Young workers face culture clash

India’s call center and BPO (business process outsourcing) boom has provided lucrative jobs to thousands of college students and graduates, who previously would have found it difficult to get employment. With their new financial independence, and a penchant for everything American, many of them are challenging Indian cultural mores such as the patriarchal family, and taboos such as premarital sex and eating meat.

Indian call centers and BPO operations hire staff in their late teens and early 20s. Many of them are given lessons on U.S. and British cultures, and learn to speak with polished English accents to interact more effectively with customers who are mostly in the U.S. and U.K.

Employees at BPO operations and call centers are exposed to Western culture in their workplaces at an impressionable age, and are rushing to ape it, according to Latha Venkataram, president of the Bangalore Society of Obstetrics & Gynecology. Traditional authority in the home is breaking down, as young adults jettison their own culture for Westernized ways. They are more likely to celebrate American festivals like Halloween and Valentine’s Day than traditional Indian festivals, she said.

A number of multinational technology and services companies including IBM, Accenture, and Dell, have set up BPO operations and call centers in India to take advantage of the low-cost of staff in India. The work cultures in these companies are different and less hierarchical than in traditional Indian companies.

The exposure to such a work culture is leading employees to challenge hierarchies at home and in society, according to G. K. Karanth, a professor and head of the Centre for Study of Social Change and Development at the Institute for Social and Economic Change in Bangalore. “Now that they have independent incomes, they feel more confident to challenge traditional values and customs,” Karanth said. Incomes of BPO and call center employees are often at or more than their parents make.

Live-in relationships and casual sex among call center and BPO employees are on the increase, as are alcoholism and drug abuse, said Arun Krishnamurthy, a former employee at a BPO operation run by a leading multinational IT firm. “The problem is that people are now getting financial independence at an age when they don’t have the maturity to handle it,” Krishnamurthy said.

Job stress could also be a factor leading to increased sexual activity, drug abuse, and alcoholism. “It is a form of release for some employees,” Krishnamurthy said. Call center and BPO work tends to be monotonous and companies demand a lot from their staffs to keep costs in check, he said.

Krishnamurthy, who is 25, quit his BPO job last year for a day job as an accountant. Like Krishnamurthy, many call center and BPO employees plan to work for a few years to make enough money to meet financial commitments or pay for their higher education. They believe that jobs at call centers and BPO operations cannot be long-term careers because of the impact the work has on their personal lives and health.

Most of the work at call centers and BPO operations is at night, so employees tend to lose touch with their family, friends, and neighbors, whose waking hours are different. “You start hanging out with a different set of people with whom you don’t really have very deep ties,” Krishnamurthy said.

“The person is no longer a vibrant and active part of a family or neighborhood,” he added.

A shift in the balance of power at home brings new challenges to Indian families. Financially independent children now want their parents to treat them as equals, according to Karanth. Parents have to redefine their roles, or lose their positions altogether. Parental authority is already weakened, and the more parents try to assert their authority, the more likely it will be completely broken, he said.

Doctors and social workers worry that night shifts are affecting the health of call center and BPO employees, who mainly work night shifts, as they are usually dealing with U.S. customers. The change from a predominantly diurnal lifestyle to a nocturnal one, and the monotony and stress of the work, leads to a number of adverse physiological changes, according to Venkataram.

Also worrisome to social observers is that students are sometimes cutting short their school careers to join BPO operations and call centers, attracted by the opportunity to make money. There are fewer students enrolling for courses in engineering and medicine, according to Venkataram. If the trend continues, some in the IT services industry worry that there will be fewer engineers available to the job market.