IT as a sector certainly contributes a lot in the growing Indian economy and many have already declared India as the "information superpower". But there is a lot that needs to be done before assigning these tags.
The IT companies in India are mostly export dependent, this is very much true for the ITES sector as well. Indian companies have been able to fetch majority of the orders on the basis of low costing which in turn involves the so called "cheap labour". This labour may seem to be cheap for the Americans or the Europeans, but the salaries being offered by the IT giants means a lot to the fresh graduates.
A guy who has completed his schooling and has a nice fluent spoken english easily gets a job with a call center offering Rs. 100K per annum approximately, this obviously means a lot in the nation where unemployment and under-employment are serious issues.
These mesmerizing offers by the IT companies leave no room for employees to think about the negatives of working with these "BRANDED" corporates...
Young women and men work painfully long hours practising cultivated American accents to sell products they have never seen or give invisible customers information they don't remotely comprehend. Even the software guys don't have fixed working hours, its all about completing and delivering the project before the deadlines to get a NICE HIKE IN THE APPRAISAL.
But the picture is not always a rosy one....as it is in the present day scenario where every alternate day we get to read in the news papers about, these IT giants firing the employees without any notices, cutting down the salaries, eliminating the appraisal process etc and all this only because of a single reason i.e. "The revenues have decreased due to the appreciating Rupee".
There have been numerous attempts to form the employee unions for the IT sector, but due to the various public policies and the manipulating power of the industrialists all these attempts have not succeeded.
Setting our goals in accordance with our people's needs and resources is the only way we can move from being cyber-coolies with no rights and little security, to dignified, respected workers who control the labour processes they work under. Is there a need for Collective action and cooperation from the IT employees? Please comment!!!
-Mayank Midha
(28077)
Section-B
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This is not the first time that such 'rightsizing' is happening in the IT industry. The industry saw similar trend in 2002, when bloated software industries were trimming themselves as the work crated by y2k bug was over. I think that collective action depends upon the willingness and preparedness of people for such action, commited leaders and some kind of state support at least in the beginning. Though I do nnot see the support from the state coming as of now because policies of state are more industry friendly than being labor friendly. Some impetus has to come from employee's side.
On that end, I do not see much of activity. People who are laid off consider it better to search new jobs instead of launching any movement or associating themselves with any kind of labor institutions. This might create an impact on their future employment. Similarly, the middle class youth which enters the IT industry is hardly organised anymore. They used to be organised once, when this country had healthy student's politics.
The middle class youth of today has stopped agitating as he is reaping benefits of globalisation. It has stopped agitating against system. To a certain extent this current state of middle class youth seems to be demotivating people's struggles (naxalite movements for instance) which lack base in middle class urban youth today. This was not the situation 20-30 years ago.
So there is this crisis of leadership, lack of unity among employess (even in recognizing common interest)and unfavorable govenrment policies which have together created unfavorable conditions for effective collective action.
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