Of course this world is fucked

If the project is GPL, I'd probably quote the cost of development. If I'm working as a programmer for hire with the copyright belonging to my client, my fee will be much bigger. If you choose to go to India for your software development needs, that's totally up to you. I didn't think that India supported copyright law.

You're asking people to foot the bill for software that their competitors would then potentially get for free. Great business model.

If they want to distribute the GPL software that they paid for, that's their own right under the GPL. I don't care if they do, I already got paid for my work.

So why would the initial company empower you with the right to potentially enrich their competitors? What's in it for them? You're just the gun for hire, anyone sane isn't going to allow themselves to be subjugated by you.

They hire me for my domain expertise and for my skills as programmer. This is how all employees function. A skilled employee working for a certain company can easily transfer his skills working for competitor companies. I'm not sure why programming is any different.

You completely avoided answering those questions.

That's very different from transferring a codebase they wrote at company A to company B.

I'm answering what I understand of your questions. Here is what I understand:
Why does my employer hire me for my programming skills?

I don't understand why this is relevant given the fact that employees are free to change employers after their employment contract is finished.

No, the question is why would a company put themselves in a position which allows you to subjugate them. For example, you (or your team) may charge me $250,000 and then sell it to my top competitor for $5,000.

See . They can take their skill, but they cannot take work they wrote with them. Those projects could represent many years of work, and are non-transferable.