* Yes – Outsourcing to India is becoming too much of a risk
* Maybe – It's too early to understand the implications
* No – India is still the best location for offshore IT services
The caller greeted her with a torrent of racial and sexual slurs, accused her of "roaming about naked without food and clothes" and asked, "What do you know about computers?"
The diatribe ended with the comment:"This company is just saving money by outsourcing to Third World countries like yours."
Such telephone tirades are fueled by outrage over outsourcing, which is expected to move 3.4 million U.S. service-sector jobs overseas by 2015, according to the consultancy Forrester. Most of the work comes to India, where young, low-cost employees now handle a range of American tasks -- they draw cartoons, interpret heart scans, adjudicate insurance claims, reserve flights and chase debtors.
Das, who quit the job after four months, said she learned to dislike Americans. "Rarely, there are people who are good," she said by e-mail, "but then others remind me that all they believe in is cursing, and they don't have respect for others."
Her opinion is not uncommon among many workers in India's burgeoning call-center industry.
Relations between India and the United States have grown closer in recent years. India now sends more students to American colleges than any other country.
Indians form the wealthiest and one of the fastest-growing immigrant groups in the United States. And in the last decade, American companies have increasingly sought Indian customers and employees.
Not everyone is happy about the growing ties between the two nations. An anti-outsourcing movement has drawn wide support as layoffs continue to mount at such U.S. companies as IBM, which is cutting 13,000 jobs in Europe and the United States and adding 14,000 in India, according to the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers.
In the first three months of this year, state legislators proposed 112 bills to stanch the exodus of American jobs, according to the National Foundation for American Policy.
Some opponents of outsourcing, often fired workers themselves, have rechanneled their rage at job-slashing CEOs toward India. On the Web forum Is Your Job Going Offshore? (isyourjobgoingoffshore.com/forums/) contributors variously describe India as depraved, as a haven for terrorists, a "giant leech" and a nation of "back-stabbing cowards."
It is this kind of commentary that has shaped a perception among India's customer-care workers that Americans are intolerant. "Everybody thinks like that," said Samik Chowdhury, assistant manager at an IBM office in northern India. "Every time, it's racism only."
This attitude is not typical of most urban Indians, who tend to admire the United States for its strength and entrepreneurial spirit. In a recent 16-country Pew poll, India had the highest percentage of citizens with a favorable opinion of the United States, 71 percent.
The less favorable view, though, is beginning to seep into Indian popular culture. The scripts for a new sitcom called "The Call Center," scheduled to air this winter on the leading channel NDTV, depict Westerners as arrogant, immoral and comically rude.
Even before the impact of the economic crisis could be felt on India's $11bn business process outsourcing (BPO) industry, which gets 70% of all the outsourced work from the US, it was in the grip of a crisis of its own.
Several companies, mostly smaller ones unable to maintain international standards, have shut down in Mumbai and Delhi.
[ ... ]
Mark Kobayashi-Hillary, author of a new book - Who Moved My Job - and the director of the UK National Outsourcing Association, believes there are several factors at play in India.
He says the rapid growth in other sectors in India is making different industries attractive for young graduates.
Another factor is the changing nature of the call centre industry, he says.
"The requirement for companies to answer their consumers by phone, e-mail, or IM on a 24/7 basis has never been so critical - consumers demand rapid service now and a lot of companies are recruiting locally instead of internationally."
He also said that salaries in the call centre industry had fallen.
The industry has tried hard to make it lucrative for young people by creating cool recreational facilities and improving infrastructure, but that has failed to stop them from leaving for greener pastures.
"Where's the time to use their damn gym or cafeteria or other facilities?" says Ms Pavaskar.
Some call centres have lowered their recruitment standards to solicit young people.
Several companies, faced with a paucity of graduates, are spreading their net wider by hiring under-graduates.
As a result, experts say, the standards are falling and they are losing outsourced work from the US.
Has the industry, which hopes to hit the $50bn mark by 2012, peaked?
For Blog -- COMMENTING ON SOME TERRIFIC COMMENTS
Date: 11/26/2008 3:22:59 AM Eastern Standard Time
Of course something had to happen over Thanksgiving. The activist can never blink. It's precisely when our minds are elsewhere - on the secret ingredient for stuffing - that the enemy pounces.
Thanksgiving, 2001 or 2, FEMA closed their services for Lower Manhattan residents. Over Christmas, 2002, the EPA closed its hotline for a cleanup.
In the heart of August, 2003, when everyone was at the beach not reading the newspaper, the EPA Inspector General's Report was released revealing evidence that lies were told compromising the lives or health of thousands, for the express purpose of reopening Wall Street ASAP.
The purpose of the timing was to minimize the exposure of an embarrassing event. By contrast the attacks in India seek maximum exposure. But the lesson remains: Someone needs to be on active duty at all times.
Meanwhile, I watch the various squabbles unfold on the blog and am constantly reminded that the left is notorious for self-destructing. The powerful keep their eye fixed on the goal. It is close enough that they can smell it so they focus like a dog in chase.
The left have no such prize within grasp so they claw at each other.
The terrorist attacks will not change Microsoft Research's plans in India. " We are committed to staying on in India," Natampally added.
Dell has issued a travel advisory to its staff, advising caution and due diligence when traveling to India, said a spokeswoman for the company. "That is the only measure we have taken," she added.
A large number of technology companies including Oracle, Microsoft, and Dell run large software development and call center operations in India. But ever since the threat of terrorism increased since last year, these companies have tightened on security at their facilities.
"For a long time now, we have tightened on security at all our facilities," the Dell spokeswoman said.
Indian outsourcing companies and Indian operations of multinational technology companies were not affected by the attacks, though the disruption of train service in Mumbai on Thursday could affect the movement of staff.
Over the years guests have included The Queen, the former Egyptian president Gamal Abdul Nasser and the Beatle John Lennon, to name but a few of the notable personalities to have checked in to the magnificent old wing.
More recently the hotel hosted the guests for Bombay leg of Liz Hurley's two-week extravaganza of a wedding, with guests dashing straight from the front door to waiting motor launches to take them to the privacy of waiting super-yachts in the harbour beyond.
To have pictures of burning Taj Hotel broadcast around the world will have a deeper impact than even perhaps the terrorists intended, striking a blow against a symbol of Indian wealth and progress and sending shivers down the spine of some of the richest and most powerful people on the planet.
Past experience has shown that markets have reacted only temporarily to such extraordinary events. Although some reports do not make a reference to the terrorist strikes, the event is likely to have been factored since the report includes India's Q2 GDP numbers, which were released on Friday.
Edelweiss Securities: The immediate impact of past terrorist attacks on equity markets has not been significant. The indices have shown falls of less than 0.75% in most instances with only 1 or 2 instances of a fall of over 1%. In the current instance, we do not expect anything different.
However, the general weakness in the markets may cause some downward pressure. We expect both, tighter anti-terrorist laws and more stringent security measures to come out of this; this should again be positive in the medium to long term.
Macquire Research: Terrorist attacks, communal violence and natural calamities are not unheard of in India, though the country and its people have been known to recover quickly (recall the infamous floods in 2005, that brought Mumbai to a standstill for several days).
Based on our current assessment, the negative effects of the current attacks on tourism (winter months are the peak tourist period), investor confidence, rupee and equities will probably turn out to be temporary. However, the gravity of the latest attack could potentially have two lasting negative effects.
One on foreign investment and the second on tourism, both of which will be partly a function of how strongly the government responds to the rising threat and the increased reach of terrorism.
Standard and Poor's: Based on the scenario that these attacks were an isolated case, we don't expect there would be negative implications on India's macro-economic activities, or on the government's fiscal position.
Even if the current crisis worsens, off-shoring firms are confident that their customers will not be impacted; vendors say that they can move their customers' processes to other cities within the country in a span of hours.
Most IT & BPO companies have their delivery centres in places such as Mahape, Malad and Andheri which are in the suburbs of Mumbai. This terrorist attack was largely focused on the Southern part of Mumbai. Moreover, local trains – which are considered to be the lifeline of the city - were largely unaffected by the stand off between terrorists and the security establishment. Though people were apprehensive of using public transport, employee turnout was quite high.
About 80 per cent of the employees of mid-tier company Hexaware Technologies turned up for work in the morning shift. "During the course of the day, this figure improved as employees kept coming in. Hence, none of our delivery operations were impacted," a Hexaware spokesperson
TCS offices closedThree offices of IT major Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) in South Mumbai remained closed on Thursday. "We do not provide services to clients from these three centres," a company spokesperson said. TCS has at least three more offices in Mumbai. Moreover, employees from these three offices in South Mumbai were either asked to work from home or from the company's other offices in the city, the spokesperson said.
BPO companies such as Firstsource Solutions had asked several of its employees working in the night shift to stay back for the morning shift fearing low turn out of employees. However, absenteeism was not as bad as the company expected it to be as public transport was largely functional, Firtsource's spokesperson said. Firstsource has delivery centres in Malad (Mumbai).
Since a majority of companies in Mumbai were closed, IT firms that garner a large chunk of business from the domestic markets had a fairly lean day.
"Eighty per cent of our customers were not working today. Hence, we encouraged our employees to leave home early," said Mr Atul Hemani, Managing Director, Omnitech Infosolutions.
Mark Kobayashi-Hillary, a board director at the NoA, said, "There is a period of unrest in India due to the build up to the next general election, which takes place in a few months. India is a safe place, but there has always been violence in places like Kashmir. I would think twice about travelling to India at the moment."
The attack probably has not damaged India's reputation as a destination for outsourcing.
Sridhar Vedala, the lead from Global Sourcing Practice at Equaterra, said, "While Mumbai is still tense I don't see that this [attack] will have serious impact on outsourcing in terms of business continuity, although the perception of India as a sourcing destination overall might have been affected in the longer term."
Michael C. Ruppert
(c) Copyright 2008. All Rights Reserved. Michael C. Ruppert
(Send it. Use it. But leave my name on it and don't change it. -- Especially you, Gore Vidal.)
Thanksgiving, Nov. 27,2008 – 00:30 PST – (After my last post I'd better start putting a time sig on these.)
I do not know how many other corporations are affected; but they will be many, if not most of the Dow 30 and the Fortune 500. And I can tell you that on Friday morning, any customer or client of Citigroup, Symantec or Hewlett-Packard will be unable to get customer assistance over the phone. Warranty service for these corporations will stop. I know that because I have been through that horrible grind with all of them in the last year or so. All of their calls are taken in Mumbai, by Indians. Nothing is working in Mumbai and there can be no certainty when anything will be working. Because the attacks included the premier hotels in the financial district, no multi-national will ever trust the city again. The risk is too great. I can almost bet that the multinationals are all well prepared for attacks on their own facilities, but were totally unprepared for an attack that pulled the city out from under them.
I think many corporations also have data processing and IT centers there are well.
The Achilles tendon of globalization has just been severed.
Ordinarily, I would go out and start researching to see how bad the exposure is but I already know that it is catastrophic. The markets will do all our research and reporting very quickly for us. Citigroup will be devastated. Its CEO Vikram Pandit, is Indian.
I am certain that this was the intended outcome of the attacks.
It is clear that the United States is imploding and that its economic, military and political influence are dying. As with all empires, it was the power of the state; whether economic, cultural, or military, which held the divergent parts together. In many cases enemies were bound next to enemies like two cats tied so tightly in a wet burlap sack that they could not move. But if the sack were to loosen, weaken…and expand? What if six wet cats were in the sack as it started to rend?
Our present, publicly-acknowledged cats include India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. Now throw in Russia and Chechnya… Shake and stir.
Is it sinking in how dangerous this is?
No comments:
Post a Comment