News coming out of India suggests that 60,000 contract employees at the top IT firms in India have been shown the door.

Mumbai newspaper DNA is reporting based on anecdotal evidence and interviews with staffing firms that 60,000 contract workers have received pink slips.

That seems like a very high estimate to us given that the same article mentions that the top 25 IT firms in India employ 60,000 contract workers.

Here’s an excerpt from the DNA story:

Thousands of jobs are vanishing in top-line information technology companies as they try to cope with the economic downturn. According to workers in the IT sector, nearly 60,000 contract or ‘vendor-supplied’ employees have been hit in the current round of trimmings. These figures, however, do not show up in the records of the IT firms.

“Many of us had to return to our staffing agencies,” said a worker with IBM’s learning content and development department in Bangalore, requesting anonymity. Several IT professionals DNA spoke to in Bangalore said they knew of colleagues or friends who had been “sent back” as IT companies try to scale down to the reduced demand for their services across the world.

Meanwhile, the New York Times is reporting that since September technology outsourcing companies in India have laid off 10,000 employees citing labor group Union for Information Technology Enabled Services as its source.