Amit Varma of the Indian Economy Blog has made the Asia Wall Street Journal today:
Organized slavery ended decades ago, but to go by the criticism of some leftist commentators in India, one would imagine that it is alive and flourishing in the world's largest democracy. Recently it has become especially fashionable to hit out at call centers, or business processing outsourcing (BPO) units as they are officially known. A study published by an institute that comes under India's Labor Ministry compared conditions in Indian BPO outfits with those of "Roman slave ships." Chetan Bhagat, the author of a new book set in one such unit, "One Night @ The Call Center," recently claimed that call centers are "corroding a generation." It is common, almost clichéd, to hear call-center workers referred to as "cyber-coolies."
Varma disagrees, of course.
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