I've had some good experience hiring contractors. It all depends on what the goal is. If the goal is high quality work there are shops for that and if the goal is for a big enterprise to manage costs and de-risk themselves by hiring contractors as easy-to-let-go resources, you get exactly that. I've dealt with both and the latter is just extremely frustrating made infinitely worse by dealing with the timezone.

If you've seen job placements in top tier colleges in India, it's obvious that none of the body shops ever get even a small percentage of graduates wanting to join. They're always the last choice even for the less academically inclined. It has been the case since at least 2005. Until then these companies still had some sway and were hiring some good candidates. Now they're coasting on their "account winning" architects who then transfer all day-to-day stuff to some of the most tough to deal with engineers.