India's Burgeoning Call Center Industry

The hiring patterns of India's burgeoning Call Center Services industry denotes that compared to their male counterparts, Indian women are better suited for voice based projects and come endowed with better communications skills. Around 60% the Call Center employees are female, and their number is growing. Women are attracted to Call Center jobs because, the salaries are good, there is pick and drop facility for the staff, the food is subsidized and the work environment is lot better.

But despite all the facilities it is still a strange job, which sees the employees picking up Western names, accent and even smatterings of culture. Janki turns into Janet, Simriti into Sophi, Parvati into Paula, Kavita into Kate. As most call centers in the country cater to American clients, the ability to pass off as the girl next door from any American town or city is sine qua non for a call center worker.

The employees undergo speech therapy to learn to mimic American accent. Some are told that understanding lines spoken in Hollywood movies is the final frontier in mastering English. Others are advised to alter their TV viewing from the usual saas-bahu soaps to serials such as �Alley Macbeal' and �Friends'. The training includes a dash of US culture, history, geography. Some call centers display posters of popular American icons to create an ambience of America.
Even the duty hours are tailored according to the American time. The call centers have to be on job between 10 PM and 6 AM when it is day in America. Young women in 20s return home after a night of telephone work to parents, brothers, and sisters who are just waking up. They hit the bed when rest of the family is preparing to begin the day. Essentially the call center explosion is leading to lifestyle changes that go far beyond the workplace.

What does it do to Janki's traditional values when she is spending all her working hours talking to Americans and pretending she is Janet from Dallas or Boston? For how long can she keep the Janki and Janet aspects of her personality compartmentalized? What if the two strains of personality converge and coalesce into a same person? Split between Janki and Janet, can she meet the exigencies of having a family? Many call center employees make the same faux pas when they let their fake American accent spillover while answering the phone at home. But what if the spillover happens in other aspects of life, like interacting with opposite sex, eating habits, dress sense, and others. It is debatable whether call center jobs are compatible with traditional Indian society but these jobs are here to stay. More and more Indian women are vying to become Paula, Petty and Penny.