sandeep.wordpress.com
First, lets look at how Microsoft structures its business in India. Even the mighty Microsoft follows a stratified talent pool system. They have 2 companies / teams here. The one that builds their products is called Microsoft R&D and the people there are _GOOD_. Whereas all their global internal IT systems needs are supported by Microsoft IT Services, which is staffed by simpler developers who are not good enough to contribute to products, but can cut all the HTML needed as well as make all the CURD applications that the business operations need.
Indian IT companies are no different, they have a small cadre of excellent developers, who form the core of their teams, and are very busy -- even now. The rest of the millions are poor developers, not algorithmically sound, but can make simple CURD applications.
Its this second layer that fills up the benches. And they are not going to be valuable contributors to any of the projects you've picked -- (unless of course you want coded an Add/Update form on the project's website ;)
If you look at the biggest revenue earners for Indian IT you'll realise its this kind of internal CURD applications. Why should an Indian IT company hire super smart developers, when it makes more by hiring (_and billing for_) many warm bodies who'll hand code stuff because they are not smart enough to create their own frameworks?
I used to work for TCS at the start of my career. During those dot com bust days saw a lot of my colleagues working on internal projects. Open source was not a big draw those days.
Guess the FOSS community in India should take this up. Would be a good place to start.
The reason this might not work unless it comes down as a diktat from top management at these co.s is - there are very few outsourcing companies that think long term at the middle management level.