Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican candidate for Governor of Ohio, posted a tweet on 26 December 2024 in which he blasted the American jock culture for creating a shortage of geek talent and blamed broader American cultural priorities for causing the need to import STEM / engineering talent from India, and other countries.
All hell broke loose for the following two to three months. Although Rammy’s tweet made no mention of H-1B, MAGA dunderheads who were likely displaced by Indians working on this category of work visa in USA posted highly inflammatory tweets accusing Indian IT companies of H-1B fraud, citing lawsuits against Cognizant Technology Solutions.
I pushed back that Cognizant was an American company, citing content in its website, declarations in its regulatory filings, and reporting by MSM publications like FORTUNE magazine (see footnote 1).
I doubt if I changed too many minds but, like all outrages on socials, this too fizzled out after some time.
It’s one thing when a horde of racist and xenophobic randos on X fka Twitter makes false accusations against the Indian IT industry but another when the world’s second largest MSM business daily jumps on that bandwagon.
That’s what happened in a recent Economic Times article. Entitled US Cranks Up The Heat On Indian IT As Whistleblowers Trigger H-1B Audit, this article implied that Cognizant was an Indian company (see footnote 2).
I wrote to the editor of Economic Times rebutting the false claim made by the article.
Dear Editor:
This has reference to the article entitled US Cranks Up The Heat On Indian IT As Whistleblowers Trigger H-1B Audit by your bureau in today’s Economic Times.
Cognizant is headquartered in Teaneck, New Jersey, USA. It is listed in NASDAQ, an American stock exchange. The company is featured at 216th rank in FORTUNE 500, the list of 500 largest American corporations. It’s also ranked as the 109th most innovative company in USA.
All of these facts make it abundantly clear that Cognizant is an American company.
I strongly condemn the article’s suggestion that it’s an Indian company.
I won’t accept the popular narrative that the bulk of Cognizant’s employees are based in India because, by that logic, Accenture, IBM and many other American companies would also count as Indian, which is clearly not the case.
Indian IT is going through challenging times due to the onslaught from AI. The last thing we need at this vulnerable moment is for the industry to be insinuated of wrongdoing on the basis of some probe launched by some American government agency on some American company for H-1B visa fraud.
Thanks and Regards.
KETHARAMAN SWAMINATHAN
10 July 2026
Economic Times has never published any of my previous letters that directly critiqued its coverage. But it made an exception in this case.
A condensed version of the above letter was published by Economic Times in its edition dated 13 July 2026.
In case the article referenced above is paywalled, see following exhibit.
FOOTNOTES:
- While Cognizant was founded as a subsidiary of American company Dun & Bradstreet in Chennai in 1994, the firm shifted its headquarters to USA four years later when it went public and listed on NASDAQ ($CTSH) way back in 1998.
- Woz a time when the mainstream media in India would include Cognizant in the list of Top 5 Indian IT services companies. But that stopped a few years ago, apparently at the behest of Cognizant, which did not want its American company positioning to be diluted by being placed along with TCS, Infosys, et al. For a while now, the list of Top 5 Indian IT companies according to the Indian business media has comprised TCS, Infosys, HCL, Wipro, Tech Mahindra – no more Cognizant.