Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Outsourcing - the price!

With the outsourcing wave getting ever more stronger, Western outsourcing civilisation felt the first effects of Indian political framework on their business. Recent death of the Kannada cine actor Rajkumar was followed by riots and violence and public nuisance for 2 days. For a person born and brought up in India, this is a normal news. And the western world never felt any effects of such local disruptions in India. But it was not the same story this time around.

With the violence and threat to safety, infosys and wipro offices among many other outsourcing offices shutdown for 2 days, and the industry in the west suffered severe set back losing 2 business days from their outsourcing offices. Now 2 days may sound trivial, but when you come to think about it, consider 365 people not working for 2 days. Simple math will tell you thats equivalent to the work one person will do over 2 years, or simply 2 man years! Now make your own estimation of how many people work in such outsourcing outfits in bangalore, an inevitable low whistle escapes through my lips.

It makes me wonder, does this make India more vulnerable as a nation?! So is it just the back office and slog work thats been outsourced or does it come with an additional price? A rather dangerous price. With the growing outsourcing business and stronger ties and dependancies on the outsourced framework, I cant stop pondering about the proportional rise in the security risk. When a simple disruption can cause an discomforting effect on the western corporate world, a major mishap, perhaps natural or "man-made", even locally can have adverse effect on a more global scale.

Is this investment a calculated risk by the corporates? I dont know, honestly. Do they have an insurance policy to tackle such emergencies, or would they take something like this lying down? And what is the Indian government doing/going to do about this security risk? If not on its own initiative, would the global corporate world be able to pressurise the government set in motion adequate planning and action teams? Or are they going to wait until they have had a better taste of the bitterness?

Well, panic takes us nowhere, and ignorance leads us worse. With positive steps, i suppose all parties stand to gain, but i suppose its not to be forgotten, that as a nation India stands to lose more. I only hold hopes, fingers crossed, that may not be the case.

4 comments:

elaine x said...

well, pretty soon, the walls will be going up ... the security teams with their ak47s and helicopters will show up ... and just like africa, this piece of india can be bought by mega-outsourcing-corporation ... and nothing can affect our consumption here in the west ... well, nothing except for us consumers ...
maybe one day the people yaking about outsourcing will realize their connection as the cause ... e.g., poorly educating our children and consuming way beyond our needs ...
keep up the interesting dialogue!!!
peace & harmony,
elaine
'freedom must be exercised to stay in shape!'

Emperor said...

Sound quite like hollywood, no? :-) Well the security risk is part national and part corporate. There is so much corporates will do to protect their investments etc, but there is little they can do towards social security, which cannot be bought with all the money they have to spare. And without social security, securing their investement with action teams will do little good.

But its so true that people are the weak links. A good social society should not need to worry about social security. Man is his own biggest threat unfortunately :-(

Anonymous said...

Alriiightyyy, this is terribly off-topic.. but jst wanted to say, i remember u frm school (IF ur Arun)!

I was in abhimanyu house ;)

Emperor said...

Well i defenitely am who u think i am!