IN BRITAIN they are the voice on the end of a phone interrupting meals and television show. But in India call-centre workers are trendsetters who are reshaping the country’s shopping habits and conservative mores.
Dating, shopping and partying, deemed frivolous, unaffordable and risqué by their parents, are the pastimes of choice for the tens of thousands of highly educated, English-speaking Indians aged between 18 and 25 in cities such as Bangalore, Delhi and Pune, where the call centre industry is booming.
With starting salaries almost triple that of an average Indian graduate, call-centre workers are the first generation able to enjoy their youth and a disposable income. Their fastspending lives have prompted a flurry of dramatisations, including a novel, soap opera and forthcoming Bollywood film, which cast them as the heroes of consumerist urban India.
The novel, One Night at the Call Centre, by Chetan Bhagat, a 31-year-old investment banker, sold more than 100,000 copies in its first month and tops the bestseller lists. It features gadget-conscious, brand-aware youngsters fretting over their appearance, relationships and bank balances.
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The soap opera, which marks a break from the traditional themes of family and marriage, and the novel explore the downsides of customer abuse, constant surveillance and monotony. But Anand Jha, 28, who has risen to a managerial post in a British phone company’s call centre on the outskirts of Delhi, says that the pay compensates for the drawbacks. Earning at least 35,000 rupees (£450) a month enables him to help his family and enjoy himself as well.
Mr Jha and his friends spend their cash in pubs, nightclubs and restaurants. He adds: “Our lifestyle is completely different from our parents’. The kind of spending power we have means we can buy a car. At work everyone tries to show off about their mobiles. Every other month they’ll resell the handset and get a better one.”
This new social class, earning more in their mid-twenties than their parents were paid in their mid-forties, is the target audience for the Indian edition of the British men’s magazine Maxim, serving up a typical recipe of motors, models and muscles.
More than half of call-centre workers live away from their families with friends. They are perhaps the first generation of Indians not to hanker after a job for life and, like many young people in the West, are earning while they decide on a career.
According to Samir Parikh, a consultant psychiatrist based in Delhi, they face many social changes in being away from their families. “I have seen many cases of substance abuse from either trying to stay awake or from over-drinking and partying after work.”
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Although the Indian economy has gained from the £3 billion industry, there are increasing concerns that the cost will be borne by a generation who will have no skills and will be traumatised by monotonous high-pressure work.
Anxiety about stress recently peaked after a report concluded that half a million workers were “burning out their formative years as ‘cyber-coolies’ ”. The V.V. Giri National Labour Institute, a think-tank, says that agents are put under surveillance comparable to that in 19th-century prisons or on Roman slave ships.
The industry disputes this. EXL, one of India’s fastestexpanding companies in the sector, says that morale and wellbeing are paramount. It offers health insurance, a medical centre and a gym. Winton Fernandes, 24, says that he was not stretched taking calls. “It wasn’t hard for me to excel,” he said. With an MBA, he has been promoted to a job as a trainer at EXL — one more challenging and “less stressful” than taking calls.
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