The past few weeks have seen quite an intense debate in Internet forum about the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) jobs – whether they represent a viable career option for the long term or a trap that leads to career stagnation and decay.

It is an issue worth debating on–given the huge number of young people from Manipur (and Churachandpur in particular) who find employment there.

This is a sector that belongs exclusively to this new century. It is the ultimate example of global economic integration, and represents the fruition-at least metaphorically-of a wired world in which the factories will be in China and offices in India! The sector is growing by leaps and bounds, and it is estimated that by next year, the number of people employed in it in India will cross the 1 million mark.

There is no census so far, but it is generally understood that the number of people from Churachandpur district alone working at various BPO companies in Delhi is in terms of hundreds. If you take other cities like Bangalore, Mumbai, Chandigarh etc, you have the number spiking towards the 1000-mark.

One thing that differentiates BPO companies from other NGOs and the government sector is that they have no physical foundation and infrastructure in their place of work. So, there is no BPO Company here that produces cement or biscuits or soaps or even CDs. They do jobs - many of them consisting of data entry and transcription- outsourced to them by foreign firms.

Cost cutting is the primary motive of the parent companies. Since they are doing American or British jobs, they have to work at the time these countries work and that explains the odd hours they keep. Technically, an internet-connected computer system is all you need to work in this sector. I told you, it’s a world no one thought of being here 10 years ago.

But, why should anybody be having a problem with this sector?

The important issue to me is not whether BPO jobs are good or bad per se. That cannot be decided on a single criterion – whether it is good or bad depends – like any other jobs – on the person, his nature and aptitude, the work and the company. What calls for attention and assessment, rather, is the impact the work culture may have on us personally and as part of a close-knit society.

Five years ago, most jobs we know (except emergency and other services like police etc) are nine-to-five, five-day-week jobs. In BPO companies (and of course, in many others like TV News), no norms are sacrosanct. They are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

There is no holiday even on Independence Day! Your working hour may start at 8 pm and last till 4 am; or 2 am till 10 am. Your off day may be on Monday or Thursday instead of Sunday. What this means, firstly, is that your social life ceased to exist.

Regular Sunday Church services are out of the question. How do an 18-year old class XII graduate, who’s been brought up with heavy doses of social gossip and Sunday schools cope with this?

Then there is the money.

The salary offered to graduate and undergraduate fresh recruits is in the region of Rs. 8000, admitting exceptions. By our own standards, this is still quite a lot of money because an average student in Delhi can still do with Rs 3000 per month.

How do we spend that money? Is it a case of easy money easy go? Do we have any saving schemes? Have we ever sent the extra money to parents back home? I am afraid that the apparent ease with which employment can be obtained and money earned may go to our own disadvantage in the long run.

Today, it looks rather old-fashioned to attend college classes everyday. It seems much smarter to work and earn money, and do college–if you must–by correspondence. The appeal of easy money and latest gadgets that come with it is overwhelming among the young.

Hoping to cash in on this craze, more and more young people from home are landing in the cities without any definite purpose, but ‘to find some work’. They did find some work, but once in, they find hard to get out.

One thing that strikes me is that most people from our area who work in these BPO companies are below 30 years of age. The companies usually did not differentiate between graduates or undergraduates. Looking at these people I know who work there, I cannot help notice that most of them are young and dynamic people who ought to be seriously in their college studies.

One other important thing is that most of those who join these companies explain it away as a stopgap arrangement, to be left as soon as they get a better job. But once they are in, they find hard to come out again. The companies too have no life of their own; their existence depends on the pleasure of their client companies who hired them.

Most of the work is low-end IT-related ‘rote work’, repetitive in nature and admitting not much scope for skills improvement and advancement. In such a setting, it is no surprise that there is sense of insecurity all the time. And I am afraid that over time, these companies will produce a mediocre workforce and smart-aleck attitude, yet shallow in knowledge and understanding.

People who can dazzle you with a one-hour demonstration, but wilt after a month at work. There was a hue and cry about two years ago when a survey published spoke very poorly of their working condition, and the widespread exploitation and pop culture obtained there.

Maybe I am too harsh in my judgment. Or I am wrong. I do know people, who work sincerely in these companies and do well. As some of them argued in the debate aforementioned, one needs discipline, dynamism, will to learn and adapt and resilience to prosper in these jobs.

It may be easy to get in, but not so easy to get ahead ‘if you don’t have it in you’. And, yes, there is no reservation system to fall back on!

The debate can go on endlessly. There is no one person competent to play the referee. But the cumulative impact the situation explained above will induce in young men and women can well be imagined. The key point is that we, as individuals and a community, do not afford to neglect rigorous academic work, in all fields, simply because there are jobs aplenty.

And just because there is a company that will employ you right after Class XII, if you feel that degrees and higher education no longer sells, think again. Whatever your field and your profession, what will get you ahead ultimately is specialization.

After all, we need not all the time be the foot soldier. We can and ought to be the commander too.