Before becoming a call centre agent, working late into the night to answer insurance claims queries from Norwich Union customers, Vinita Rawat was a post-graduate student in English literature. She believes her fondness for Robert Browning and Jane Austen has given her an invaluable insight into British society, helping her penetrate the minds of the customers she speaks to 4,000 miles away.
'I understand how things work in Britain; I know how the culture has developed. This helps me empathise with the people I'm talking to,' she said, taking a break from her night shift at the EXL call centre, in the new IT outpost of Noida, north of Delhi.
Rawat, 26, sees herself as a professional, and has a managerial position as a 'team fraud coordinator'. According to a study into conditions inside call centres conducted by a government-funded research institute, she is a prime example of an Indian 'cyber coolie' - an expensively educated, highly intelligent graduate, who is wasting her talents performing exhausting, mindlessly repetitive tasks for the call centre industry, a sector which it claims offers no career prospects for the majority of its workers.
The report has triggered an explosive response within the industry, opening an angry debate over conditions within the country's flagship service industry.
Over the past few years, India's success at winning contracts from the West has been cited as a positive face of globalisation - providing good salaries and new career opportunities in the developing world. This study alleges that behind the shiny exterior of the new business, traditional forms of labour exploitation continue.
The controversy will add spice to the already fraught debate in the United Kingdom and and the United States on the ethics of the offshoring industry. It comes in the wake of a series of setbacks for the Indian sector - ranging from scandals over theft of sensitive data to decisions by Western companies to end contracts and pull their call centre operations back home. Last week, the British bank Abbey announced that it would be bringing back 1,000 jobs to the UK.
Thought to be the first piece of independent research on labour practices in Indian call centres, the study claims that the emerging industry has developed a system for hiring 'productively docile workers', bereft of labour rights and without job security.
These agents, the researcher states, are employed under constant surveillance, in an atmosphere similar to that in '19th-century prisons or Roman slave ships'. Despite the relatively high salaries, and modern working environments, the study concludes that 'most of these youngsters are in fact burning out their formative years as "cyber coolies",' doing low-end jobs.
The true monotony of the work is disguised by 'camouflaging work as fun' - introducing cafes, popcorn booths and ping-pong tables into the offices. Meanwhile, quotas for calls or emails successfully attended to are often fixed at such a high level 'that the agent has to burn out to fulfill it', the report claims.
With employees working through the night to cater for clients in different time zones, the work requires staff 'to live as Indian by day and Westerner after sundown' and takes a 'heavy toll' on agents' physical and mental health, the study states. But more importantly, call centre work 'leads to a wastage of human resources and de-skilling of workers' which will have a high impact on Indian industry in the long-term, the report conducted by the V.V. Giri National Labour Institute, a body funded by the Labour Ministry, concludes.
Pramod Bhasin, president of the leading offshoring company, Genpact, dismissed the research, which was completed in 2004 but only brought to public attention last week, as 'hogwash'.
'It is extremely damaging to an industry that the world fetes India for. This kind of report will make people question whether India is the right place to put their operations, or whether they should be going to China or Romania,' he said, speaking in his glass box office, looking towards hundreds of employees performing back-office financial analysis for US banks.
He stressed that working conditions in call centres were far superior to those in other areas of Indian industry, pointing to the pristine offices where some of the company's 15,000 workers are based. Staff are provided with free meals, free transport, regular staff entertainment, a concierge service that will book cinema tickets for them, and an ambulance waiting at the bottom of the building if they ever be taken ill. Many of the workers at Genpact are offering very high-level services but the study distinguishes between companies providing value-added back office support, and less cerebral areas, such as telesales and customer service.
Raman Roy, the businessman credited with creating the industry when he opened an offshore service for American Express 12 years ago, dismissed the report as unscientific, based on a limited sample and politically motivated.
'These jobs are being done in America and the United Kingdom and no one describes the workers there as cyber coolies. The reality is that these companies have offered fantastic opportunities,' he said.
The timing of this report is particularly unwelcome for India, amid concerns that the industry's rapid 40 per cent growth rate could be slowing down. 'As wages in India rise and its supply of skilled workers tightens, its advantages relative to Central Europe and China could erode,' a McKinsey study of the industry published last week warned. It stresses that if India is to maintain its advantage it needs to increase the sophistication of its services rather than simply providing 'large armies of inexpensive offshore workers'.
Determined to counter the report's allegations, EXL gave rare access to one of its call centres on Friday night. Security is tight at its Noida headquarters. Workers have to fish out a ball from a small wooden box at the entrance checkpoint. If the ball is coloured they are frisked, if it is white they can pass through - but only after they have deposited their cameraphones and any kind of recording device. Data theft is a concern after employees at another company were recently accused of stealing $500,000 from Citibank customers.
In a windowless room in the basement of the building, half a dozen new employees are being tested on insurance claim scenarios. They give rote answers swiftly in clear English which has been 'neutralised' from any strong accent during a three-week voice-training programme. It is 10.45pm, and in the dark streets outside preparations are being made for Diwali, the Hindu festival of light, but EXL works to English rhythms and even training sessions are conducted according to London time.
Upstairs on the call centre floor, a telephonist apologises patiently to a customer, Maureen, calling to find out why details of a crash she had on Wednesday have not been properly logged. A team leader observes the progress of the call from the side of the room.
'Our performance is monitored, but you don't feel like Jim Carrey in The Truman Show,' Rawat said. 'I like working here. I was planning to go on to do a postgraduate degree in English literature, but it's amazingly interesting work. You think you know everything there is to know about motor insurance, and then you find out something new.'
It is not hard to find employees who are disaffected. Yamini (who asked for her surname not to be used), 20, works for HCL, a call centre elsewhere in Noida, which provides services for BT.
'The pressure is tough. There's such a volume of calls that we don't have a second to pause, and the customers are often irate because they've been waiting so long,' she said. 'The hours are regimented. If you need to go to the loo, you have to wait until your allotted break period. My parents want me to leave because they can see how my health has suffered.'
Union activists have welcomed the study. 'Employers are looking for two kinds of people. People who are completely brain dead, who accept commands and carry them out. And then they want a smaller number of believers in who will become managers and trainers,' Gautam Mody, a labour activist working to introduce call centre unions, said. 'There is no modicum of labour law in this sector. Offshoring is linked to low wages, so the question is: how can one do it cheaper and cheaper?'
Industry leaders have rejected the need for unions, although they are working on minimum standards for working conditions. Nasscom President Kiran Karnik claimed there was no demand for worker representation. 'In this industry every youngster wants to be the CEO after a year or two,' he said. 'I don't know, with that kind of mindset, they would want to join unions.' -------------------------------------------------------------- Please Note: Due to Florida's very broad public records law, most written communications to or from College employees regarding College business are public records, available to the public and media upon request. Therefore, this e-mail communication may be subject to public disclosure.