Why BPO Will Be The Death of India

Good article Anoop! I`ve had similar experiences with a bank in India that has outsourced its call center operations. Two of the call center executives gave me different answers to the same question leaving me totally confused. But thankfully (as you have pointed out too), I was able to escalate the matter through e-mail and solve the problem.

Ref Maasanamuthu #56

[If you`re too lazy or stupid (as in your case) to ask someone who`s in the know, search the company`s SEC filings & check their financial statements. But that would mean having to spend time elsewhere learning, while you could be grandstanding here, being a legend in your own mind, calling everyone names.]

Who is grandstanding here? Aren`t you the one kissing the Paki a$$ along with any other that shows up (such as Sonia Gandhi) so long as that butt doesn`t belong to an Indian?

[ ``Compassionate leader?`` Maybe you need to get a colleague to prescribe you prozac..]

Don`t try to drum up business for Headshrinker.

[To anyone else interested in the issues, as far as I know, there`s only a handful of high-profile indian software companies (i-flex solutions & polaris among them) that take R&D semi-seriously. The intellectual property (IP) component of indian IT industry is very, very miniscule. If Indians working for foreign companies either in india or abroad can generate a vast amount of IP so can indians working for indian companies, provided there is a budget for it.]

Yeah, let me give you an example of IP generated by the great IBM. It is a prioritization algorithm for the use of toilets on a plane, taking into account the fare basis (such as First, Business or Coach).

IBM has decided not to enforce the patent on this or demand royalties from any airline wanting to use the algorithm.

You might want to see if you could use this to prioritize your butt-kissing routine.

#53
You have a relative working at Infosys and yet you ``google`` to get your info, so you can attain instant knowledge & bash someone else. Wonderful!
If you`re too lazy or stupid (as in your case) to ask someone who`s in the know, search the company`s SEC filings & check their financial statements. But that would mean having to spend time elsewhere learning, while you could be grandstanding here, being a legend in your own mind, calling everyone names. ``Compassionate leader?`` Maybe you need to get a colleague to prescribe you prozac..
To anyone else interested in the issues, as far as I know, there`s only a handful of high-profile indian software companies (i-flex solutions & polaris among them) that take R&D semi-seriously. The intellectual property (IP) component of indian IT industry is very, very miniscule. If Indians working for foreign companies either in india or abroad can generate a vast amount of IP so can indians working for indian companies, provided there is a budget for it.

I cannot help myself linking the article with the topic and even with the caption. Would you help, Mr. Writer?

Ref Maasanamuthu #43

[I know about infosys because I know someone there who is near the top...]

Someone who serves tea to the executives, perhaps?

[At any rate, it`s true of india-based IT companies in general that they invest little in R&D. The prevalent thought is that it eats into margin and is therefore not a good idea.]

Pray tell us, what exactly is R&D in the IT industry? Are you talking about a new language along the lines of C++, C# and Java? A radically new approach to programming using a completely functional language based approach? Possibly a lambda-calculus (you don`t know what that means, do you?) derived language? Tell us how you plan to get the world to adopt this new thingie to come out of R&D?

If one cuts the crap, it is obvious that the vast majority of IT work happens to be writing SQL code to access RDBMSs, COBOL/VSAM to access legacy data and HTML code to web-enable crappy applications. Don`t glorify this by calling this``information TECHNOLOGY``. However, we at Chowk are all agog to know what you consider to be valid R&D in this area. Maybe we can then get your contacts at high-level at Infosys to impress upon Narayanamurthy the need for R&D investment.

[But the good times will not last forever and we cannot continue to live on someone else`s handouts.]

You have managed to do this until now by ripping off the scholarships and reservations for Dalits and managed to copy someone else`s resume to bolster your own. So what is your fear that the gravy train is about to come to a halt? Did you just get pink slipped by your code pimp?

Ref soysauce #43

[#42 google research, eh?
Googling seems to have rendered average people stupid and stupid people think they are smart!]

How about self-awarded titles like ``Great Intellectual``, ``Artist``, ``Father Big Man``, etc.? They seem to confer a lot of respect on otherwise worthless street thugs and lead to worship from you.

By the way, that tile ``Navalar`` - would that mean ``Tongue Wagger``?

re: Sausauce idiot`s comments
``Googling seems to have rendered average people stupid and stupid people think they are smart! ``
Now, you think you are saying something smart, which makes you stupid i guess.

You said Infosys does not do any research. Now you are saying it does not do much research. Who are you trying to fool? Now you bring a guy you claim you know in Infosys. Well, tell you what. I know the top management of Infosys. My uncle`s son is there and he knows everyone there.
``Good times won`t last for ever``.
Ha! Does it ever?
Here is an article about BPO in India. Note that it says the possiblilites are endless and the cake is huge: $ 300 billion.
Relevant passages:
1. ``Several factors pose a challenge and may work against the growth of BPO industry in India. The transaction costs of working with Indian companies are still high due to the less than optimal infrastructure in the telecommunications industry. The cultural barriers in communication between US companies and their counterparts remain. The law and order and the economic governance continue to be low and ebb.

The judicial system is strangled by backlogs and protecting patents and intellectual property rights is a nightmare. Fly-by night operations and quick income from the growth of outsourcing threaten quality of service.

Indian companies that will fit into the business model of the outsourcers have a better chance of survival. Labor productivity needs to continually increase through innovation and retraining. ``

2. ``The US economy is moving fast from information technology revolution to biotechnology revolution to nanotechnology revolution and will continue to outsource its low-end labor-intensive operations to low income countries. To capture real gains of globalization and to become world player, Indian businesses need to move away from the receiving end of outsourcing and be at the creative end, themselves outsourcing their operations to other countries. ``
Sridhar

re:#43 by soysauce
Hey, Sausauce.
What do you do if you want an info? I either go to library or now-a-days simply to the internet. Why is that so funny to you?
I guess you simply call up your ``compassionate leader`` and ``the fountain of knowledge``. Alas, i do not have such resources.
Sridhar

This BPO thing is good for India ONLY IN THE SHORT TERM. We can already see the fear it has generated in America and UK. Just as the US congress ( or is it senate ? ) banned outsourcing of all goverment contracts, all 50 states might do the same in the near future. Clearly, depending on foreign sources for economic development is not a good idea. Crying foul about protectionism is not going to help. The US politicians will do whatever they can in an election year. The bottomline here is YOU CANNOT DEPEND ON IT.

India should use this time to significantly upgrade it`s infrastructure. That not only include Roads, power, communications and water supply but also all the systems and procedures that enable the smooth flow of Goods and Services. Once these systems are in place, we can replicate the same Western example in India.

I can give an example of a ``System``. I bought a brand new 24,000 dollar car within 4 months of landing in the U.S of A. How was that possible ? Obviously my salary was not good enough to make such a purchase in 4 months... well, I had a social security number. Any potential lender can look up my SSN and find out if had the ``potential`` to pay off the money loaned to me. And the car that I bought was made by some people in a plant in kentucky. My sale employed these people. Because they were employed, they could buy stuff in their local grocery stores, Bestbuys, etc etc etc further aiding employment.

Sounds pretty simple... eh ? Obviously, until now, we have failed in implementing such simple systems and procedures. One might say that it is the duty of government to implement such things. Not necessarily...... the current buying power of the Indian middle class should be attractive enough for foreign and domestic lending institutions to implement a complete Credit system. Imagine the number of jobs this thing creates.

This is just one example of how implementing ``infrastructure development`` systems increase economic development.

The concept of economic development is pretty simple folks....i.e., trade. Meaning, I make rice, you make vegetables, and then we trade. But that can only happen if there is a nice road, which we both can easily use to get to a marketplace.

arjun_m,
Why the name calling? Why the anger? Are you what they call a code pimp? Someone who contracts at 10 - 15 bucks an hour and squeeze every bit out of your contract employees?
Which part of ``india should grab all the opportunites it can get`` went over your head?
I can understand that a code pimp like you can only think of nickel & diming for the moment, but the discussion before you arrived with the moron brigade was about what should happen not what`s happening. Go back to pak-bashing. This ain`t your cuppa.
Oh, & lay off the gujrati..

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#44 arjun_m
Commie rat? Tsk..tsk..
Too emotional, aren`t you, at the mention of low contract rates? Tata Infotech & Satyam must be eating your lunch.. Get a grip & read what i REALLY wrote.

#44 arjun_m

Come on, you surely can read. After all you read every one of Romair`s posts and quote him verbatim. Do me a favor & read my #38 to which you responded. The choice is not between $10 an hour and protesting. It`s between being satisfied with $10 an hour and working up to $100 an hour. Nobody is going to pay indian contract workers $100 an hour just yet.

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#42 google research, eh?
Googling seems to have rendered average people stupid and stupid people think they are smart!
I did say we should grab all the opportunity we can get. But as wages rise, unless we have long term plans, we can be sure the wages will start to go down again. See if you can figure that out with google..
I know about infosys because I know someone there who is near the top...At any rate, it`s true of india-based IT companies in general that they invest little in R&D. The prevalent thought is that it eats into margin and is therefore not a good idea. But the good times will not last forever and we cannot continue to live on someone else`s handouts.

re: BPO
Indian talent seems to be not just vast but cheap as well. It is not as if this was not the case before. As Rajeev Srinivasan pointed out in his recent article (in rediff) US was able to leverage in the past (before IT boom) by allowing flight of capital (to its advantage) but preventing mobility of manpower. With advent of Internet, distance is not as issue anymore and MNCs are tapping into the vast pool of talent available in India without having to bring them to USA. This talent is cheap and competetive. This is clearly advantageous to the MNCs.
BPO is a multibillion dollar industry in which everyone can have a piece of cake but India`s share will continue to be high simply because of vast talent pool of English educated middle class. Russia, Phillipines can have their piece of cake too but it will not be as large as India`s simply because their talent pool is not as large.

Soysauce is foolish to think that $15-20/h will not make a difference. 15-20$ per hour is a lot of money in India. Who is soysauce kidding? Besides, close to 60% of Indians are below 25 years of age. Majority of people going to jobs related to BPO are in this age group. They want to spend the money and enjoy life. Inturn, they create an unprecedented consumer demand for all kind of items. Such a demand is good for the industry (especially consumer industry) and indirectly boosts the economy.
Sridhar
P.S: i did a quick google search and found that Infosys is involved very much in research and actually has started a fellowship program. I suggest Soysauce do some research himself before he comes up with outrageous statements.

Ref arjun_m #39

[Those 10$/hr jobs are more likely to make India rich than marching in the WSF meet or the latest commie/socialist lovefest.]

This brain-dead idiot belongs to the Nehru School of Socialism/Karunanidhi School of Thievery which says that it is okay for a few people to get rich but the vast majority of people should be poor so that they can be exploited by the rich.

#39
Is that the choice?

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#35 Layman
If knowledge is just another commodity, then you`d be right.
I think india should grab as many chances as it can get. But people like Bidwai who are derided by the learned folks here do an invaluable service by making us think. Let`s not be complacent and think that these $10 - $15/hour contract jobs are going to make us rich. As the standard and cost of living rise, India will become unaffordable. The only kinds of jobs that will stay are the ones with a high barrier to entry where we compete not (just) on cost but on quality & innovation. Companies like infosys are very short sighted. They spend exactly zilch on R&D. When the cost advantage goes, infosys will see its revenues shrink. Microsoft allocates like 5 billion dollars a year to research. It`s an astronomical figure considering that it`s the same as the budget of the National Science Foundation that funds almost all of physics, math, chemistry, geology, materials & engineering research in the entire american higher education system!

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Harimau @29:
I know of a large architecting company (the kind that builds buildings) in the US that is outsourcing some of the architecture design work to an architect company in India. They say it is cheap and the quality of work is amazingly high - the city authorities approve of the plans immediately, whereas earlier the company was asked to correct errors and re-submit.
I see a lot of potential for `brain-work` to be outsourced to India - anything that does not require customer interaction. But I feel call-centres will fail, especially ones that have to deal with customers (as opposed to the internal help desk of a global firm), due to accent and culture factors. You cannot expect all Americans to understand (the various) Indian accents, especially when they are calling up about a problem...

soysauce @24:
You are absolutely right - the barriers are low for call-centre work and it can easily move from India to another country. I have had some exposure to the deal-making and believe me, the only factor is the price that the Indian call centre company is charging.
In fact, I think all outsourcing, including that of software outsourcing, is liable to move to another country. The software talent pool in India is drying up fast, due to a lot of American firms setting up their own captive units in India and mopping up all the good talent. Increasing salaries, falling rates and a weak dollar - all mean that software outsourcing is becoming less profitable. More than China, it is Phillipines and Russia that I am worried about as competition to India. The Filipinos are cheap and the Russians are damn good at technology, better than Indians in fact. I only hope the Pakis, Bangladeshis and Africans do not get their act together, otherwise, they will kill us on price.

Looking at it another way, isnt all export based on price? If someone provides the same quality of rice or oil or another commodity at a cheaper price, the importing country will buy from the cheaper source. Since ITO and BPO are really service exports, why should they be any different?

To the author:
Anoop, your experience was with an Indian firm`s in-house call centre. Would Indian call centres serving US clients have higher standards? Or better procedures? If so, you might not extend your experience with an Indian company to that of the BPO industry.

Cherry:

Call centre jobs typically do not allow much value addition, unless you get into business development or operational management. In terms of choice, you have not really mentioned what your options are at the software development house. In case that is a more technical position you are looking at, then the potential is more there.

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alright im terribly confused!
im still trying to understand if working in a call center would help me or not.
one place i read a line which went something like ``call centers will jump start Pakistan`s IT sector`` and then i read loads of bad stuff about it, including this article which i chanced to see today.

i was offered a job with a call center (touchstone comm.) on the basis of my being ``intelligent``, although i suspect it was coz of my angraizi. i was actually dropping off my resumes at various software houses and chanced upon this place. an informal chat in a friendly setting wid the ppl clinched the matter.

im actually considering leaving the software house im working in to work for them. :/
i will be working with their IT team on some database project and also on networking. im enticed mainly coz of their pay package (13,000 is pretty good for a graduate jiska result bhi nahin nikla abhi. dont u think?)

some ppl said that they will eventually have me answering calls which is silly, since i`ll be with the IT team. but then therez the funny requirement of my having to learn an accent. i actually consider it a subservient attitude n urs truly aint parting with her native accent. no siree!

but im getting double minded now. kiya karoon?

What the folks in US and Europe don`t understand is that the companies save not just by hiring cheaper labor in India. Unpaid bills as low as $20 or $10 can be cost-effectively collected by a call center in India whereas with the prevailing wages of #12/hour in the US for call center jobs, the bill would just be written off. Companies are able to collect money owed them more effectively becausae of overseas call centers.

Anoop, Prafool Bidwai, Arundhathi Roy and others should ask themselves: is it preferable for an Indian to be unemployed than sit in front of a computer and go through mindless repetitions of prepared scripts for a salary of some Rs. 8000 a month? They may prefer the former because then they would have a mob ready to chant ``Long Live Chairman Mao`` but I think the call center employees themselves don`t mind their jobs as much as these people make out.

After all, assembling automobiles in an assembly line where management speeds up the line to increase production isn`t any less mind-numbing than answering phone calls. It is a tough job but someone has got to do it.

I understand Commerzbank of Germany has outsourced mortgage processing to India. They are paying $150 to process each mortgage to the Indian BPO provider. An Indian credit analyst is able to process two mortgage applications in an 8-hour day earning the company #37.50 an hour. That is a rate that Infosys/Wipro/TCS/Satyam would kill for for offshore programming work.

Thanks all for your comments. In my note to the chowk editors with this piece, I described it as ``satire gone sour``. I think all the visceral reactions have been to the sourness, which is as it should be. hamidm, harimau, stuka: your points are duly noted.

Urstruly, BPO is business process outsourcing. Call center is a small but visible part of this phenomenon. It works on the principle that jobs need to go where they are cheapest to carry out. But of course you know that.

PS>> My line was restored miraculously after the 6th call to the helpline. Maybe they decided they`d had enough fun with me, maybe someone read this piece. Whatever the reason, all`s right with the world again.

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What in God`s good name is a BPO. I hate this writer for making me read first two paragraphs without telling me what this tripe is all about.

Call centers as such can only be a stop gap phenomenon. Ones that offer customer service & sales stuff can easily be shifted to another country where it could be run more cheaply. Praful Bidwai is correct in cautioning against a misguided sense of euphoria that call centers somehow represent progress. It simply is not sustainable.
The ones that specialize in technical support have a somewhat taller barrier to entry and these jobs may not leave as suddenly altho Dell showed otherwise. I have spoken with HP and Intuit customer support in gorgaon and chennai respectively. These people knew what they were talking about. The intuit people were especially impressive since they had to deal with both accounting and software issues.
Nevertheless, the reason these jobs go to india is cost saving and that will not last long..

Anoop Bhat,

Please stop this kind of illiterate talk. It is really, really stupid and should be reserved for fanatics like Arundhati Roy and PraFOOL Bidwai.

If you apply your commonsense you will come to the following understanding: jobs that require deep knowledge of US culture will shift back to US and the near-US. Going forward, there will be fewer jobs in which indians have to be pretend to be americans.

Indians are not being forced to take these jobs, it is going to help develop the idea of information sharing and communication skills in general. Young kids will take these jobs for a few years and then move on to other types of positions. Indian businesses will get deep experience with this type of technology and be able to apply it to India, SE-Asia, Middle-East. And yes, if a few of the kids who were ``americanized`` present themselves as skilled in selling to americans. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ThAT? Isn`t sales and marketing a key function in any developed economy? Isn`t the US market one of the biggest in the world.

Sometimes I worry that the biggest problem in india are the pretensions of the indian elite class. Thank god for the disruptive internet technology. It is forcing these self-appointed custodians of indian culture and economy to face new realities.

hahahaha... this is a hilarious account of customer ordeal. We have a certain ``Maybelink`` in Pakistan. But they are leagues ahead: never would anyone from their call/ service center carry out such a half-brained service. Maybelinks` greater solution is NOT have any Kumar/ Zafar pick the help line at all. The end of that.

Once we logged a complain with the PK telecom authorities, and received an explanation from Maybelink via PTA: it said, ``for further information, please dial helpline.``

---

I love Scaretel`s new ads though, and Maybelink`s marketers are great too!

Another (related) viewpoint . . . courtesy Varun Arya:-

````In the wake of the recent repeated instances of MHRD onslaught on IIMs & IITs, it may be pertinent to refer to the latest (24-30 January 2004) issue of The Economist which has the cover title ``Pay or Decay : The University Crisis`` the substance of which (page 11) is that if the universities are to be truly free and sustainable, most students will have to pay the required high fees. There is another major write up in the same issue on pages 23-25, the essence of which is ``All around the world, when universities depend on taxpayers (read `government`), their independence and standards suffer.`` These write ups also make another crucial point - the educational institutions should have the right to choose the intake.

One of the major arguments behind MHRD onslaught on IITs & IIMs has been that these are elitist institutions and the entire hypothesis behind its various moves is that those from poor background are unable to get into these institutions because of their high fees. Unfortunately for MHRD, this is just not true and is not based on facts.

As someone has rightly said recently, in the history of IITs and IIMs, there has not been even a single student who was selected for admission in these institutions but could not study because of want of finances.

I myself came from an extremely poor family, where in my childhood it was often that my family did not have even one meal a day. However, I could study at IIT Delhi because I got a merit scholarship from NCERT. At IIM Ahmedabad, I took a loan from State Bank of India and paid it back with interest within three years.

I am convinced that whatever I am today (I have worked in senior positions with leading companies like Indian Rayon, Reliance and American multinational DuPont) and whatever I have achieved has been entirely possible because of my education at IIT Delhi and IIM Ahmedabad. And there are many many more cases like mine.

In fact I am of firm belief that the reservations of all kinds existing for so long and continuing endlessly should also be done away with since these lead to avoidable complacency and undermining of people, positions and purpose. All those who have the merit but not the means can always get scholarships and educational loans, which are now more easily available specially for IITs & IIMs.

In the ongoing onslaught on IITs & IIMs, unless stopped and various retrograde steps reversed, everyone is going to be a loser including the government and the nation.

Thanks and best regards

Varun Arya
Alumnus of IIT Delhi (1976-81) & IIM Ahmedabad (1981-83)
Formerly President, IIT Delhi Alumni Association &
Secretary, IIM Ahmedabad Alumni Association

---

````

Point I am making here is that the BPO evolution in India is also bringing a world-citizen kind of exposure to a wider range of young people, especially to women from all strats of society. Why deny them this, and why can`t we live with some of the glitches and gremlins along the way? The cost we pay as individual consumers for an attempt as a country to bring some amount of economic and social emancipation to a wider spread is justified.

Hamidm:

Man, a few years back I was at my uncles place in Morthwest Indiana. The phone rang, I picked up and there was a lady from AT&T wanting to know if we would switch. Since it wasn`t my house I just decided to play the fool by saying ``me no speaka ingliss...`` she immediately switched to Hindi and asked if I spoke that. I was floored. Hurriedly hung up, but it was a revelation.


Pankaj: That Gadha Bidwai must me stripped nakes, made to sit on a donkey, garlanded with shoes and onions and made to parade around every university in India where students are graduating from.

.......... there seems to be a new twist in this call center business ............ just last week i recieived two marketing calls from some call center in karachi - one for long distance phone service, and the other for mortgage refinancing ............ they start out by saying, `` assalaam o alaikum, mera nam zafar hai `` and end up with familiar small talk .......... in the traditional business sense this might be a little unprofessional and hokey, but who knows, it might work ........ i ended up buying the long distance service because the poor guy sounded so hungry and desperate!

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What a nonsense. I read similar article by Praful Bidwai earlier on some other website. Looks like the author doesn`t have any idea about the number of graduates that india churns out every year. The call centers are employing only miniscule percentage of people, still leaving hundreds of thousands people without any jobs. It is better to have some kind of job than not having one.
Just because there are call center jobs, students are not going to change their ambitions/goals.Their goals will still be to become an engineer, doctor , lawyer or chartered account etc. These call center jobs will provide a decent jobs to people who doesn`t have oppertunities to achieve their goals. Remember India a is a country of 1 Billion people. Any kind of job created will definitely help a family.

arjun,

..... you are right, call centers are not BPO............ high end business processes like accounting and product design are also moving offshore ........ but there is still a place for the lowly call center ......... let`s not turn up our noses at these jobs that a lot of people would kill for .............

Stuka

This might be an attempt at satire but Marxist backlash against growing prosperity in India is a very real thing. For instance, what is your opinion about this piece of reporting in BBC that quotes our great Marxist thinker Mr. Bidwai copiously -

Call centers `bad for India`
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/3292619.stm

Pankaj: Nahi yaar, this was pure satire. And when was the last time you saw a comrade with a sense of humor?? :)

Stuka

You may consider adding the name of this `illustrious`` author to the list of Marxist notewothies such as Arundhati Roy, Angana Chatterji, Sitaram Yechuri, H.K. Surjit, Prafool Bidwai etc. Next the author is likely to educate us how outsourcing is a neo-imperialist gesture to suppress proletarian forces and what harm our IT cos like Infosys and Wipro are doing to the class struggle of proletariots led by worthies like him against bourgeoisie. Bombastic as it may sound, these Marxists are full of it...

Stuka

You may consider adding the name of this `illustrious`` author to the list of Marxist notewothies such as Arundhati Roy, Angana Chatterji, Sitaram Yechuri, H.K. Surjit, Prafool Bidwai etc. Next the author is likely to educate us how outsourcing is a neo-imperialist gesture to suppress proletarian forces and what harm our IT cos like Infosys and Wipro are doing to the class struggle of proletariots led by worthies like him against bourgeoisie. Bombastic as it may sound, these Marxists are full of it...

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harimau,

You have touched on an old debate, why didnt the indian govt add any new lines. Well the cities were already connected by the british, or rather the cities grew around the rail lines. So the only thing the poor inidan govt could do was to electrify and double the lines. This increases the trafic.
One may have to make a disitinction in this case, not lines to new destinations, but doub;ling and electrification of the lines should be the comparable statistics on indian rail development since the brits left.

``Even if they are well-intentioned, these young “executives” are usually clueless. Most are just making easy pocket money on their way to a “real” job anyway. They work during hours when they should rightfully be asleep. BPO employment is little more than glorified casual labour career prospects are limited, the pay is so-so and worst of all, it’s a fairly commoditised market- all it needs is a little accent training and basic computer literacy. ``

Beware, the Marxists are coming, the Marxists are coming. What problem do these wretched Marxists have if people work when they should be ``rightfully asleep``. What grouse do they have against those hapless graduates who decide to make a little fortune for themselves by faking midwest accent. Is the author envious that they are gainfully employed and will no longer listen to his sanctimonious unionist claptrap. These despicable Marxists want people to remain hungry and unemployed so that they can gleefully fill their minds with commie rubbish towards the path of ``proletariot revolution``, the dream of Marxists to seize totalitarian power for a select few politbureau members.

Okay, Mr. Anoop, so the job doesn`t offer ``creativity``. Pray, how many jobs in India do offer room for ``creativity``. Surely the glamorous jobs the millions of clerks in government offices do offer ample room to display their ``creative`` faculties. What rubbish! Nobody forced anyone to take up a job in call center, take it or leave it.

Yes, Mr Anoop, BPOs will sound the death of your India, the socialist, hungry, unemployed and timid India and mark the rise of new India - capitalist, prosperous and assertive India, that we aspire to.

Harimau,

For everyone like you with bad experience there are hundreds with good experience.

Though I agree the call center business is being trashed unnecessarily here.

Anoop, what you have experienced is the customer service for the local offices of airtel. You can not extend your experience to the call center industry that caters to the US and UK markets.

Let me tell you my Scaretel story,

Scaretel ran a promo a month or so ago wherein you would get 500 minutes of talk time instead of their regular 375 minutes if you bought their Rs. 540 post-paid card and activated it by the 5th of the month. I bought the card on the 5th and tried to activate it but they had system problems and it couldn`t be done. I tried 3 or 4 times more on the 5th and the 6th unsuccessfully so I gave up since I had other things to do. Surely they would realize that it was their problem and give me the promised extra minutes when their system came up.

Well, to cut a long story short, after I activated the card on the 7th and found that the extra minutes weren`t credited to me, I called their Customer Support. The minion who took my call said that the system had been up and running on the 6th and they had extended their offer by a day and I didn`t take advantage of it so ``nyaak, nyaak``. Of course, the manager that I asked to talk to wasn`t conveniently avalable and my protestations that it was not my fault that their system was down and I had better things to do than keep checking whether it was working fell on deaf years.

I finally told him that if he didn`t give me the extra minutes, I would take not only my account but also that of my wife`s which ran into thousands of rupees a month and switch to their competitor so the ball was in his court and hung up.

By the evening the minutes were credited to my account. What a difference a little competition makes!

Call centers are going to be the big outsourcing wave. Probably the best business to outsource. Pay someone $14 in the USA or $2 in India or Pakistan or elsewhere. It`s no contest.

I think the following company in Lahore may do well. www.resgrp.com. They certainly have a very qualified (and very Pakistani) executive team........

.............. this is utter nonsense ............ i have found indian call center folks to be a lot more professional, knowledgeable and helpful than some yahoo down in texas - and, on top of that, they speak better english too !............ the other day i spent an hour on the phone with the guy at microsoft in delhi - no complaints, kumar really knew what he was doing .............

..........and these are not dead-end jobs either .............. it is a great entry level job for someone who was lucky enough to go to good schools where he/she learned to speak english but ended up with a useless liberal arts degree.............. twelve thousand a month is not bad for someone who majored in sociology - it is better than pulling a rickshaw .........

......... i wish there were more call centers in pakistan where our young people could earn an honest living instead of blowing themselves up or watching the traffic on gt road ................

Anoop:

U should have used the real name of the company.

And do send this as a letter to the local newspapers.

``LaatouN key bhoot, baatouN sey naheiN maantey.``

Goodluck,

Karim

[For 50 years we did the right thing. Invested in top-notch universities, created a huge talent pool of professionals. Built rockets, missiles, even a nuclear weapon or two. Won wars. Clung on to democracy. Built the largest railway in the world. Nurtured IT powerhouses. Spawned corporate leaders who featured in Top 25 lists worldwide.]

I think you need to dig up a few facts before you write crap like ``Built the largest railway in the world.``

You need to tell us what was the total route mileage on Aug 14, 1947 and what it is now before you start claiming credit for the railway network of India.

The rail network in India was built by British companies with British capital, British steel, British locomotives, British carriages and Indian coolies.

I remember reading about a spur line being built somewhere in Karnataka. The entire 39 mile route was going to be completed in about 5 years.

For your information, when the Yanks built the transcontinental railroad, the Union Pacific was laying 13 miles of rails every day. That was when they had to haul the steel rails and lumber (for sleepers) from the factories and forests of the East, ship it along the coast to New Orleans and then up the Mississippi river all the way to Council Bluffs, Iowa and then send it to the site by the newly laid tracks.

As to the ``largest railway``, except in terms of inefficient manpower I don`t think it is large in any sense. From the CIA Factbook (I recommend this on-line resource to all Indians who have the strange urge to thump their chests periodically), here is the total rail transportation network of various countries:

India 65,000km
China 71,600
Russia 87,000 km
US 194,700 km

As to your IT powerhouses, after dealing with Indian jerk-offs for about 10 months, I am signing up Russian programmers on the web for a project. They are cheap and they are GOOD. Your average Indian programmer is only thinking why he should work on a project in India when it is his God-given right to get a H1-B visa to the US because of his 4 years of training at regurgitation at some local engineering college. By the way, these idiots (one was a BS in Computer Science another in Electrical Engineering) hadn`t heard of regular expressions and didn`t know how to prepare a state transition diagram.

On the other hand, I dealt with Dell`s call center in Hyderabad about 6 months back. They identified my problem as the Blaster virus, sent me detailed instructions and the virus scanner and made sure that my computer was back to normal.

Give me the honest toiler anyday than your frikking smug IIT grad. Or the IIM grad who can spout the latest jargon and give better BJs than Monica Lewinsky in his attempt to please the boss.

Good article, Anoop. Enjoyed it.

But I could not figure out the connection to the title.