A call on behalf of Call Centres.......

Why does it take a Shilpa Shetty for a Whole Nation to sit up and take notice for something as serious as Racial Discrimination....Well Discrimination in any form is a highly undesirable phenomenon and should be discouraged. In this case I am surprised at the reactions of the Indian Media and everyone else.....

In fact the fact that we are crying "Foul" over others calling us " brown" etc is really funny- given the fact that our society itself places high premium on fair skinned people and calls them " beautiful" just by the virtue of them being fair.
Also our society is divided in many frgaments on the basis of castes, communities etc...and there is a prvilent norm of people being considered " high" and " low" based on their castes....etc....
But we will come to that later- maybe in a different post.

This time I am more concerned about Racial Discrimination against Indians and more importantly our take on it...

Consider this- A celebrity who is being paid in crores to appear in a reality show goes and puts her foot in her mouth by calling herself Angeline Jolie of Asia etc and also trying to prove herself as more elite than the rest of the showmembers and ends up being targetted -She gets to hear things which are considered unacceptable in the Racial Discrimnation Dictionary. The entire nation, media and even the Govts of the two countries go into a frenzy denouncing the whole thing. The Sponsors of the programme withdraw their support, public sympathy pours in -and finally Shilpa ends up winning the show and bagging many laurels and movie and brand endorsement offers along with a couple of more crores- And the perpetretors of the hate culture in the show came under a lot of flak and fire- I would call it as Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish....Nice Very Nice- Never seen such a apt and quick poetic justice to unfair treatment....

But my question to the Media, to the People of India is - Why Shilpa? Why only Shilpa?? Is she the only one going through such trauma ? Do they know- Are they aware that there are millions of Indians who face abusive language, rude behaviour, hear derisive language in their own country from millions of people all over the World- just for doing their jobs- and these people are based in India- At Bangalore, At Gurgaon- they are young people who do not have a professional degree to be able to bag a higher end job, they belong to different parts of the countries , they are people who have left their homes to earn some money and make a career. They are people who work in the BPO-ITES Industry, some of them have backend data processiing jobs and others take up calls for customers for clients based in USA, UK and the rest of the world.
Their jobs are not easy- they have to work at nights, at odd hours, they have to forsake public holidays and festivals so that they can align to the customers in the other countries, they have to forsake their sundays, their social lives and sometimes even their dignity....Cos their jobs have been outsourced...... Their customers view them as outsiders who have taken away their jobs....and frequently vent their anger on these hapless employees who have no choice but to take it and keep quite- That is considered "professionalism"....
I have been associated with a Call Centre as a HR manager for 6 months - and 6 months was all I could bear - for it was frustating for me to be unable to help this people from their daily trauma of hearing things like: "u indian filth", "u dirty pig", " do u guys worship cows... for us they r beef", how much will u charge for sleeping with me" - the list is endless..........

There was a woman who used to leave her 6 month old baby with her cousin and come to work at night because she needed the money.
There was a lady whose husband had died in the Kargil War and the govt compensation was not enough.
There was a 20 year old boy from a remote poverty striken part of Orissa- who had big dreams .
There was a handicapped boy who was not able to get employment in any other area......

I have spent some sleepless nights thinking of their traumatised sad tales and my and the authorities inabilites to help them out- True we arranged for professional counselling, true we arranged for stress busters on the floor, improved the incentive plans and even put forth a complaint to the Client- But we all knew that this will not stop- because the Calls meant Revenues-Period....

And yes this is true for most Call Centres- after some time the employees get de-sensitized to everything, all slurs and move on with life...

Meanwhile let us take a look at how the Media behaves with this Industry-

There are frequent articles in leading national dailies describing Call Centres are breeding grounds of sleaze, drugs, indecent behaviour - the list goes on.....

Call centre employees are represented as young people earning lots of money early and consequently going astray and getting involved in alchoholism, substance abuse, late night binges and sexcapades. They are portayed as people of lose morals , people who are thieves , people who cant be trusted etc etc- they face problems in getting accomodation and many such services.

Recently there was a case in Delhi- a call centre employee was brutally raped in dhaula kuan- reactions to that incident have been like the following-

#What was she doing out of her house in the middle of the night

#Call centre gals are anyways used to sleeping around- Big deal

#She must have been drunk......

I wonder- even if all of the above is true -does it justify Rape?? Would the reaction have been same had the victim been a housewife with 3 kids??


At the end of the day- this industry generates millions of jobs for people who might have been umemployed or underemployed otherwise.

Attention Media- Can we have a matured outlook and view and not taint an entire industry just for the sake of sensational news reporting?

Just adding a biblical context- the lord said " he who hath not sinned cast the first stone".....Get the drift??

Do a dipstick of other industries and see if instances of alchoholism, substance abuse, romance in workplace etc do not exist?

Shilpa Shetty is just one case- there are millions out there who face racial slurs each day- go out and reach to them- help their voices be heard by the country and the indifferent world....

You have the power- Do justice to it-

Are u listening- Times, NDTV, Aajtak etc etc..........????