Need to put a stop to the Employment and Corporate frauds in the IT industry

The Indian Information Technology (IT/ITeS) industry has been one of the most successful sectors in recent economic history of our country. The sector encompasses everything from high-end Research and Development and Software application development to IT enabled services like BPO, KPO and even data-entry operations and customer support operations. The industry is employing more than 25 lakh people and is contributing over 6% of GDP. The sector is unique in attracting some of the most highly qualified professionals in India and provides some of the best working conditions. Unfortunately, it is also unique in the way it seeks exemptions from practically every laws in this country! Be those the labour, corporate or taxation laws. 

Exemption from labour laws is sought by industries who wish to operate with a high degree of flexibility. Exemptions are provided by the Government on the condition that the industry would take responsibility for self-regulation and maintain the highest standards and best practices in its operations and processes. While this in itself offers great manoeuvrability for companies that have to negotiate unpredictable market conditions, it also puts the workers under great risk and pressure. To make matters worse, the situation becomes far more serious when fraudulent companies and individuals start operating under the same umbrella of lax labour laws and take advantage of them to engage in illegal and unethical practices cheating large number of IT job aspirants and professionals.

IT industry has been plagued off late by the menace of employment frauds and career scams. These scams have been in various forms, shapes and sizes, including cash-for-job, interview scams, fake offer letters, denial of salaries, shop-shutdowns, false job specifications, recruitment scams etc. Many unsuspecting and helpless job seekers have fallen prey to such unscrupulous elements and organized groups. It is high time that such fake companies, middlemen and brokers are brought to book and appropriate actions are initiated to stop mushrooming of such fraudulent entities and practices. In the context of high unemployment in the country among educated youth, a large section of job seekers are vulnerable to such frauds. Thus, it becomes utmost important to be vigilant and take stern action against the perpetrators of such crime so that spreading of such activities and more people falling prey to such frauds can be avoided. Such scams are seriously eroding the reputation of the industry, leaving many young career aspirants cheated, robbed and victimized, that an industry-wide cleanup operation has to be initiated with highest priorities.   

Labour laws and regulations are put in place to ensure healthy relation between the employers and the workforce and to safeguard the employees from undue exploitation at their workplace. Many checks and balances are designed to prevent fraudulent individuals and groups taking people for a ride by establishing illegal and fake entities with the sole intention of robbing money.  However, many times, slackness in enforcement of these regulations and inadequate implementation strategies and practices have lead to widespread unhealthy practices in the IT industry.  Taking into consideration the special nature and needs of the IT industry, adequate laws and regulations need to be put in place and should ensure strict enforcement and flawless implementation of existing rules to strongly deal with corrupt practices in the industry. The fraudulent elements have also been encouraged by factors like absence of appropriate laws, loopholes in the existing rules, blanket exemption from certain industry and labour laws, lenient attitude by law enforcing authorities towards violating individuals and enterprises etc.  Whether existing laws are sufficient to deal with the corrupt or need fresh rules and regulations and how to ensure adequate enforcement mechanism is put in place and effectively monitored are all important questions that need to be addressed.

Declining employability -- The disconnect between the academics and IT industry

IT industry has caught the imagination of a whole generation and has given hope to many as a path to progress. Many parents and their children dream of making a successful career and life in the IT industry. The IT dreams have resulted in large sections of student community opting for courses that would qualify them to earn a career opportunity in the IT industry. This has also lead to emergence of large number of institutions that offer such courses. With the education sector transforming into another full-fledged industry and business, serious issues and concerns also have emerged with respect to the quality of education imparted in these institutions. With hardly any regulations or quality control mechanisms in place, educational institutions have been mushrooming overnight at every nook and corner of the country and many of them lack needed infrastructure or qualified staff to impart quality education, despite collecting huge amounts from the students. Sadly, the effect is there for everyone to see in terms of declining employability among new graduates coming out of many of such make-shift institutions. The situation calls for a more stringent set of regulations and quality enforcement in the education, as the sector has become a new fiefdom for business forces, operating in a ‘free for all’ manner with hardly any standards, guidelines or meaningful regulatory mechanisms. The disconnect between the industry and the academic has become more glaring, both in terms of meeting the requirements as well as in ensuring proper alignment of  curriculum and syllabus focus. The ever relevant debate of how to mould and align the vision and policies for education in the country with the needs of the society is again on the radar as the industry-academic disconnect widens as it is felt in the IT sector. 

“NO” to Extending Working Hours for Women IT Employees !

“NO” to Extending Working Hours for Women IT Employees 

- Suresh Kodoor

A recent conference in Bangalore, attended by the senior HR professionals of the IT and ITeS companies, has raised a new demand to the government for granting yet another exemption for the industry. This time the IT/ITeS Companies wants the Karnataka Government to extend the working hours limit from 8pm to 10pm for the Women employees in the IT/ITeS industry. The new demand raises several questions, not only regarding the security for the women IT/ITeS employees, but also about the very motive behind such a demand.

The Shops and Establishment Act in Karnataka originally prohibited employing women workers after 8pm. However, in the year 2002 this act was amended to enable women employees to work in BPO industry, where night shifts are common. The amendment allows the companies to have female workers work past 8pm, provided the companies adequately take care of their security and maintain safe work environment for them. Thus, the employers were mandated by the rule to provide transportation and other security measures for women employees who work past 8pm.

Currently, about one third of the total employees in the Call Center / BPO sector is women. Though many of the Call Centers provide transportation, safety of the women employees still remain a major challenge. Moreover, though pick up and drop facility is provided by majority of the companies in the ITeS sector, the case is different with the IT companies. Though some of the IT companies do comply with the practice of providing transportation back home for women employees working past 8 or 8.30 pm, majority of them do not. Some companies may allow reimbursement of transport expenses if the employee avail cab on their own, which still doesn’t address the issue of security concerns for the women. With this new demand for extending the working hours, the companies are trying to wash their hands off even this basic responsibility.

As per the 2002 amendment in the act, companies even today can let women employees work after 8pm. i.e. there is no legal hindrance for employing women past 8pm, provided the companies are willing to provide necessary security measures, including safe transportation. So, the demand from the companies is not for enabling them to employ women employees in the extended shifts, but more for the legal permission to allow them to do so while at the same time not mandating them to provide transport and other security measure! This unfair demand by the industry should be strongly opposed. Currently there are large numbers of employees in various IT companies who work in the UK shift timings. The UK shift end at around 9.30pm. Thus, the real motivation behind such a demand is to be freed from the responsibility of providing transport to these employees, which will save the companies a lot of money.

Various unfortunate and gruesome criminal incidents of attacks on women BPO employees in the metro cities like Bangalore and Delhi should not be easily forgotten. Several other petty crimes and attacks against women are reported all over the country. With the security concerns ever increasing, particularly for women traveling in the late hours, the safety of the women employees must be the paramount concern for everyone. Unfortunately, the IT companies, in their quest to save money and farther profit at any cost and by any means, are trying to conveniently absolve themselves of this prime responsibility.

Madras High Court, in a year-2000 verdict declaring that the provision in the Factories Act that prohibits employment of women in the nightshift as unconstitutional, has also laid down several guidelines for the employers to follow, if they want to employ women in the night shifts. IT and ITeS companies also should be brought under the scope of such guidelines and best practices.

Apart from the security concerns, extending the working hours also raises the larger question of well being of the IT workers. IT industry is notorious for not allowing any labour laws or guidelines to enter into its realm of affairs. Concepts like 8 hours working are very alien to the industry. Employees, including women, are subjected to 12-14 hours working daily and still many times have to extend the day’s work by logging in from home at the wee hours in the night. The new demand will only empower the IT companies with one more rule which may be leveraged to put pressure on employees to stay late and work for more hours! For the interest and the overall well-being of the IT industry, this should not be allowed to happen.

 Hindu Article: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article2539084.ece

Suresh Kodoor

Email: sureshkodoor@gmail.com

Political Economy of Information Industry

The transition from a manufacturing and product based economy, which primarily produces tangible goods, to an economy which is extensively 'knowledge-oriented' and dominated by information goods has been dramatic. The key drivers for the transition have been the globalization and the emergence of 'self-acting' transnational finance capital. Under the current system of economic organization, Information has seen increasingly being monopolised, sold and manipulated through restrictive legal regime with a single motive of furthering the profit for transnational corporations. The monopoly rights on the information acts as the key reason behind the ability of the Information technology companies to amass huge wealth and unreasonable profit. These companies are being evaluated in the 'speculative' market rather than based on the real assets helps them to project a highly inflated valuation in the stock market compared to traditional brick and mortar companies. Such speculative evolution and transactions with a disconnect from the real asset and economy leads to the formation of a parallel virtual economy which is vulnerable to the high instabilities and bubble formations.

Please watch the video below for a full presentation on the 'Political Economy of Information Industry'.

Kill the farmers only at our peril!

The sericulture farmers Swami and his wife Vasantha did not kill themselves. We killed them! It is the utmost callousness and the continuing indifference of the Government towards our farmers that made the poor farmer couple from Mandya in Karnataka State loses their precious lives! It is the eagerness of our neo-liberalist ruling ‘robbers’ to surrender our economy at the feet of the western profit mongers that made the three innocent children orphan at such a tender age! We should be ashamed for what happened on the midnight of March 5th, 2011! We are responsible for the untimely death of those two members of the very community that toil day in and day out to ensure we are fed three times a day!

Swami and his family engaged in the sericulture farming, as many other rural poor farmers, taking bank loans. Their own sweat was the only capital they had to initiate the only means of lively hood that majority of our rural populace know about. It was their hope for a better living that came crashing when the finance minister proposed a drastic reduction in the import customs duty on the raw silk and silk products from 30% to a mere 5% in his budget speech. The cocoon price plummeted by almost 1/3rd and along the way it crushed the lives of helpless small-time farmers like Swami! Faced with the grim reality that their crops now wont even enable them to replay the loan, leave alone getting any returns, they expressed their frustration and anger the only way they knew, by giving away their lives.

The blame for the pathetic condition of our farmers should squarely be put on none other than the Government itself. The amount of harm that is being inflicted on every single walk of life in the country , because of the disastrous economic policies aimed at gifting away each and every sector in the country to the western developed market forces for their unlimited profiteering, is beyond imagination. While USA and other developed economies have time and again proved that they will not think twice when it comes to protecting their economies when their own interests are in danger, our own policy makers feel no inhibitions when it comes to opening up our national treasures to these very same forces for looting. Our elitists are rather more than happy to facilitate and collaborate in this massive ‘robbery’ at the very expense of the majority of our toiling masses.

Prevailing concerns regarding the domestic agricultural sector obviously doesn’t confine to the sericulture alone. Farmers and agriculture laborers engaged in each and every crop have been finding the going difficult in the face of the global trade controlled and manipulated by multinational conglomerates coupled with the antagonist attitude of the Government. Government has been doing nothing to protect the domestic agriculture. On the contrary, our ruling elite have been very eager to allow producers from the west to enter the lucrative Indian market. For example, more than 60% of the silk was being produced in Karnataka alone. However, this is rapidly diminishing in the last few years. As cheaper Chinese silk flood the market, the Indian farmers are being driven out of the market and are being forced to move to other crops or migrate to urban areas in search of casual labor. Without fixing a minimum price for their produce, farmers will be left to the mercies of the market fluctuations and deliberate price manipulations by the transnational corporate and the domestic middlemen. Small-time farmers taking the investment risk will be ultimately ruined and will be forced to give up the farming activities all together.

India is the second largest producer of raw silk after China and the biggest consumer of raw silk and silk fabrics. Silk production in countries like Japan, South Korea, Russia etc are steadily declining because of cost of labor as well as specific climatic restrictions that would allow only 2 cocoons a year. India, because of the tropical climate conditions, thus has a distinct advantage of practicing sericulture all through the year, yielding a stream of 4-6 crops annually. In India, sericulture is practiced as a tradition and is a small-scale rural industry that suits rural based farmers and provides income and employment to the rural poor. The benefit-cost ratio in sericulture is highest among comparable agriculture crops, if managed properly. Around 5 million farmers depend on sericulture for their livelihood directly while lives of another 2million depend on it indirectly. Currently the domestic demand is nearly 25000 MT and domestic production is around 18500 MT. The deficit in requirement is met by importing largely from China. It is highly feared that the proposed move to reduce the import duty would help China establish its monopoly in the Indian market and Indian sericulture farming may soon face extinction.

While USA and Europe demand abolition of subsidies in the agriculture in India and other developing and third world countries, they themselves have no inhibition in continuing to protect their agriculture through lavish subsidies and other government funded incentives and raising barriers for imports in one or the other pretext from the third world countries. It must be still fresh in our memories how USA banned the import of raw bananas from the European Union and how the Europe had to resort to fiery fighting in the WTO forum against the ban. It was with an absurd excuse of ‘easily vulnerable to fire’ that the US government imposed ban on the import of Indian silk garments to protect their textile industry. Many African countries have been demanding for years the abolition of agriculture subsidies in Europe and America. It is common knowledge that the free trade in agriculture produces benefits the western economies the most. Dumping such subsidy funded surplus crops in countries like India, sold even at below production cost, destroy the growth of domestic agriculture. UK government spends around 6 billion pound a year on agriculture, forestry and fisheries as direct subsidies. The European Union allocates 31% of its budget to agricultural support under CAP (common agriculture policy) and was set at about 44billion euro in 2010. Continuing protectionist policy of western government to protect their own backyard is no secret at all. Ban on outsourcing in the IT industry by the US government has only been the latest in this long list. Case of cotton is another glaring example. Cotton has been in fact a symbol of inequalities of global agriculture trade. Example of cotton shows clearly how agriculture subsidies by the western countries destroy farmers in the developing countries. Western subsidies have been skewing production levels and prices undermining the income of cotton farmers in developing and third world countries. US subsidies have led to reduction in world cotton prices which have cost countries in Africa millions of dollars in their export earnings. Beginning in the late 70s, USA has been using the VER (voluntary export restraints) to impose import restrictions in many industries. Textile and Steel industries have been the biggest beneficiaries apart from the Oil industry which has always shielded itself from the competition by invoking national security clause.

In the historical process of national development, all of the today’s developed economies have resorted to one or the other form of protectionism to protect their domestic economy. Now that their economies have developed, they switch to preaching of “free trade” to get free access to the unlimited resources and markets of the developing countries should fool none. Sooner the developing countries realize it, the better. If not, the vast majority of the population of these countries will have no option but to raise their voice collectively to make their rulers listen. If a country can not protect its farmers, it has no right to hope for a secure tomorrow.

- Suresh Kodoor

Streets are the cradles of social changes!

Should all the public meetings conducted by the roadsides be banned? Should the political parties be denied the most effective means of reaching out to the people by denying them the access to the place where the mass is most likely to be found? The Supreme Court seems is suggesting so!

On a judgment dismissing the review petition filed by the Kerala state government, the Apex Court has upheld the verdict passed on June 24, 2010 by the Kerala High Court imposing statewide ban on public meetings by the roadsides. The Court also further made an observation wondering why the government had to even approach the Apex Court to reverse the judgment of the lower court when the High Court verdict only strengthened the government’s hands!

Earlier, the Kerala High Court gave the judgment in response to a petition filed by an individual who contented that public meetings caused inconvenience near the railway station area in the Aluva town. However, the High Court had issued a blanket statewide prohibitory order on conducting public meetings and rallies by roadside and suggested that the order was being given to ensure free flow of traffic on public roads and to ensure the safety of the traveling public.

Before coming to the issue of the ban, let us spare a thought or two on the apex court’s observation wondering why in the first place state government has to approach the court when the high court’s order was in fact giving the government more power. This remark has long-term repercussion and should worry anyone concerned with the democracy and citizen’s rights. Is the court trying to suggest that government should be happy with anything that give it more power over its own people? Should the government be happy with any laws that allow it to impose its will over its people? The order implies and legitimizes the fact that the government and its people have to be in the opposite camps! Though the ruling machinery is by and large anti people, the said character is not something that should be welcomed or condoned, but is something that to be treated as an aberration. By very definition, the government in a democracy should be ‘for the people’ and thus it should be more interested to empower the people and not itself. Court’s opining that the government should automatically accept any laws that empower its hands at the expense of people’s rights is worrying to say the least.

It is suggested that public meetings be held at designated places like conference halls, play grounds etc without disturbing the traffic and the people on the public roads by conducting meetings on the roadside. On the surface this may sound like a simple, straightforward, win-win formula for everyone involved. However, once we go a little deeper into the realities on the ground, it will become clear that this issue is not something that should be dealt so simplistically. To start with, there are not enough facilities suitable for holding public meetings in the state of Kerala. Street and corner meetings have been thus an integral part of the political, social and religious activities in the state for long. It had been a continuing practice since decades to hold festivals, processions, political and other public meetings, religious discourses etc by the roadside. This is however only a part of the problem. The crux of the issue is in fact much more fundamental and far reaching. The bigger concern about the ruling is that it is taking away from the hands of progressive forces the most fundamental means of instilling social changes through educating, organizing and orchestrating public upraising against the wrongness in the system.

Reaching out to the masses has never been easy for social reformists and political activists. Mass don’t flock to them. They rather have to reach out to the people, run campaigns and dialogues and raise the consciousness of the people in the process. This exchange happens on the streets. It is this coming together of the people that results in the emergence of the ultimate driving force behind social changes. Any move to close down this very avenue would only be at the risk of cutting down the most critical lifeline of a healthy democracy. It would be a grave ignorance to expect people to always voluntarily gather in the air-conditioned conference halls and designated meeting grounds to get educated and inspired. As the saying goes, if Mohammed doesn’t come to the Mountain, the Mountain has to go to Mohammed! The activists go to the people, not the other way around.

We are living in a time where people, especially the large majority belonging to the middle class, are increasingly becoming self-centric and inward drawn! Added to this, every vested interest having any stake in keeping the status quo in the society spare no effort to keep people away from coming together. The sermon of the era is never to look beyond one’s own affairs. More the people turn their heads away from public issues, the better! Everybody has only one goal in this age of globalization; to win at any cost, even if it is at the expense of the rest. Competition, not the cooperation, is the mantra of the present. Efforts are to destroy even the smallest signs of revolt and resistance. Scheme is to keep people away from any places that can potentially groom resistance and forces of change. Thus, many of the once most active meeting places like libraries, clubs, street corners and community places are slowly disappearing. People are kept out of the street, not by force but by carefully designed market tactics, tying them within the trivialities of life and luring them with the temptations of soap operas, entertainment and reality shows within the comfort of their homes. It is to this mass the activists need to converse. It is this mass who need be turned into soldiers of the army fighting for change. A population passive and slaved to the existing system will be the biggest threat to our democracy. We need a responsive and responsible population to safeguard our democracy. We need them on the streets. Let us not destroy the very cradles of social changes.

Suresh Kodoor