Why MT draws a flak in Manipur

Samarjit Kambam *

Once when I was travelling to Trivandrum by train, I stumbled across two ladies from Scotland. We were accommodated in a 3-Tier AC. I embarked my journey from Guwahati. They climbed up from Howrah station, Kolkata. Both of them hardly spoke a word, even to themselves. They were engrossed in thick novels, lost in their fantasy world and never even threw a glance at me. As my eyeballs rock 'n' roll every time I read on a running train, I had no option than putting on my headset and listening to some MP3 tracks.

If I am not mistaken, I was listening to Jim Morrison's. Maybe, they were scared of me, maybe they might have mistaken me for a kind-looking but deceptive and unwanted passenger, like the many they had come across, preferably in India who firstly befriended them and robbed them of their personal belongings, not even saving their Passports. I wanted very much to start a conversation with them to kick away the boredom which was looming thickly during the long and tedious journey, at least to a certain extent. But they were not oblivious of the ambience, lost in their world of Harold Robbins, Irving Wallace and John Gresham.

I thought, maybe, they hadn't even seen me sharing the same compartment. After about 6 hours, one of them seemed tired of reading the novel. Then, all of a sudden she came towards me and introduced herself and her friend to me. She extended her hand towards me. We shook hands and I gave her my name. Slowly, the conversation started. Her name was Katherine and her friend's name was Steffani. Being from Scotland, their medium of conversation was English. But their accent was such that I couldn't understand whether they were speaking English or not.

It was like watching a hollywood movie when I was a kid without knowing the dialogues of the movie. They were tourists, the ones who want to tour the third world countries. We exchanged conversations – about the climate, about the landscape, about India and even about the dirtiness of the very train in which we were accommodated. Brought up amidst the metallic rhymes of Metallica and Iron Maiden, amused with Roger Waters, one who tried to rise up like a star with Dio's help (but unfortunately couldn't rise) and wanted to break free like Freddie Mercury, I brought up the topic of music, that Heavy Metal has been my favourite genre.

But to my utter disbelief, Katherine asked me "Who rought(wrote) 'Have'ye Met Alle?,". Maybe they might have mistaken this genre of music as some kind of a novel, or maybe my accent must have sounded Heavy Metal to her as "Have'ye met Alle". Further, I told them that I loved all songs of Elton Johns but they counter questioned me "Elton woey (who)?".

Then I brought up the issue about David Bowie the late famous songwriter and singer, of John Beige and the heart rending song "Diamonds and Rust", a song which reflects the intense, plutonic love and admiration of John Beige for David Bowie with the song even sung from classical genres to heavy metal genres by Judas Priest and various other singers. But Judas Priest was mistaken as "Jude has Pissed".

I wanted to bring up the subject that Bruce Dickinson has been one of my favourite singers but I was afraid to bring up for they might confuse the name with "Bruce Dick Insane" and I might end up looking like an insane guy to them. I thought to myself whether it could be my North East accent that gave them great confusion. I also found it quite hard to absorb what they were talking about. Slowly, with my slow-paced brain, I could find out that they were more interested in folk songs and country. Accents suck! I thought.

I had written the above passage just to show how 'accent' plays a great role during conversation. Even if you know the language, if you find hard to deal with the accent, you'd really want to throw the conversation away. At this juncture, I would like to bring the issue of Medical Transcription (MT) and why MT draws a flak and fail miserably in Manipur. First and foremost, the workforce needs a thorough training on different accents of English, be it British accent, European accent or American accent.

As not every person are the same, some can easily pick up the various accents of English language within a short span of three or four months while in general, most take upto one to two years to come to terms with fluency in the various accents. Many from Manipur are working in corporate MT bodies in mainland India and some of them are doing exceptionally well.

However, its not as easy as it sounds. One needs to know a lot of medical terms such as names of medicines and its compositions, pharmacology, names of various kinds of illnesses, kinds of treatment, names of machines involved in treatment and above all sitting for long stretch of hours.

For the uninitiated, Medical Transcription means maintaining a repository or database of patients of respective doctors half-way across the globe. With world-wide connectivity through the net, the world has really virtually shrunk giving us the 'feel' as though far-flung western countries are located just at our back yard.

As the wages of workforce are high there, the western countries are looking for cheap labour with India as a mammoth grazing field for them as Indians are quite competent in English compared to other countries such as China, Thailand, Vietnam and other East Asian countries. Am not writing this piece just by listening to some tell-tales but after thorough interactions with my elder brother who once used to work at MedWrite, an MT firm based at Hyderabad.

As per his experience, many corporate bodies exploit the resourceful workforces by extracting whatever they can and giving them honorarium which is totally and unreasonably meagre. So, once they have thoroughly known the workings of MT and once they can get the leverage of getting contract from corporate bodies of other countries, most preferably western countries, many(my bro is one of them) are giving up their jobs and return to their homes to work 'standalone' at the comfort of their own from homes with no boss to hover around them and get their payment on 'more work, more pay' basis with dateline of completion of work as paramount importance. However, there are many hurdles in working from a remote place like Manipur which has very poor net connectivity and erratic power supply.

As the work of MT is totally bounded by datelines, one has to be equipped with a gen set, an inverter, a high powered UPS and a broadband connection with router and hub. So, in Manipur, it is always easier said than done when it comes to MT with many factors coming into play such as slow connectivity, working at night time and sleeping during daytime due to difference in time zone with the company to which you are having contract.

With many fresh graduates and under-graduates in Manipur opting for management, medical, engineering, IT, et al, the prospect of setting up an MT firm is quite deem due to lack of resourceful workforce and the above mentioned logjams such as poor connectivity and erratic power supply. However, many who have hands-on experience in the field are doing pretty well by working from their own homes.

But one thing, you have to alter your body's mechanism for you have to sacrifice the night just like a nocturnal animal and sleep like a log of wood during daytime.

(Courtesy: My brother Kambam Lenin Mangangcha).