Ashish’s World!

I took a break from blogging the last few days and enjoyed the festival week in India. It was a good Diwali this time - I hope my relatives in and around Delhi should not have much to complain now that I paid a visit to them a few number of times over the last week. Let me start with wishing everybody a very Happy Diwali, Eid, Vishwakarma Pooja and Bhai Dooj - from Tekriti and me. I was still in the city, going to office for a few hours daily but was pretty much in the relaxing mood - only to come back with a greater energy on Monday when we are at full strength.

I got a lot of time to think and talk about things other than those directly related to Tekriti in these days. I will write about all that in the coming days but something that has got my attention is the recent bashing of BPO industry in India. Actually, let me clarify - the bashing is not for the BPO industry as such but for the effects that it has on the employees of these companies. This has got even more attention because of the recent release of the book “One night@the call center” by Chetan Bhagat whose last book “Five point someone” about 4 IIT grads became very famous.

I haven’t interacted a lot with anybody working in a call center but overall, from what I know, I think a lot of people treat these jobs as temporary jobs. These jobs are not treated as the jobs-to-retire-on by a large proportion of the call center work-force but something which is good for earning some decent salary while one is still young and is in the process of deciding what will they want to do eventually. Let me present my case on why I think the positives outweigh the negatives:

Positives:

• Employment to the youth: I am sure this has helped bringing down the unemployment rate and frustration amongst the graduating students who used to have horrible time looking for a job if they didn’t study the traditional courses.
• Positive contribution to the Indian economy and help increase foreign currency reserves: It’s a no-brainer to figure out how good are the BPO industries to the Indian economy. I won’t even talk about any details here, for the fear of repeating what others have told many times.
• Increase the spending power of a lot of Indians by virtue of providing sufficient cash to the youth who are willing to spend: If something has changed a lot in the last 10 years - it is the spending power of us Indians. That is a cause that many foreign brands are coming to Indian market and are targeting the youth of India while doing their marketing / advertisement campaigns. I don’t really have to travel to the US or outside India to get things which were traditionally available only in those places. And, even, the prices are becoming more and more attractive.

Negatives:

• Not the ideal working environment: Of course, it is not ideal working environment when people have to work night-shifts but then this is not something really new. Industrial sector is another example where this is practiced.
• Killing people’s creativity and not letting them realize their potential: I will agree with it to a large extent. Since it is substantially easier to get these jobs rather than slogging out and trying to do something different, a lot of people actually go for these jobs. Don’t we all know that “Necessity is the mother of invention”. Now, there is a case when somebody capable of doing more is not able to do that because they are doing something which was easier to get but doesn’t utilize their full potential / capabilities.

I wouldn’t have been so thoughtful about this but, then, we have 2 sufficiently large BPO companies in our building and I always see them hanging out together and having a nice time by the coffee shop - and it’s difficult not to think about them - particularly when the average beauty is on the higher side than the usual crowd that I get to witness.

So, in the light of all the positives and negatives that I talked about above, I don’t really see a problem with people working for BPOs. I almost feel like comparing a BPO job with a job in the US where people are working in a store like Safeway / Fred Meyer / Wal-mart (though I think that it requires more skill to work in a BPO than Safeway). Can’t we apply the same logic for those jobs too? So - why is there so much of a hue and cry or am I totally missing a point here?