Not only Indian I would say... Basically all big IT companies flaunted of how flexible they are. All the managers wanted a tap on the back.

Now all of a sudden all these managers discover that if they don't micromanage they have to work..... Now suddenly small talk in the office is very valuable...

Moral of the story: IT will lie about everything all the time...

A lot of smaller companies have realised the cost benefits of letting employees WFH, while for the big outsourcing shops it's mostly the need to look over the shoulders of devs. Most of the work with overseas clients or cloud systems doesn't require any physical co-location unless explicitly needed.

Kinda highlights which of the companies are well prepared & have proper knowledge based processes in place. If you didn't have good culture/team building exercises before the pandemic, then you won't have them magically during/after the pandemic either, unless you task HR with it. Instead of saying "remote doesn't help with culture/team building" as the excuse for calling everyone back.

The entirety of the internet & its various communities have been remote first since decades

Of course they want to come back, how else can they micromanage people and take the entire credit for a project, and get paid big?

This is accurate. My deadline to go to office is coming soon too . Shifting to a new city is going to be tough.