The path of evolutionary enlightenment, like all enlightenment teachings, is one of ego-transcendence that's a means to a higher end, to open up some space within the self – space for evolution to occur.

Being inspired by the idea of conscious evolution is one thing, while actually engaging in the process of evolution is something else altogether. Many people are moved by the notion of evolutionary becoming. But within themselves they are not free. They are trapped in psychological hang-ups and attachments, with little or no space for that which is new. Their souls are not liberated, and their choices and actions are still being shaped by unconscious adherence to values and perspectives that have nothing to do with being a liberated vessel for the evolution of consciousness and culture.

Merely being inspired by the potential for conscious revolution does not automatically give us access to the fearless inner freedom to actualise that potential. In order to find that freedom, to open up that space for the new, it is essential that you liberate yourself to a significant degree from your personal fears and desires and your culturally conditioned values.

This inner freedom is not different from the goal of traditional enlightenment where freedom is an end in itself. Ideally, freedom becomes the foundation from which to engage in conscious evolution. So the foundation of the path and practice of evolutionary enlightenment is nothing less than the position of traditional enlightenment itself. In order to release your own consciousness and psyche for the wider and deeper embrace of the life process that evolutionary enlightenment demands, you must disentangle yourself, free yourself from your karma, your history, culture and personal ego.

How does one discover enlightened awareness? There are two ways that you can gain access to the intoxicating joy and ecstatic wakefulness of that timeless spiritual attainment: spontaneously, or through making noble effort.

Like an unexpected visit from God, for no particular reason, the doors of perception can spontaneously open, expanding your awareness to reveal a higher and deeper dimension of your own consciousness. This kind of spontaneous experience often happens in the company of a spiritual master who has access to this unmanifest ground, or among a group of inspired individuals who have come together to share mystical truths.

You can also, however, assume the posture of freedom and experience enlightened awareness simply through disciplined effort…The way to practise this radical position is to literally take the posture the Buddha is taking – to engage with what i call "the art and science of stillness" or the traditional practice of meditation.

The ability to be very still is foundational, because stillness is the perennial portal that gives us access to the dimension of ourselves and of life itself that is the source of traditional enlightenment. In learning how to be still, you are choosing to stand for and express that deepest part of yourself – that empty no-place before the beginning of time, before anything ever happened. That formless ground of Being is always the deepest dimension of who we all are, and it is the ultimate source and wellspring of all that is. In that ground, nothing ever moves, because there is no time, no form, no subject or object.

There is only One, eternally at rest and at peace. By assuming the inner and outer position of stillness, you are bearing witness to the deepest part of yourself in the world of time and space.

For nearly 40 years, we've had the keyboard and the mouse. Point, click. Point, click. It works, but it's indirect. You may be too young to remember, but the mouse wasn't always the easiest thing to learn. (I spent many years working as a personal computer tutor, paying house calls to frustrated adults who were struggling to enter the digital age.)

But then came the Wii. We could control a computer by waving a wireless remote in space. There was the iPhone and iPad: we could control a computer by pointing and dragging a finger on glass. There was the Microsoft Xbox Kinect: we could control a computer without touching it at all, just by moving our limbs in space. Then came Siri on the iPhone 4S, which took voice control to a much more sophisticated, fluid level.

Each of these breakthroughs works brilliantly in its particular niche – but we're not done yet. At the International Consumer Electronics Show a couple of weeks ago, I'd heard buzz about a company called Tobii, which was demonstrating a laptop with built-in eye-tracking software . (That's Tobii, "with two eyes," get it?)

Now eye tracking isn't new. It is available, at huge cost, in the military, in specialized industries , for disabled people, and so on. But it's one thing to pay millions for a heads-up display in a fighter jet, and quite another to have it on your laptop.

I found the company's booth out in the deepest reaches of C.E.S.'s 37-football-fieldsbig exhibition halls.-.the Siberia of tiny booths from companies without a lot of money to spend. The entire booth was pretty much one laptop and one desktop PC.

A representative helped me through the demo on the laptop. First, the system finds and learns where your eyes are by using a 10-second calibration procedure, in which you simply look at an orange dot as it jumps to four positions around the screen. Then you're ready.

The first demonstration was an Asteroids game, in which you're supposed to blow up incoming asteroids just by looking at them. You discover that Tobii's system works perfectly , flawlessly, exhilaratingly. Your hands are free, your body is relaxed, and you're blowing up space rocks instantly with nothing but the awesome power of your gaze.

Another demonstration involved Google Maps: the software automatically focuses and zooms in wherever you seem to be focusing.

There was a slide show app, in which you see the thumbnails of many photos, and whenever you gaze at one in particular, it automatically blows up full screen.

On a PC running Windows 8, you could click toolbar buttons in Word, click tile buttons and swipe through screens, all using your eyes. In an architecture-design program, you could effortlessly move around a large blueprint with your eyes, using the mouse's scroll wheel to zoom in at any point. (For the disabled , Tobii makes a kit that lets you "click the mouse" by blinking or staring, but the system really works best in conjunction with a regular trackpad or mouse.)

The demo that really rocked my world, though, was something much less glamorous: reading. Imagine a Web page or Word document on the screen before you – and the page scrolls automatically, gracefully and effortlessly as you proceed through the article. The system knows where your eyes are and how fast you are going, so it keeps your place centered on the screen, scrolling automatically as you go, even if you jump back to reread something. It feels as if this is how reading on a computer screen was always meant to be.

The rep said that the company was marketing this system to computer manufacturers, not individuals (although the company also sells hugely expensive add-on kits for existing computers – for disabled people, for example). And he said it would take a couple of years before you could buy it.

Furthermore, as excited as I was by my first experience with everyday eye tracking, I later discovered that not all of it is new. Tobii , it turns out, has competitors. And Tobii isn't a new company, or even a small company ; it's a big Swedish outfit that makes eyetracking products for all kinds of uses. Even the laptop wasn't new; a Google search indicates that Tobii has been demonstrating it at trade shows for a year.

Even so, you know right away when you try it: There is something here. It may be a couple of years away, but the technology is stunning – and the possibilities are limitless.

BANGALORE: Senior executives in research and development (R&D) firms are less prone to shift loyalties and rise up the corporate hierarchy compared with their peers in industries like information technology.

Most of the top brass in R&D firms have worked only with three to four companies and around 60% of directors have four or even fewer company changes, according to a study by management consulting firm Zinnov.

The study was done across 20 R&D companies based in India with roots abroad, including Google, Cisco, Samsung, General Motors and Microsoft. Over 520 senior executives were surveyed.

Those who have worked with one company reached the post of director or above in 13 years, while those with experience across two firms have reached the top in 14.7 years.

Those whose resumes show three company shifts have taken 15.3 years to become directors, says the study. In the IT industry, job shifts are far greater, and only those who have Esops linked to their salaries stay for longer periods, says Chandramouli CS, director, Zinnov.

In terms of career path, the growth charted in an R&D-based firm is horizontal, with more exposure to different products, while movement in the IT sector is vertical and dependent on product complexity. Expertise in an R&D centre is focused on products and customer satisfaction, while that in an IT industry is based on personal skill set along with technical and process knowledge.

Further, 70% of executives in the R&D industry who have less than two company changes have postgraduate degrees to their credit, while 50% of those surveyed have completed their higher education from an Indian tier-I, tier-II institute or one outside the country.

Born in a remote Odisha village in 1942, Satyanarayan Gangaram (Sam) Pitroda — the man who heralded India's communication revolution — does not know his exact date of birth. Simply because his village did not have a hospital neither did it keep records of babies born. Which is why Pitroda feels the the unique identity number Aadhaar can bring in social innovation at the bottom of the pyramid.

An advisor to the Prime Minister on public information, infrastructure and innovation, Pitroda draws on his wealth of experience to dicuss issues plaguing the government like internet censorship and his vision of social innovation. Excerpts from an exclusive chat with Harsimran Julka and Paramita Chatterjee :

How do you compare social innovation in India with that in developed nations?

The problem is the best brains globally are busy solving the problems of the rich who really don't have problems. And problems of the poor don't really get the attention they deserve. Most modern innovations that have taken place over the last 50 to 60 years have come only out of the US. Now, all US innovations focus on the top of the pyramid and they are primarily from areas such as biotech, genetics or laser technology.

Inherently they are expensive. A few days back, I was told that 60 million people in India have liver ailments. The number is higher than those battling AIDS. But AIDS gets more money and attention because it is a rich man's disease. Look at all the global institutions in the world – the United Nations, the World Bank or the IMF. All these institutions were set up by America for America after the Second World War. We need institutions for tomorrow. That's where innovation comes in.

What's been the most important change since the telecom revolution?

A very important thing has happened over the last 20 years. It is the invention of the Internet. I would say nothing like this has happened in last 15,000 years, It is as big as the invention of languages.

Do you support the idea of controlling the internet? Are we going the China way?

Nobody can control the internet. It is impossible. We cannot go the China way. Even China is not going the 'China way'. It is finding it difficult controlling the Net. The problem crops up because the older generation wants to impose its values on the younger generation. I always tell the youth not to listen to the stifling values of the old. If someone wants to want some content, who are we to control him or her. Instead, India should have its own locally relevant social networks.

Can the unique identity project be the basis of all financial inclusion programmes?

I was born in 1942 in a small little village, Titlagarh in Odisha. There were no doctors, no pharmacies, no running water, no electricity. Who is going to give you a birth certificate there? When I went to the school, I was told I was too young and I had to submit an affidavit. People are always quick to criticise.

If you have 1.2 billion people and want to build a 21st Century infrastructure, you need to build robust information systems. When you begin to organise databases of people, you realise the importance of Aadhaar.

Last year, about 7,50,000 people were released from Indian prisons. Many of them were undertrials without any identity. Aadhaar will give them an identity and allow them to say you better recognise me.

How has been your experience working in India? What more needs to be done?

I have had the best time of my life in India. In the early 1980s, Rajiv Gandhi saw that computers could play a very important role. I had a background in telecom and technology.

So, I decided to look at telecom as an instrument of change. Despite having battled cancer and two heart bypass surgeries, I wouldn't like to retire. I don't like to look at the past. I only look at the future. I don't watch any films, don't read any newspapers. Retirement would be so boring. I just enjoy working. There is so much more that needs to be done in India. Some of it may happen in my lifetime, some 20 years after I have gone. But it has to be done.

Can innovation solve India's challenges?

First, we need to find out a way to train 100 million people in vocational education. These include the truck drivers, the plumbers, the carpenters and the electricians. We have to use technology and internet to do that. Our banks give low-cost loans for higher education. But if a carpenter wants training, we don't give him a loan. What kind of system is this? Either you give them more money through schemes like the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act or empower them to do things on their own.

WASHINGTON: Internet giant Google has been by Fortune magazine as the best place to work in the US.

The Mountain View, California-based company hired about 7,000 people in 2011, the most intense hiring spree in its 13-year history, which moved Google up from fourth to first on Fortune's annual list of the 100 best companies to work for, Xinhua reported.

"Employees rave about their mission, the culture, and the famous perks of the Plex: bocce courts, a bowling alley, eyebrow shaping (for a fee) in the New York office," Fortune wrote.

"What people often focus on are the flashy, showy things, like the massages and the food, which are important to us. But they are not the real story about what makes our culture work," Laszlo Bock, Google's senior vice president for people operations, told San Jose Mercury News, a daily newspaper in Silicon Valley.

Larry Page, Google co-founder and chief executive officer, said in an interview with Fortune: "We've always been good at making sure we're treating employees flexibly. You treat people with respect. They tend to return the favor to the company. And that goes for families."

LONDON: A quiet internet revolution begins on Thursday. Organizations can begin applying to name and run their own domains instead of entrusting them to the operators of .com, .org, .gov and others.

Up to 2,000 applications are expected to be made to ICANN, the body that oversees the internet's naming system for so-called "top-level" international domains. The window to grab some virtual real estate will close in three months' time, probably for years.

The most radical move in US-based ICANN's 13-year history is designed to foster competition and innovation, allowing the new domain owners to build new communities, strengthen ties with customers and give consumers more power.

"It's a fascinating new chapter in the internet's history," says Jonathan Robinson, non-executive director of Afilias, which is helping with applications and already provides key infrastructure for .org, .info and .mobi.

"It's opening up new fronts of internet real estate and that brings opportunity and threat."

Most of the first wave of applications is expected to come from leading brand owners who see an opportunity to boost their visibility online, or simply fear that others will grab "their" space if they do not do so themselves.

At $185,000 per application, estimated start-up costs of $500,000 and annual running costs of about $100,000, a .yournamehere domain will be out of reach of the smallest companies and organizations.

But applications are expected from cities or regions with strong identities, such as .london and .mumbai, from companies aiming to build a business based on new domains, and from community identifiers like .eco or .gay.

Melbourne IT, a leading consultancy firm that is preparing about 100 applications for customers, says most interest has come from the financial services and consumer goods sectors.

"They're looking at it as something they can use as an additional weapon." says the firm's European sales director Stuart Durham.

"Banks are looking at it for online authentication, to prevent fraud and build trust, while consumer goods makers believe they can use this to become more effective in their online marketing and consumer engagement," he says.

For example, a customer on a site ending .hsbc could be certain it was genuinely operated by the bank, or a consumer goods maker like Canon might give each customer their own .canon domain to keep details of their purchases and for communication.

Secrecy
Camera maker Canon is one of just a handful of companies to have acknowledged they are applying to operate their own brand domains — Deloitte and Hitachi are others. Others are more secretive, fearing unwanted competition, and ICANN will publish details of applicants only after the window closes in April.

In cases where more than one applicant has a legitimate claim to operate a domain – for example, .apple could be contested by the iPod maker and the record label — ICANN will hold an auction.

The trademark lobby in the United States has some issues with this process. It argues that brand owners will be forced to mount expensive and unnecessary bids to protect their brands online, and has mounted a last-minute offensive to change the rules.

But ICANN says strict criteria are already in place to protect interests.

Applicants have to demonstrate that they have relevant intellectual property rights, and detail how they will operate the domain. The aim here is to prevent cybersquatters from buying up valuable ones and then leaving them inactive while they negotiate a profitable sale to a more legitimate claimant.

The $185,000 application fee is a far cry from the $10 or so needed to register a .com site. Applicants have to fill in a lengthy and complex application form, around which a whole consultancy industry has sprung up.

"It's not something you can just complete in five minutes online using a credit card, like you can for a .com domain name today," says Melbourne IT's Durham.

Jeff Ernst, principal analyst at technology analysis firm Forrester, says he is advising customers against a knee-jerk application.

"I'm not an evangelist for the program myself. I've talked to about 50 companies now in the last six months. There were only about five or six that we found had reason to apply," he says. I'm advising against just doing a defensive registration."

Artificial scarcity
Beyond the big brands, the revolution in Internet naming could give smaller businesses the chance to increase their visibility online.

With the introduction of geographical top-level domains, a bicycles firm, for example, might boost its profile by winning bicycles.london or bicycles.mumbai, whereas bicycles.com could be prohibitively expensive to acquire from the owner.

"There's tremendous artificial scarcity that's been caused by the delay in the development of these new domains," says Jacob Malthouse, co-founder of Big Room, a Canadian company which is applying to run the new top-level domain .eco.

Malthouse believes the changes mean global communities such as the environmental movement will be better able to unite and work together in future. His organization is backed by some of the world's biggest environmental groups, including Greenpeace, WWF International and the Green Cross.

Malthouse argues that with such backers, .eco would have the authority to certify genuine environmental Organizations and individuals, allowing only them to register a .eco address, and screening out much of the "greenwash" that exists.

"The environmental community has never had a home on the Internet before," he says.

"We see .eco as an opportunity for smaller Organizations or smaller businesses. Maybe a .org doesn't really communicate what they do, or .com doesn't communicate it."

Malthouse says he has been open about his bid to gather the most broad-based and authoritative support possible, to prevent commercial interests from grabbing the domain.

"I think there's a real risk that private groups will try to force .eco to auction. The way we manage that is by demonstrating environmental community support. That's why we've been so public about the bid," he says.

Candy floss
A handful of potential new domains such as .eco seem likely to succeed but many may turn out to be little used, as was the experience for .jobs, .museum .travel and others in previous, experimental rounds of liberalization.

The .com domain remains dominant for companies, Tim Freeborn, technology and media analyst at London-based brokerage Xcap points out.

"The .mobis were a bit of a washout even though people made money selling addresses," he said. "There may be lots of addresses but they just may not catch anyone's imagination."

Freeborn follows Top Level Domain Holdings, a London-listed company set up to exploit the possibilities of the program, and which is applying for 20 domains on behalf of customers and 30-50 for itself.

Peter Dengate Thrush, TLDH's executive chairman and a former chairman of ICANN, says the process has been protracted — six years in the planning — and skepticism widespread, but interest is belatedly gathering momentum.

"A lot of people are waking up to domain names in general. The availability of .xxx (for pornographic sites) has alerted a lot of people," says Thrush.

Some investors are buying TLDH shares as a pure-play bet on the value of the new domains. Its share price has risen 41 per cent since the end of November, as fears that the US trademark lobby might derail ICANN's plans have faded.

Still, the model has yet to be proven. ICANN is likely to take until the end of 2012 to award the first new top-level domains, and in the case of hotly contested ones it may be years before they come online.

"The main risk is that people and companies will still gravitate towards .com, and the second risk is that the process of sorting out some of the major generics will be protracted," says Mike Jeremy, analyst at London brokerage Daniel Stewart, who also covers TLDH.

Xcap's Freeborn says: "It feels like candy floss. It's very hard to get a grip on it at the moment. A year from now it should be a lot clearer."

SAN FRANCISCO: Google Inc will provide more personalized search results for users by tapping content from its Google+ service, including photos, news and comments that are posted on the social network.

A new service called Search, Plus Your World will display more content for users who log into Google, providing access to items they may have put on Google+ or from friends' posts, said Amit Singhal, who focuses on improving information retrieval at the Mountain View, California-based company. If someone searches for a dog, for instance, pictures of friends' dogs might show up first in the search results.

"At Google, we always want to return the most comprehensive and relevant answers to your questions, and many times those answers are in the open public Web, but many times those answers are in your own personal content," Singhal said. "This is the first time we're bringing personal content right into the results page."

Google, the world's biggest search engine, aims to ward off competition from Microsoft Corp's Bing and Facebook Inc. Last year, Bing began displaying Facebook data, such as restaurants, brands and links friends have recommended, in its search results. Facebook has more than 800 million members, compared with more than 40 million for Google+ as of October.

Facebook, Twitter
Google's search service doesn't include content from Facebook or microblogging service Twitter Inc. The changes under the new Google service could make finding Twitter posts on news events more difficult, San Francisco-based Twitter said.

"People have relied on Google to deliver the most relevant results anytime they wanted to find something on the internet," Twitter said in an e-mailed statement. "We're concerned that as a result of Google's changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone."

Facebook, based in Menlo Park, California, declined to comment on the new search service.

Google wants to be comprehensive in its search results, according to Gabriel Stricker, a spokesman for the company.

"Google does not have access to crawl all the information on some sites, so it's not possible for us to surface all that content," Stricker said in an e-mail today. "Based on current policies from many social networks, we currently only have persistent access to information from Google+."

Bing plays catch-up
While Google remains dominant in internet queries, Microsoft has gained ground. In December, Bing had 15.1 per cent of US internet queries, up from 13.9 per cent in March, according to ComScore Inc.

Microsoft passed Yahoo to become the No. 2 search engine last month. Yahoo dropped to 14.5 per cent in the period, down from 15.1 per cent the previous month and 15.7 per cent in March. Google's share was 65.9 per cent in December, compared with 65.7 per cent in March.

As part of Google's search changes, the company is rolling out a feature called Profiles in Search. It has an auto-complete function that brings up links to friends' Google+ accounts while users are still entering queries in the search box. It also will give suggestions on whom to follow on Google+.

Google's new personal content on search-results pages, which will be rolled out in the coming days, can come from Google+ accounts or its photo-sharing feature Picasa. Google shares rose less than 1 per cent today to $623.14 at the close in New York. The shares rose 8.7 per cent last year.

BANGALORE: Many medium enterprises in IT/ITeS sector from Hyderabad and Bangalore are shifting or expanding their bases in the Philippines owing to concerns pertaining to infrastructure, cost of doing business and availability of skilled labour, an ASSOCHAM survey said.

ASSOCHAM referred to current developments taking place in the southern part of the country, and said that it clearly indicates that India's prominence as an Information Technology/Information Technology Enabled Services (IT/ITeS) hub is fast fading away.

"The driving forces are multitude, ranging from ease of doing business, availability of abundant English speaking workforce at lower wages, better infrastructure to government incentives", said D S Rawat, Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India.

"It is imperative for Governments at the Centre and States to quickly initiate remedial measures on war-footing to stem the loss as the capital flight will not only severely affect the growth and employment but threaten India's leadership in the knowledge industry," he said.

According to the just concluded ASSOCHAM Eco Pulse (AEP) Study titled "Sustaining India's IT/ITeS Leadership", the prevailing macroeconomic and sectoral conditions have been resulting in a shifting of ITeS/BPO industry away from India to the Philippines, especially from Hyderabad and Bangalore.

Such a trend is yet not being noticed in the National Capital Region and Pune.

BANGALORE: The Indian IT industry is hopeful of maintaining its growth momentum in 2012 despite global economic uncertainty and concerns over the fallout of the sovereign debt crisis in Europe.

"The Indian IT sector, especially software services, will do well to sustain the growth momentum as demand for its offerings in export and domestic markets continue to be favourable despite uncertainty, arising mainly out of the Euro crisis," a top industry representative told IANS ahead of the third quarterly (Oct-Dec) earnings season.

Asserting that the market conditions were not as bad as they were in 2008-10 when global financial meltdown reduced the industry's growth to single digit (six percent) in fiscal 2009-10, National Association of Software and Services Companies ( Nasscom) president Som Mittal said software exports would be in line with the projected 15-17 percent to generate about $70 billion in 2011-12 as against $59 billion in 2010-11.

"We are cautious about the outlook for the ensuing fiscal (2012-13) due to concerns over the Euro crisis. Though we don't know how it (crisis) would play out eventually, we are optimistic that our services will be in demand as clients will continue to engage us for their business operations, which are non-discretionary," Mittal said.

The results season starts Jan 12 when bellwether Infosys will announce results for its third quarter ending Dec 31, 2011.

Analysts are also upbeat on the overall performance of the software services sector owing to the long-term contracts of IT projects and the transformational jobs they are involved in providing more for less.

"As evident from their robust performance during the first half (April-September) of this fiscal, we expect the topline growth of the IT majors to be higher than a year ago and sequentially better than the second quarter due to increase in service offerings, client acquisitions and new lines of business such as cloud computing, mobile applications and outsourcing of more IT-enabled services, including remote infrastructure management and data mining," an analyst told IANS.

A sharp depreciation of the rupee to 53 from 49 against the US dollar during the October-December quarter is also expected to improve the operating margins and profitability of the software export firms despite anticipated losses in hedging at a higher rate.

"Benefit from a depreciating rupee will only be a short-term gain on exports but continued volatility in the forex (foreign exchange) market is a cause for concern as it will have an impact on the overseas operations of IT majors and budgets in exploring businesses in emerging markets. Sharp fluctuations in shorter cycles are detrimental either way," Mittal noted.

Notwithstanding the looming Euro crisis, the latest data on job gains in the US, which accounts for over 60 percent of the Indian IT exports, augurs well, though the pace of economic recovery has been slower than expected.

"Job gains or losses in the US are largely in the manufacturing, transportation, retail trade and construction sectors and not in the services sector, which continues to be healthy. Increase in employment in other sectors indicates signs of recovery and investments," Mittal said.

According a research study by an international bank, the Indian IT vendors are in a position to pitch for multi-billion dollar deals that are due for renewal this year and compete for large annual contracts that are up for grabs in new service lines.

"In hard times, when companies across verticals look for cutting costs and focus on core business, they will scout for partners to manage their non-core activities such as IT services, which means more business for our sector," Mittal added.

BANGALORE: Indian IT companies are bolstering their immigration, visa, and legal departments to deal with the rising number of immigration issues in the West, the primary markets for these companies.

All the major tech firms today have in-house teams of 25 to 50 people. A few years ago these areas had just a few people and were part of either the HR department or were outsourced to travel agents and law firms.

TCS, Wipro and Infosys have teams of around 50 each. MphasiS has 25. The Indian operations of global firms like Accenture, HP and IBM also have large departments. Small and medium size IT providers too are hiring for the space.

The visa case that Infosys Technologies is fighting has made tech providers particularly vigilant. Wipro recently hired Inderpreet Sawhney as general counsel of the company. Sawhney previously was a partner in Santa Clarabased Chugh Firm. She is the head of Wipro's legal function and is responsible for helping the company run the business ethically and transparently.

"Most companies are asking for people to ramp up their visa, immigration and legal departments," says B S Murthy, CEO of executive search firm LeadershipCapital . Immigration rules, he says, are more stringent today. "America is going to elections. So Indian providers are doubly conscious about not messing up in their breadand-butter market."

The number of immigration compliance violation charges is rising, as is visa rejections. About 50% of L-1 visas are rejected now, compared to 30% a year ago. Some companies have gone out of the US Consulate's priority visa processing scheme, Business Express Programme , meant for those that file a minimum of 30 business visas.

Stella Nagesh, head of immigration at MphasiS, says L-I visa rejections are mostly because "specialised talent" is wrongly defined by the Consulate or misunderstood by Indian companies . L1B visa is a type of intra-company transfer visa, which mandates 'specialised knowledge'. 'Specialised knowledge' is defined as any knowledge that specifically concerns the employer company's and/or the client company's procedures, methodologies, products , tools, technologies, framework, etc, that is uncommon, noteworthy and is not commonly available in the US IT industry.

"Business visas too are misunderstood and violated sometimes," says Nagesh. One of the criteria for business visa eligibility is that the employee must not be performing any activity that would be benefiting the US client. In general, efforts of the applicant during the US stay should not be billed to the client. If billed, it is a clear case for a training visa or a work permit (H-1B or L-1).

Immigration, visa and legal issues today are key to enterprises as they are directly related to business. "Travel delays directly impact business flow, kills customer satisfaction and has the potential to block repeat business," says the legal head at a leading tech firm.

It is critical to keep the travel channel clear and you can't expect HR or finance to know the basics of immigration. "Every company runs a visa and immigration drive internally. They are increasingly hiring law professionals to support contract drafting, contract vetting, compliance management, policy drafting, handling issues of sexual harassment etc. Some are even hiring fresh law grads," says Nirupama V G, MD of recruitment firm AdAstra.