Manias, Panics, and Crashes – BPO and IT Services

Indian youth start earning as early as 18 – 22, thanks to liberalization of the Indian economy and globalization. BPO industry found its way in for certain reasons leading undergraduates and even teenager’s dream of lucrative salary. BPOs provide a golden opportunity for youngsters looking to financing their future studies and day-to-day expenses. More often than we might think, BPO is breeding sense of self sufficiency and pride among young population that they no more need to be dependant on their parents for money. To a great extent even the IT population which is largely young and are under late twenties come under the same category. Burgeoning middle class is highly receptive of BPOs and IT services opportunities.
Having said most of the positives, I ponder about the credibility of BPOs. BPOs and most of the IT firms take up maintenance and customer / product support related functions. For an employee in an IT firm or BPO, it’s a matter of getting acquainted with the process and procedure which does not take a long time to master. Beyond that, the job becomes mundane and employee cannot look for a change in profile mainly because of attractive salary slip he gets every month. Global players continue to remain delighted outsourcing mundane and procedural IT functions to India and our major chunk of educated population continue building their career in the same path which is assumed to be safe and most respected. Today, people in the age group of 18-26 are hired and fired by the BPOs. Future of the nation cannot be habituated doing mundane tasks!
Where would this land us into decades down the line? Are we moving in the right direction?
Would this sustain under any given scenario like Wall Street Crash of 1929, 1990's stock market bubble and the current economic crisis threatening IT and BPO chain?
In three words, this phenomenon could be described as “Manias, Panics, and Crashes". Do we have a way out of this vicious trap? Yes, certainly we do! We need to groom innovation…. Innovation to make products that would be sellable across geographies. We need to emerge as a global player in products and technology innovation to help us sustain on a longer term. For short term benefits, BPOs and IT services are paradise however on the longer term this could prove out to be nightmare because by the time “CRASH” happens, we would not be able to innovate anything for survival. Recent financial crisis, quality of life a BPO worker lives, health hazards of employees working in IT services are good enough a wake up call to motivate the educated population to innovate for products instead of being satisfied doing boring outsourced functions. China has smartly projected itself as leader in hardware while blocking BPOs to a good extent. Its time for us to adapt to futuristic approach!!!