Hi all. Been a busy time. Graduated with a Masters!(Whew.. at last). Now that I have a graduate degree at hand, I am finding a lot of excuses to think about nothing in particular.(Hurray!)This morning, I found a chance to visit the Hindu online website and tune in on to what is going on TN.
Mostly this blog was inspired by a small news column and my Chinese lab mate remarked, "Your(Indian) English is far better than us. But we beat you to it soon(Overtake us)." He is right of course! He also referred deprecatingly to the two industries India seems to have made the most of : IT, and BPO. I think we are very good in terms of medicine. But..
Actually it's been a long time since I received any news from outside of my apartment in Lexington. There was a small section that talked about career enhancing skills being imparted to youths from centers faraway from the cities..(I have become so attuned to the insensitivities in speech that I cannot even use backward areas without wincing slightly!!)
It spoke about BPO, photo shop, DTP skills which are being taught and later employed. Actually considering the present scenario of jobs in India and the business that these skills generate, I am not really surprised and am happy to an extent that the government capitalizes on it. But is it what we are really headed to? Lead the BPO and Outsourcing industry?
Thinking about it, I guess I would rather by business generators than business supporters. First thing the economy takes a hit in the parent company, the outsourcing is going to be laid off. Which would be rather hard hit if we focus too much on outsourcing.
Also every one of my friends in the finance/art side of the spectrum have taken up with one of the BPOs for a job. Easy to get jobs, accent training to speak like foreigners, pomp and show that goes with the rest are I guess what is luring them. But once into the job, I feel that the bad working conditions, the stress levels due to abusive foreign clients and the not too bright chance of progress in career lead to breaking illusions and resignation.
But once into it, I guess there is no out. You are not fit for any other job that does not apply interpersonal communications! And if this industry turns out to be the biggest : Indians speak so much better English than any other non English speaking nation: lures us into it than anything else.
They do generate one of the highest revenues in the industry today(with the amount of outsourcing!!!). But it is not a stable/indispensable commodity. China is also making its foray into BPO and we better be ware. The sheer numbers and cost are against us.
If interpersonal skills are to be exploited, they could be used in world class restaurants/food/tourism development. Currently there are avenues in these three industries which IMO have been tapped to a very little extent.
English language is an asset to us. One of the few very good things left to us by the British. Unwittingly, they brought India, a land fit only to be ruled and not self- governed as they thought, to the spotlight. We have brilliant personages :" writers, poets, scientists,academicians, Nobel prize laureates opened to us by the bridge called English.
Today much of our business revolves around the word. We must capitalize on this skill to establish our own businesses and take them to the world more than to borrow only certain business sets.
It would be good for the government to realize and act upon it before the entire population is converted into three sections : 1) Old people 2)BPO personnel 3)Those lured abroad for technical skills
6 comments:
Congrats on your success..Ethula Masters ?
Ennadu idhu population a Kooru pottu maanga beddai maadiri..lol
Unmai dhan adhu
TC
CU
aah, the drought of blogs has finally ended!! :). what plans for the future ma'am?? Is it the peak of winter at your place?
When I see India, China, economy and such terms - a chain reaction occurs. Iam extremely sorry for the torture that follows :)
Your chinese friend would be badly mistaken if he confused the ability to speak english with a genuine comparative advantage India has in the services sector.
After all lets not forget that if India is becoming a services outsourcing hub today, China became a manufacturing hub some 15 years back. And thats not even on the basis of genuine competition.
Does english help the services sector. Definitely. It is one of the barriers to entry for China. But not the only one. The education system, free market, political and legal structures and above all, the way their society behaves, are all extremely high barriers to entry.
Their systems in place have been structured to support the second wave economy - i.e industry, infrastructure, manufacturing. In a large part this represents standardisation, mass production. Whereas the services sector is one of customization, variety and differentiation. That requires an entirely different makeup. India, with a democratic society promotes free think, creativity and innovation to flourish. And it shows!!! Indian entrepreneurs and local businesses far exceed chinese ones.
China is an offshore for MNC companies from US and elsewhere whereas India is creating new businesses which are increasingly competing and buying out MNC companies.
There is also another aspect to this issue. With a high manufacturing base, China is an energy intensive economy. Whereas in the long run, India with a services base would be less energy intensive. In a way, India is a resource constrained America version 2.0. So the effect of energy shocks would be lesser to India when compared to China. This is of course not the immediate conclusion. But rather a long term sustainability issue.
Furthermore, lets say China became a country of extremely fluent english speakers in say 5-10 years (which is quite optimistic). What can still happen? They would take a slice of the voice-based IT services. Which is the lowest in the outsourcing chain. By which time India would hardly be doing any voice based services. So not much of impact.
In fact, today itself, a large part of outsourcing work is fairly high end. Includes designing, analysis and other knowledge based work. IT started as an outsourcing phenomena. But today, it is more of an enabler of outsourcing of high end work in media, finance, medicine, education, law and engineering. India does produce a lot of engg. graduates to support services more than just english talking kind of work. And then there is also outsourcing of pharma manufacturing and furthermore pharma R&D. So its no longer low-tech by any means.
The IT/ BPO and now KPO sector has two sides. The people side, as you say is really sad. Its a very flat structure and chance for progress is less. A lot of people are going to face stress, depression, and food habit related problems. Family life is going to take a hit. Most likely a single parent family would prevail.
About the risks of services sector and loss of jobs. The first premise for outsourcing is cost advantage. Then skills and competencies evolve , thereby increasing the scope and depth of outsourcing. But still cost is the primary advantage. Lets say there is a slowdown of economic growth in the source country. Do you really think outsourcing will be affected? I mean, yea there will be a general backlash against outsourcing. But in an open economy, you can safely expect domestic businesses to take the primary hit of slower growth. In fact, to cut costs and stay alive, they would increasingly outsource. Its most likely that the domestic workers be the one affected.
What i think is going to happen is that maybe in 10 years or so, the services sector would turn India centric (the way u say it - hospitality, tourism, and IT-support). A middle class population of 450-500 million with average incomes even in the range 10,000-15,000 (i think this is very conservative 10 years down the line) is a huge huge business proposition. The exposure and services export happening today will help in developing firm level and individual level competencies to address the requirements of the Indian population.
Thats the good thing about India (and problematic thing for China). The government does not have to worry about economics side decision making. The market will ensure an achievable optimal growth of services (what u have referred to as hospitality, tourism and IT-support). What the government should do is focus on areas where the market fails. Use taxes to improve education, health, basic access to rural and poor, facilitate investments in infrastructure development.
I read this in some book, typically nations progress from an agrarian economy (first wave) to an industrial economy (second wave) and then to a services economy (third wave). US is an example of 3rd, African nations of 1st, China of 2nd. India is unique in the sense that these three are happening in parallel. This itself is a natural hedge against over-exposure to any particular sector.
For a large part, India will face tremendous problems and risk of collapse from socio-environmental problems rather than economic issues.
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