A "body-shopper" by profession, Mr. Reddy takes calls from around the world and then scours the ancient city of Hyderabad for the best and brightest computer kids to send to Silicon Valley and beyond.

That changed after India began its economic liberalization in 1991. At first the country was tapped primarily by "body shoppers"… for labor-intensive applications like data entry and millennium-bug projects.

Canny "body shoppers" round up workers from Third World countries and ship them to the United States, where they work long hours for employers on the lookout for cheap labor. Or employers looking for even better deals simply set up shop in low-wage countries.

Textiles? Low-end manufacturing? Hardly. The work is computer programming, and the new arrivals are accomplished code writers.