Racial slurs that hurt
India By Siddharth Srivastava
NEW DELHI - It is an incident being
closely watched by Indian industry observers as
future corporate decisions may depend on the
outcome. As has been widely reported, Neelima
Tirumalasetti, an American of Indian origin, has
filed a suit in a federal court in Texas against a
US firm.
Neelima, an information
technology analyst in quality assurance, was
allegedly subject to repeated racial harassment
and discrimination after the company for which she
worked, Caremark, decided to outsource work to
India.
Her case is not only important to
ensure the welfare of people of
Indian
origin, who are among the wealthiest, earning high
salaries in the US. It is of interest to Indian
outsourcing firms, which have to interact with
American and European clients and customers on a
regular basis.
One of the main reasons,
apart from the long and odd hours of work, for the
high attrition rates in Indian call centers is the
abusive and racist outpourings by some foreign
customers angry over jobs being outsourced to
low-cost countries, with India being one of the
pioneers of the process.
It is not easy
sitting in a far-off land to handle queries that
could range from weather, rail reservations, maps
and credit card statements. According to some
experts, the stress caused by abusive callers
results in an annual erosion of up to 60% to 70%
of the over half a million Indians working in
Indian call centers.
Neelima's lawsuit
alleges that after Caremark announced in December
2003 that it would be outsourcing work to IBM
India, she became a target of harassment.
"Caremark's investors deserve to know how it
conducts itself behind closed doors," Neelima said
in an interview to The Times of India. "This
lawsuit is about dignity and assuring that
employees are treated equally regardless of their
origin, race or ethnic background."
Earlier this year, in a move to cut costs,
IBM Corp added more than 14,000 jobs in India
after slashing 13,000 positions in Europe and the
US. Last year IBM bought out Daksh eServices, the
third-largest outsourcing firm in India with 6,000
employees, at a value estimated at over $170
million. IBM has in recent years implemented cost
cuts in the face of dwindling financial results
and leveraging in a new global economy.
According to the allegations by Neelima,
her co-workers repeatedly called her
"brown-skinned bitch" and "dirty Indian" among
other abuses, saying that people such as her were
taking their jobs. Neelima, who is a US citizen,
told her seniors of the problem, but matters only
turned for the worse as Caremark allegedly removed
her from higher responsibilities, denied her pay
and accused her of lying about her case, including
physical symptoms that led to hospitalization.
Finally, Caremark reportedly conceded her
case, but said that it was "understandable given
Caremark's employees' concerns about outsourcing
to India".
The lawsuit alleges that
Neelima suffered a final emotional breakdown after
Caremark wanted her to report to a co-worker and a
junior whom she accused. Caremark fired Neelima
after she took her case to the federal Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission.
Neelima's case is a reflection of the
pent-up anger that remains within populations due
to job losses. Earlier this year, India-born
PepsiCo president Indra Nooyi, one of Fortune's
most powerful businesswoman, faced a fair bit of
this ire when she anointed America as the "middle
finger" of the world in a speech to Columbia
Business School's graduating students. Americans
took to deriding Nooyi, with the most vociferous
comments registered on the Internet, though Nooyi
explained that her meaning was entirely different
from the more obvious interpretation.
A
comment in an Indian paper said: "No matter how
many years she has lived in the US and how much
she professes her loyalty to the country, to a
bigot she is a brown foreigner. And a woman to
boot. How dare she criticize the United States on
American soil? If you are a recent immigrant, you
don't bite the hand that fed you. It is okay if
you are white and your forbears got off the boat a
century or two ago."
Indians were also
miffed at the parody this year by a US radio
station that telephoned an Indian call center. In
the "call", aired on Philadelphia's Power 99 FM
radio, the caller placed an order for beads and
then abused the person on the other end of the
line.
Despite the problems, though,
outsourcing is here to stay. Estimates suggest
that only 200,000 to 400,000 jobs have moved from
the US since the outsourcing trend began in the
1990s, which is still a fraction of 138 million
jobs in the US. The Information Technology
Association of America says only about 2% of 10
million computer-related jobs have been sent
abroad.
However, jobs will move out at a
higher pace. According to consultancy firm
Forrester Research, 3.4 million US service-sector
jobs are expected to have moved overseas by 2015.
Observers say one-ninth of the world's service
jobs could be done from any location.
India has repeatedly urged Western nations
to make a commitment not to enact legislation that
prohibits the offshoring of call centers and
software development.
According to a study
by Global Outsourcing: "The anger in the West over
job losses and fear about offshoring has made this
[racist calls] a growing problem. Some people call
up with deliberately difficult questions. Most
just say things like, 'you are from India. You
don't know anything. I don't want to speak to
you'." There are reports websites have sprung up
that teach Americans the choicest Hindi abuses.
Until matters settle down, Indian call
centers have been trying to protect their
employees by training them in Western-accented
English and other methods, such as taking on
Western names. But this has not been very
successful. Many have employed foreigners to train
as well as take calls; others have installed
technology that blanks out abusive callers from
known numbers.
There is no denying,
though, that there will be victims of the
transition and evening-out of global economic
processes. Sadly, Neelima could be one of them.
Siddharth Srivastava is a New
Delhi-based journalist.
(Copyright
2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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