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A Terrible Beauty
is Born
Young Indian call centre employees are a new dalit elite. Made invisible
by names like Susan and Andrew, they compete against prisoners working for
US corporations
Arjun Raina
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Confronting
Aliases: Indian body, foreign suit photo by ajay jaiman |
So corporations in America
are now using prisoners to recover credit card dues. It follows the corporatisation
of prisons in America. Private corporations run prisons and the state pays
a fee for each prisoner. Prisoners then work for the corporation for a low
wage. Prisoners are paid $1.20-1.30 an hour (the same rates as most call
centres in India) and the great advantage of having prison labour is that
they are never late for work! If competition drives market value to the
consumers’ benefit then in the international labour market prisoners
in America become one important factor in defining labour value and price.
The facts. There are more prisoners in the state of California than in the
UK, France and Spain all put together. Prisoners and convicted felons in
the US have rights equivalent to slaves. That is zilch. There are no minimum
wages. Of the $1.20-1.30 they earn they pay for their bedding, their warm
clothes, and their calls to their loved ones. I imagine if needed they could
be paid less. Can the Indian call centre industry compete with this? In
an industry based on cost effective labour will the cost of labour in the
future necessarily go down?
Especially if one of its competitors in the international labour market
is the prison workforce of America? And as a consequence, does the international
global economy need a global minimum wage? To protect international market
wages from being controlled by what American corporations decide to pay
their prison workforce with the delightful contradiction that they are free
to pay them as little as they feel the need to?
Why is a Kathakali dancer thinking these ungodly thoughts? Why is a one-time
one-film actor (Annie of Annie gives it those ones) still attempting to
give it those ones! Why is someone who spent the decade of the nineties
living in a 300-year-old haveli in Gali Bajrang Bali, Chawri Bazaar, Old
Delhi, and who ran a theatre there combining Shakespeare and Kathakali now
talking of American prisons, corporations and minimum wages.
Why does someone who gets paid a very un-prisoner like wage of an INR equivalent
of $125 an hour as a voice and accent trainer not just keep quiet instead
of raising these dangerous and subversive questions? Why am I risking my
job by raising issues that need to be raised? Like a minimum wage? Like
fake American names ? Like a six-hour worknight instead of a 10-hour worknight?
I mean what if the business went to China? I too would be out of a job.
Is this a deeply ingrained Indian habit of resistance? To desperately seek
a hole in the boat to make sure it leaks and sinks? Or am I doing this so
that I can go back to the ruins of the haveli in Old Delhi where there are
powercuts for days on end and water supply for only a couple of hours in
the morning instead of living a comfortable material life in the new boomtown
of Gurgaon.
The fear is the business will go to China, Yugoslavia, Latvia, or Philippines.
What if? Are they not part of a global economy? Could they not be a part
of a global minimum wage? An eight-hour shift is now an accepted global
workday. What about a six-hour global worknight? Call centre agents travel
up till two hours each way to work and back. That’s a 12-hour worknight.
Can we think of taking away two hours of profit each night for each worker
not just in India but also even in China, Yugoslavia, Latvia or wherever
the global economy threatens to take this global business.
If millions of young Chinese are forced to change their names and take on
American aliases as a precondition to their working in the global economy,
are we in an interconnected and interlinked global reality not concerned
about them or about the millions of Filipinos or Ghanaians or wherever the
business threatens to move itself.
How is it that an increasing number of companies, specially the UK-based
ones (where names and their link to identity have a historical link), are
allowing their workers to work with their own names? And yet most American
companies demand their workers to fake their names.
Why should a PIL not be be filed in the courts questioning this business
that asks of hundreds of thousands of young and free Indians to give up
their names as a precondition for their first handshake with the international
market reality.
At a time when your mind is just beginning to link to the real world imagine
thinking of yourself as Sarah, Susan, Andrew or Jack for hours and nights
and months and years on end!
I
dislike the term
cyber coolies used for
this sophisticated
labour force. That
is a prejudiced
outsider’s view |
In a country whose culture,
religion, politics and daily business thrives on the names of a million
gods, are the fake names of its first free generation (their parents and
teachers were not slaves as mine were) not a case for concern? Is not the
dignity of your name and your identity as important as the ‘food on
the table’?
I dislike the term cyber coolies used for this sophisticated labour force.
That is a prejudiced outsider’s view. I think I have a better term.
The dalit elite. I call them dalits because they share the primary condition
of invisibility. Once you accept being Andrew, or Susan or Mary you accept
invisibility as your part of the working equation. This is not about humiliation.
This is about labour control. In corporate reality, humiliation is the irrelevant
emotion and invisibility the relevant function of control.
This is a very hardworking and sophisticated workforce. They are the English
speaking elite of the country. ‘Elite’ often is a bad word in
India. The habit of denigrating this workforce as an elite does it a disservice.
They function as an elite not out of feudal privilege or unproductive socialist
idealism. They labour hard and vulnerable within the ferocious realities
of international capital.
However, they have learnt to negotiate the system for a better wage. They
hire and fire at their free will. They move for better wages at the first
opportunity. They work hard through the working week and then party over
the weekend. This is rightfully the lifestyle they have earned for themselves.
They live alone in cities, making new friends, new homes and a new life
for themselves. No one can take this away from them. It is for sure that
traditional unionism will not bring them together into protective collectives.
Can I continue to earn the INR equivalent of $125 an hour training agents
to create a persona believable as Andrew, Susan, and Mary? Do I have a moral
responsibility to my next generation of Indians? Can an industry continue
to survive working 12 hours a night?
Is there no negotiation possible? Is the threat that the work might vanish
silence us? Being a part of a global economy are there any global concerns?
A new definition of a worknight? Respect for each individual through their
own names and identities? Is Bhatnagar so different a word from Schwarzenegger?
Can each call not proactively carry a rider saying where it’s coming
from? To make invisible a great nation like India by being quiet about where
you are calling from — is that acceptable? What needs to be done about
all this?
The fact is this business is here to stay. I wouldn’t risk my wage
if I didn’t know it was! When the powerful want doors opened they
don’t say please. They kick them open. It is labour’s burden
to try to begin to close it. Labour has to find a new and sophisticated
voice to articulate its concerns. The colour of this new labour is no longer
red. It is ‘gold’. It is how we treat this ‘gold’
and begin to really make it ‘shine’ that will decide our futures.
What we fight for today will create our tomorrow.
The night is still young with possibility.
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December
25, 2004
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