Out of India Why American business's love affair with Bangalore can't last.
By Joshua Hyatt

(FORTUNE Small Business) – We Americans make no apologies for our geographic promiscuity. No sooner have we collectively fallen in love with one dirt-cheap labor haven then we pack up and move on to the next one. So border towns in Mexico got left behind for a hottie named China; South Carolina got dumped for Malaysia. Such activity is all part of a phenomenon called "outsourcing," which is, according to U.S. Labor Department statistics, costing the country in the neighborhood of a gazillion jobs. The "it" country of the moment, as everyone knows, is India. But the passion American CEOs feel for it, intense though it may be, can't possibly last. Soon India must return to being what it used to be in the eyes of all Americans: the place where that really long movie about Gandhi was set.

Not that any of those jobs in India will be coming back to America, even for a visit. Our economy, as any CEO knows, depends on "creative destruction," meaning that we continually replace existing high-paying jobs with new dead-end ones. This process ensures that our standard of living remains firmly in check, as shown by the ubiquity of American Idol's Ryan Seacrest. So we must keep exporting jobs, but not to the likes of Delhi anymore. India, to borrow every two-bit consultant's favorite buzzword, has reached a tipping point. It is kaput.

Why? There's an intractable piece of the American character that drives us to keep exploring, pushing onward to the next horizon, a fresher and finer frontier. Also, we are really, really cheap. And the moment is coming when the overeducated engineers cramming cubicles in Bangalore will demand luxuries such as time to sleep or allowances for antidepressants.

We must start looking now for The Next India. Let's keep focused on what CEOs should look for in a new geographic mate: a place swarming with educated people who are willing to work for pennies and to act as if they live a time-zone apart from their families, and who are capable of imitating even the most apah-ling (hello, Bahston) American accents.

Call centers have already begun opening in Ghana where the natives speak English and wages are low. But does that West African nation really have the labor pool we need? Besides, everybody confuses it with Guyana, in South America, which had that distasteful cyanide-punch episode. Nigeria? Too politically unstable. Canada? Too politically stable. Russia's too cold. The Philippines, where English is the primary language, could work--Epixtar, a Miami telemarketing company, recently touted its intention to put call centers there rather than expanding its India operations. But--indulge my nostalgia--wasn't there something charming about those workers in India who tried to pass for WASPs on the phone, identifying themselves by such names as "Heather Bhattarjee"?

Besides, if it is English speakers we're after, there is a much better choice. Obvious, really, since it's in a state that has actually legislated its love of the language. It has a highly educated workforce, knowledgeable in technology and equipped with the goatees to prove it. The people there definitely need the money, laboring as they do under a multibillion-dollar state budget deficit. Perhaps it can't technically be classified as foreign, but its governor does have a funny accent. That's right, I'm talking about Silicon Valley. Now all we have to do is figure out how best to understand its culture.