Indias software sector is so starved of talented resources that they have already started tapping into rural areas. e.g. navgurukul.org

IME (I led offshore teams of Indian devs for years), the quality of the in-house training TCS/Infosys/Cognizant/Capgemini etc provide for employees is... poor. They seem to focus on quantity over quality, presumably so devs have lots of "relevant" training to pad CVs with.

> If the latter, I’d say education is helping pull these people out of poverty.

Is the school paying them? Its rich Western countries bringing India out of poverty.

I work for one of these services companies in the UK. They put huge investment in having their own training centres and universities and most of the recruits have already attended at least on university. You have to realise that the business is about selling time, not producing working or quality software. The more people you can bill, and the more skills on your CV the better. Once a large enterprise has pushed all their business into outsourcing, they can only go with it and try to make the best of it. Most businesses seem to have done this now, justifying some massive bonuses for their board staff and shareholder gains, due to the perceived "cost savings" going through a professional services business.