But companies will continue to use (various) means and mechanisms," including the shift of some jobs overseas, "to slice and dice costs."

That leads to the second fear behind the wall of silence surrounding off shoring, which usually refers to the transfer of clerical jobs from the United States to India or other countries.

Executives, who have recently become much more reluctant to talk about outsourcing or off shoring jobs, also fear for their own jobs. They worry that their jobs will be next on the chopping block - if they don't cut costs fast enough. The upshot? The media, investors and analysts are often kept in the dark.

"The public discussions are significantly lessened, but that doesn't mean that the activity is going away," said Peter Allen, president of outsourcing consultant TPI.

Allen added that companies are more likely to recruit American service providers such as IBM with offices in India, instead of going directly to Indian service providers such as Info sys Technologies. This can help them mask where the jobs are going, he said.

The fear of political backlash - and media exposure - also is driving more clients to ask service providers not to disclose off shoring deals to the media. But there is a silver lining to this cloud over the US job market.

One positive outcome of the controversy is that companies are taking more of an interest in placing employees they lay off in other jobs or training, experts say. In fact, service providers are taking damage control measures by offering to retrain and recruit client staff and training their managers to be more sensitive.

"The political pressure has created a step back in thinking and people are being more considerate in their decisions," said Kelly Gay, chief executive of search engine and research firm Knowledge Storm. "They aren't just doing a cost-benefit analysis of off shoring, but are also looking at the reputation of the company." -Reuters