Do you thinkpost COVID, there will be tighter borders in terms of letting people, goods in because every country wants to protect their own people and economy?

Absolutely, I think one of the biggest casualties of this will not be an ending of globalisation but it will be slowing down globalisation. I think, in the long run globalisation may be an irresistible force but it is meeting an immovable object right now, so when an irresistible force meets an immovable object there is short term tension. So, in the short run, yes. The only thing you won't be able to stop is our ideas. So the question is, you'll be able to put barriers against labour, you'll be able to put barriers against capital but you won't be able to stop the propagation of ideas. So, actually in a funny sort of way, India has the same switching cost in IT that China has in manufacturing. We have reached critical mass in terms of schools, in skills, project managers. Bangalore is probably the only place in the world where you can have a thousand adobe programmers in one week.

So my sense is that the decline globalisation will much difficult for China than for India. India may not grow up to be a China, it may grow up to be the US. Is is not a very globalised economy, it has a lot of domestic consumption driving in but it has a very high level of intellectual capability. I think there was an opportunity which China has exploited in the 1980s. From now on, India needs to exploit its strength which is its positioning in services, large domestic consumption economy and if the world co-operates we should focus on exports but I think the world will be distracted for a long time with this coronavirus.

Manish Sabharwal,
Chairman and Co-Founder of Teamlease Services, India’s largest people supply chain and HR services company