NEW YORK, Aug 11: The Indian government backed off from attacking Pakistan two months ago in part because of the influence exerted by the huge US corporation General Electric (GE) which holds sway over India’s burgeoning software and information technology industry.

In an Op-Ed column in the New York Times on Sunday writer Thomas Friedman said “quite simply, India’s huge software and information technology industry, which has emerged over the last decade and made India the backroom and research hub of many of the world’s largest corporations, essentially told the nationalist Indian government to cool it.”

He asserts that while US Secretary of State, General Colin Powell has been credited with playing a key role in talking two countries back from the brink of war “in the crunch it was the influence of General Electric, not General Powell, that did the trick.”

The NYT asserts that when the US State Department issued a travel advisory on May 31 warning Americans to leave India because the war prospects had risen to “serious levels, all these global firms who had moved their backrooms to Bangalore went nuts.”

India’s software and IT technology industry earns almost $60 billion a year for the country’s coffers which the writer says “has made world more dependent on India and India on the world than ever before.”

Charting the linkages of India’s software and technology industry the Times said: “If you lose your luggage on British Airways, the techies who track it down are here in India. If your Dell computer has a problem, the techie who walks you through it is in Bangalore, India’s Silicon Valley. Ernst & Young may be doing your company’s tax returns here with Indian accountants. Indian software giants in Bangalore, like Wipro, Infosys and MindTree, now manage backroom operations — accounting, inventory management, billing, accounts receivable, payrolls, credit card approvals — for global firms like Nortel Networks, Reebok, Sony, American Express, HSBC and GE Capital”

Speaking of American travel advisory on May 31 asking some 60,000 or more Americans to leave India, an owner of IT Industry told the Times “That day,” Vivek Paul, vice-chairman of Wipro, said: “I had a CIO (chief information officer) from one of our big American clients send me a e-mail saying: ‘I am now spending a lot of time looking for alternative sources to India. I don’t think you want me doing that, and I don’t want to be doing it.’ I immediately forwarded his letter to the Indian ambassador in Washington and told him to get it to the right person.”

No wonder. For many global companies, “the main heart of their business is now supported here,” N. Krishnakumar, president of MindTree told the paper. “It can cause chaos if there is a disruption.”

While not trying to meddle in foreign affairs, he added, “what we explained to our government, through the Confederation of Indian Industry, is that providing a stable, predictable operating environment is now the key to India’s development.”