In twenty years of international travel, I must have experienced every possible reason for flight delays, from the non-availability of a ladder at Saratov airport in 1995 to multiple de-icing needs at Boston’s Logan airport in 2009 but the recent experience at JFK, New York’s busiest airport has to take the cake. Over seventy aircraft were delayed for an hour because they just stood lined up on the ramp waiting for the runway to be cleared of an army of turtles that had emerged from the adjoining pond on a warm June morning to bask in the sun. The turtle waltz was probably an omen of the times where multiple factors, economic political and social seem to be in collusion to slow down the rate of growth of the IT sector. The launch of the election campaign in the US in the cloud of continuing unemployment levels and over half a dozen Republican candidates throwing their hat in the ring will put a sharper sting into the election rhetoric that is likely to unfold during the Presidential battle. The continuing economic sluggishness in key Western markets with Japan down for the count also do not augur well for IT spending during the latter part of this year, although demand and new order inflow is robust at the present for all IT firms. Underlining this point in his keynote address at the recent World IT & BPO Forum held in Jersey City, former Harvard President and Obama’s Economic Adviser Larry Summers cautioned the three hundred delegates that an economic recovery was going to be slow and painful. The picture he painted of the unfortunate American citizen who sees the loss of first manufacturing and then service jobs to global destinations and then a raising of personal tax to help the bail out of corporations would not be a pretty one if some political forces choose to raise the outsourcing bogey again in the coming months. To give credit to Summers, he argued passionately in his speech for the continuation of global sourcing, stating unambiguously that any move to limit American corporate freedom in this regards would result in their competitiveness being eroded and further aggravate the problems of boosting domestic and international demand for American goods and services. A galaxy of speakers including academicians, CEOs and CIOs and my own plenary speech outlined the progress that the Indian industry has made in becoming true strategic partners in transformation. The next few months will be interesting, as demand problems get compounded by cost pressures caused by wage increases in India and quality issues caused by an excessive focus on fresher recruitment by all IT firms. Strategic moves to improve quality of business and non-linearity of revenues will need to be accelerated for revenue and profit growth to sustain in the industry in 2011-12 and beyond!