Any incident in a BPO is blown up to the level of a national calamity with every wise cynic and reporter joining in an I told you so refrain!

The dastardly killings of young BPO agents in Bangalore and Pune raise a number of security issues. When a young lady is transported to and from her place of work at night, most mature BPOs take every possible precaution to ensure her safety but, quite naturally, every incident raises many questions. Could she have been more watchful and avoided any risk? Could the company have done even more to ensure that she could not fall into danger? All this is rhetoric and discussions after the event have very little hope of any logical outcome.

The time has come for a clinical analysis of the new reality of the BPOan industry that has put millions of people to work and given them a future that was beyond their wildest imagination. The BPO sector in India continues to be one of the most professional in our country; and through a combination of contact center interaction and transaction processing services, has ensured that our country is spoken about through the length and breadth of the Western world.

More importantly, it has created jobs in many cities and indirect employment for tens of thousands of people in the real estate, construction, transport, and hospitality industries. The future will see rural employment get a boost as well as tier-3 and tier-4 locations in India.

It is heartening to note that Indian firms came first in four out of ten IT service categories in a global survey that selects the 100 best IT services providers. US-headquartered IT firms topped in four other categories, and one firm each from Mexico and China took the other prizes in the fourth CyberMedia Global IT Services Survey.

Overall, the survey affirmed Indias standing as a major outsourcing center. The US firmsEDS, Sitel, EPAM Systems, and Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC)are firms that have operations in India and our country is rated the #1 hub for global delivery of IT services.

Fifty-seven percent of IT service employees working in delivery centers were located in India and only 18% were based in the US. This reflects how many non-Indian firms have made India the center of gravity for their global operations, making it even more imperative for us to take pride in Indian talent and support millions of young aspirants and their parents who look forward to be a part of this great IT and BPO movement.

Is it fair to expect that there will be a foolproof method to ensure that no incident of an untoward nature can ever happen in a busy work environment? Can all the good done by a global industry be undone in the minds of an entire nation when a failure of this nature gets all the wrong attention focused on individuals and institutions?

Ganesh natarajan

Surely, there is no single entity that can take the responsibility for security in all circumstances! It is essential for the central and state governments, law and order enforcement agencies, and indeed the industry itself to work in concert to define what we can and should do to create a collective responsibility culture.

The security and well being of every Indian and every global citizen who finds employment here must remain our primary concern but logic must prevail over unfettered emotion in thinking through and implementing the right solutions. And any moves that are taken in the specific case of BPO firms will have far reaching consequences for other sectors like airlines, hotels, hospitals, and telephone exchanges that also need to employ women in night shifts!

This is no time for displaying the classic Indian Crab syndrome but a time when the entire ecosystem must come together to keep India at the top of the heap of global services!

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