Is India to be the World's BPO?

Is India to be the World’s BPO??

Some recent trends and talks with friends indicate that more than a few people in the Information Technology and allied industries (that includes the Government) believe that India can be the back office of the world. I find this to be...(what!??!?!)

The foundations of the BPO industry is rooted in providing cheap labour to perform a repetitive job that is no longer viable to maintain under tougher regulations and more difficult economic conditions any longer.

Deriving from this first principle (it could be my hypothesis), I infer such an industry to be a function of the following variable:

1. that India will continue to produce labour that is qualified as ‘cheap’ labour, currently, this means knowledge of English language and knowledge of Computers


2. that such labourers will continue to work for the kind of salaries that are being offered now and the rate at which it may grow in future; that forever and ever the Indian mind will always convert USD to INR and perceive its value, that it cannot recognize the futility of such a conversion in a global economy


3. that we continue to produce labourers who would enjoy performing repetitive, sedentary jobs and consider working at all odd hours that may not comply with their own clocks; perhaps at a future date India will become the biggest market for clocks that would show time in different countries, so that individuals working for each country can set themselves as remote citizens of that land


4. that the cost factors in India will be favourable to continue to set up BPO businesses, that the business will move from cities to big towns (which is happening now), and from big town to small towns and from small towns to villages and villages to hamlets and from hamlets to every back woods and at a future date every Sadhu sitting in every crevice in the Himalayas will have to strap himself with a head-set and microphone on wireless net connection and perform his mandatory ablutions for being an Indian citizen; that such networking will continue being viable and businessmen will continue scouting for the last Sadhu to attend to the world


5. we will never regulate the speed in which the BPO vehicle will drive on the roads, continue to expand / build more structures to house them, nor question the employing of minors in the call centres, will relieve BPO employees from all possible regulations that will require them to stand in queues or answer anyone but their client in the other end of the world, the government will recognize (and regulate) the importance of sex trafficking in the call centres and ensure that there is a automated condom reminder to every man entering the BPO and there are pills liberally available for women to avoid complications (and this will be kept secret from the strict Catholic societies for which the centres may work); the government will go on-line on every possible service to ensure that it stays in touch with the citizens; all national holidays will be revised to ensure that every citizen of India can avail of national holidays of any country he or she is servicing and is not bound by any needless constraints that would limit their availability on the terminal or the telephone


6. that all this would happen as we continue to improve the infrastructure and all other facilities through the policies of governments with grants and loans from international funding agencies which would never cease and for which no BPO need to pay (as they would enjoy tax benefits) and the only people who will pay will be the farmers and other allied producers and manufacturers of this country who refuse to join the BPO (and thereby can be declared as AWOL) and are willing to pay the price to forego the privileges of being the BPO citizens…

Whew! Does that sounds like development?

American Resistance to Fight - A Satyagraha there too?

The following seems to be some kind of a Satyagraha movement by the Americans, it is said that 8000 people have been declared AWOL by the American Department of Defence of which 24 have openly declared as living in Canada and there could be several hundred in hiding in that country. Many of those who refused to fight the war in Iraq because they disagreed with their government (you should watch how young they are and what they say about their military operations) have decided it is better to go AWOL, to leave their all and resist arrest and forceful induction into armed force and instead escape.

Maybe Gandhi's Satyagraha would have asked them to face their government and refuse to fight in the battlefield and get shot! But, these are American youth, without the advantage of the knowledge of Gandhi or Satyagraha in their history. They have made the sacrifice of migrating to a different country, and that counts.

t r u t h o u t� - MultiMedia: "AWOL: GI War Resistance in Canada
A Report by Geoffrey Millard and Sari Gelzer

The Department of Defense has recently reported that 8,000 members of the US military are listed as AWOL. Currently 24 war resisters are known to be in Canada trying to establish citizenship, with an estimated several hundred more living there underground. Truthout's Sari Gelzer and Geoffrey Millard report from Buffalo, New York, and Fort Erie, Ontario, to bring you coverage of Peace Has No Borders, an event that brought US attention to political refugees in Canada. Geoffrey Millard interviews war resisters about their decision to refuse deployment to Iraq and seek asylum in Canada. "

Cycling to Work

i don't see what is so bad about going to work on a bicycle. Our leaders seem to think that this can only happen when there is a petrol price hike...I disagree. This contry has a few million cyclers.

There are people leaving their homes at very odd hours in the morning to ensure that our milk and news papers reach us on time, there are others vending us vegetables on the streets to ensure that we have our required subzi for lunch, other later in the day delivering post and couriers. Electricity, Telephones, even the Police. All the jobs that require a serious interaction with a large section of our population have always pedelled to their work and this ensures that they never lose touch with them.

If any Indian politician was ever serious about keeping in touch with society, people and with what happens, they would cycle to work whether in power or out of it, regardless of the price of the fossil fuel.


13th June 2006
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Accompanied by his party leaders and cadres, Naidu pedalled a bicycle from his residence on Road No 68 at Jubilee Hills to the party office at NTR Trust Bhavan in Banjara Hills. He covered a distance of 1.5 km on the bicycle - which is also the TDP's election symbol.
About 2.1 lakh trucks in Andhra Pradesh went off the roads for 2 hours from Monday midnight, responding to Transporters and Truck Operators Federation's call for a one-day token strike to protest against the fuel price hike.
Trucks transporting essential commodities were, however, exempted from the strike. In all, 11 truck unions from the state participated in the nation-wide stir.
In the state capital as well as other towns and cities, TDP and Left parties' leaders and cadres came onto the roads at 11 am to stage rasta roko for an hour.
At several places, cadres of these parties tried to stop the rail traffic by squatting on the tracks but the police and railway protection force personnel took them away. The police arrested Communist Party of India-Marxist state secretary B V Raghavulu and other CPI-M and CPI leaders for defying prohibitory orders and staging rasta roko.
http://www.rediff.com/news/2006/jun/13tdp.htm