If you have tried calling your bank recently, you may have spoken to Nancy (also called Neeti) or been politely served by Jean (otherwise known as Gunjan). These English-speaking Delhi graduates are among thousands working in the booming Indian call-centre industry. In order to sound more European, they have been encouraged to adopt western names.
The documentary film Diverted to Delhi, by Australian producer Greg Stitt, follows the journey of four of these call-centre trainees at North Star Call Centre College. Two men and two women, all university graduates, undertake the gruelling task of perfecting their pronunciation and learning about western culture until they can pass themselves off as British, American or Australian, as the demands of their impending call-centre jobs require.
Angela Saini reported for openDemocracy from the 2004 European Social Forum in London; see Islam was for me more punk than punk: Aki Nawaz interviewed (October 2004)
The story has increasing pertinence. 30% of Indian graduates fail to find employment. The phenomenal rise in call centres is therefore providing unprecedented opportunities for many young people. And since these plum multinational jobs often include free travel and meals, there is every incentive to be recruited.
For western firms such as GE Capital and British Airways, the prospect of hiring highly-educated workers to do what in their own countries would only be done by the least educated, and to conduct this entire operation at a lower cost, is becoming increasingly irresistible. Call-centre growth stands at 30-40% per year, and revenue is expected to exceed $17 billion by 2008.
But there are cultural barriers to working in a call centre. Although English has been widely adopted by Indias educated elite, especially those who have been educated abroad, the Hindi-English combination spoken in India, known as Hinglish, is a dialect in itself. The call-centre trainees, however, overcome these obstacles with dedicated effort. More difficult than tongue-twisting their way around English consonants, however, the trainees have to master the intricacies of western culture, be it the finer points of baseball or the Australian love of beer.
There is some understandable patriotic dissent among the ranks of North Star College at the prospect of having to sound American while living in India, but this doesnt last long. Unemployment is a remarkable motivator. Sitting outside on the lawn after class, the students quickly reverted to sharing jokes in Hindi. Nancy and Jean once more became Neeti and Gunjan.
As the daughter of Indian immigrants to England, their lives seemed startlingly parallel to my own. I was given an English name by my parents, and have been culturally immersed into British life. My regret, shared by many Indian immigrants, is the cultural chasm that eventually develops between my country of origin and my country of residence. For these call-centre workers, there is no such dilemma. Enjoying a pizza after their studies, it seemed that these Indian graduates had attained a life that their Indian immigrant predecessors would have envied - the best of both worlds.
This is a revolution that owes much of its existence to globalisation. Exponential improvements in international telecommunications and ease of travel have allowed companies to easily relocate across continents. Even the financial news service, Reuters, has shifted part of its editorial team to Bangalore.
In short, outsourcing is a win-win situation. Monotonous though the work may be, call centres do not employ the sweatshop labour tactics deplored by many activists. The phenomenon lowers unemployment in the developing world, brings foreign direct investment, and financially benefits the companies who utilise the practice. You may have thought that call centres would be hailed as the first step in a solution to global economic injustice.
But if you went to Delhi today youd be hard-pressed to find a call centre anywhere. They are not signposted for fear of drawing attention to themselves. Some call centres, the documentary noted, retain the old shop signs of the premises they now occupy.
The reason is that workers in the west are outraged at the prospect of their jobs going overseas. This despite the fact, said another interviewee, that the qualifications of the Indian employees are much higher. Companies are shamefully reluctant to admit they even have call centres overseas. A commercial for one of the major United Kingdom banks, currently airing on British television, goes so far as to explicitly state that it will keep all call-centre jobs in the UK.
Outsourcing has become the swearword of the 2004 American election campaign, proclaimed the Times of India recently. Both candidates have taken turns in accusing the other of outsourcing jobs. We value an America that exports products, not jobs - and we believe American workers should never have to subsidize the loss of their own job, John Kerry commented on the campaign trail recently. The Indian finance minister Shri P Chidambaram has denounced US and UK fears over outsourcing as western protectionism.
While the campaign against unfair trade laws and sweatshops has its vocal champions, outsourcing has managed to find support only among the developing worlds governments and multinationals. Trade unions, paradoxically given their supposed solidarity with the global workers movement, are often the first to complain when a company announces that it is sending its calls abroad.
In Britain, the trade unions Usdaw (Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers) and Amicus (Manufacturing, Technical and Skilled Workers Union), representing a total of over 1.5 million people, have been at the forefront of the criticism. Amicus recently launched a campaign against the British financial services group Friends Provident to stop it from offshoring UK jobs.
The failure of the political left to respond to the success of outsourcing was epitomised at the 2004 European Social Forum in London, where Diverted to Delhi was screened. European delegates in the half-empty cinema giggled when one trainee tried unsuccessfully to say vision (in Hindi, the v is often pronounced w), and it was easy to feel irritated by the hypocrisy. Just outside, after all, hundreds of Babels language interpreters were desperately busy compensating for the delegates failure to speak other languages. It came as little surprise that among the many illuminating debates at the third ESF, there were none extolling the virtues of outsourcing.
It seems that the entire political spectrum in the west has finally found a cause it is united against - outsourcing. What this will mean for the future of call centres is uncertain, but for now the future is bright for trainees at North Star College, Two out of the four profiled in the film (incidentally, both women) went straight into jobs. They may be at the other end of the line of your bank or insurance company today. If you do call, ask them about baseball - they probably know more than you do.
Also in openDemocracy, comment and analysis from the third European Social Forum in London from 15-17 October 2004:
- Susan George, Another world is possible, if (13 October 2004)
- Paul Kingsnorth, A shaft of light at the European Social Forum (18 October 2004)
- Paul Kingsnorth, The European Social Forum: time to get serious (21 October 2004)
- Massoud Romdhani, Islam and politics dont mix (October 2004)
