Valdar's Blog

Business process outsourcing have fast taken over the Indian youth, which has further led to accumulation of western culture in them. Globalisation has brought this culture in India, but is it cultural genocide or the cultural assimilation?

THE POST 1990’s period in the history of India is not only marked by the changes in its foreign policy by rejecting the old ’Nehruvian Socialism’ and adaptations to neo-liberal development in the form of globalisation, but also in the socio-cultural manifestation of the neo-liberal development.

The advent of the business process outsourcing (BPO) culture in India is considered to a by-product of the liberalisation of the Indian economy. The emergence of the BPOs in India was essentially marked by the four pillars (four Ms) of a successful business, namely Mazdoor (cheap human resources), Mal (raw materials), Money(for high profit of margin) and the availability of Market. To fulfill the needs of BPOs, India was having all these components because as cheap labour force we have the vast youth labour force, as raw materials we have the information technology (internet and computer accompanied with telecommunication skill) and of course burgeoning middle class to spent the money for the gizmos and to act as a market – the potential client and customer.

The BPO, as such, has certainly given the employment opportunity to the huge unemployed, helped in deduction of the gender disparity, increase in the human development index at least to say, India’s international market reputation as fast expanding market (thanks to the service sector), but what the economist have failed to understand is that the accompanied socio-cultural mind set up.

The accompanied socio-cultural mind set up is the non-materialistic aspects of the materialism because of the cultural diffusion between India and the west. The fast and competitiveness BPO has led the unconscious mind of the youth to go for anything available in the market, be it the fast food culture, west dress code, pop music or to say electronic goods in the hands. The saving tendency has declined to so-called emerging middle class. To make this point more clear, how come a clerk could afford to education for its children, housing cost, meet the challenges of unforeseen future merely in Rs 5000-10,000 but the Rs 15,000- 20 ,000 and even more earning BPO employees have to live in the life of credit card? Why can’t they save the money? This is primarily because of the ’floating money culture’, which says, “enjoy the life at its fullest” and so we could see the market, masti, maza and majboori (compulsion) as a life style of the youth.

The other aspect that raises the BPO culture is more upsetting for us. Today the youths unofficially in the age group of 18-26 are hired and fired by the BPOs , this is the age group, which is the backbone of any nation as human resources, but when they get engaged in the said sector, from where we will meet the demand of soldiers, engineers, managers and doctors for our future generation? Are we ready to import them from the African countries?

The question remains pertinent for the policy makers, intellectuals and at most for the civil society, that how are we going to meet the demand of the challenges? Can we bear the pressure of the ’cultural colonisation of the mind’. Remember the ’cultural genocide’ can awake from its ashes but the ’colonisation of mind’ takes more than century to awake and that’s what Indian Independence struggle has taught us in the ’history of India in making’.