[Reader-list] The Flight to India

[Kiran Chandran]

The flight to India

The jobs Britain stole from the Asian subcontinent 200 years ago are
now being returned

George Monbiot
Tuesday October 21, 2003
The Guardian

If you live in a rich nation in the English-speaking world, and most of
your work involves a computer or a telephone, don't expect to have a
job in five years' time. Almost every large company which relies upon remote
transactions is starting to dump its workers and hire a cheaper labour
force overseas. All those concerned about economic justice and the
distribution of wealth at home should despair. All those concerned
about global justice and the distribution of wealth around the world should
rejoice. As we are, by and large, the same people, we have a problem.


Britain's industrialisation was secured by destroying the manufacturing
capacity of India. In 1699, the British government banned the import of
woollen cloth from Ireland, and in 1700 the import of cotton cloth (or
calico) from India. Both products were forbidden because they were
superior to our own. As the industrial revolution was built on the textiles
industry, we could not have achieved our global economic dominance if
we had let them in. Throughout the late 18th and 19th centuries, India was
forced to supply raw materials to Britain's manufacturers, but
forbidden to produce competing finished products. We are rich because the
Indians are poor.


Now the jobs we stole 200 years ago are returning to India. Last week
the Guardian revealed that the National Rail Enquiries service is likely to
move to Bangalore, in south-west India. Two days later, the HSBC bank
announced that it was cutting 4,000 customer service jobs in Britain
and shifting them to Asia. BT, British Airways, Lloyds TSB, Prudential,
Standard Chartered, Norwich Union, Bupa, Reuters, Abbey National and
Powergen have already begun to move their call centres to India. The
British workers at the end of the line are approaching the end of the
line.


There is a profound historical irony here. Indian workers can
outcompete British workers today because Britain smashed their ability to
compete  in the past. Having destroyed India's own industries, the East 
India
Company and the colonial authorities obliged its people to speak our 
language,
adopt our working practices and surrender their labour to multinational
corporations. Workers in call centres in Germany and Holland are less
vulnerable than ours, as Germany and Holland were less successful
colonists, with the result that fewer people in the poor world now
speak their languages.


The impact on British workers will be devastating. Service jobs of the
kind now being exported were supposed to make up for the loss of employment
in the manufacturing industries which disappeared overseas in the 1980s
and 1990s. The government handed out grants for cybersweatshops in places
whose industrial workforce had been crushed by the closure of mines,
shipyards and steelworks. But the companies running the call centres appear 
to
have been testing their systems at government expense before exporting them
somewhere cheaper.


It is not hard to see why most of them have chosen India. The wages of
workers in the service and technology industries there are roughly one
tenth of those of workers in the same sectors over here. Standards of
education are high, and almost all educated Indians speak English.
While British workers will take call-centre jobs only when they have no
choice, Indian workers see them as glamorous. One technical support company 
in
Bangalore recently advertised 800 jobs. It received 87,000
applications. British call centres moving to India can choose the most
charming,  patient, biddable, intelligent workers the labour market has to
offer.


There is nothing new about multinational corporations forcing workers
in distant parts of the world to undercut each other. What is new is the
extent to which the labour forces of the poor nations are also
beginning to threaten the security of our middle classes. In August, the 
Evening
Standard came across some leaked consultancy documents suggesting that
at least 30,000 executive positions in Britain's finance and insurance
industries are likely to be transferred to India over the next five
years. In the same month, the American consultants Forrester Research
predicted that the US will lose 3.3 million white-collar jobs between now 
and
2015. Most of them will go to India.


Just over half of these are menial "back office" jobs, such as taking
calls and typing up data. The rest belong to managers, accountants,
underwriters, computer programmers, IT consultants, biotechnicians, 
architects,
designers and corporate lawyers. For the first time in history, the 
professional
classes of Britain and America find themselves in direct competition
with the professional classes of another nation. Over the next few years, we
can expect to encounter a lot less enthusiasm for free trade and
globalisation in the parties and the newspapers which represent them. Free
trade is  fine, as long as it affects someone else's job.


So a historical restitution appears to be taking place, as hundreds of
thousands of jobs, many of them good ones, flee to the economy we
ruined. Low as the wages for these positions are by comparison to our own, 
they
are generally much higher than those offered by domestic employers. A new
middle class is developing in cities previously dominated by caste. Its
spending will stimulate the economy, which in turn may lead to higher
wages and improved conditions of employment. The corporations, of course,
will then flee to a cheaper country, but not before they have left some of
their money behind. According to the consultants Nasscom and McKinsey, India
- which is always short of foreign exchange - will be earning some $17bn
a year from outsourced jobs by 2008.

On the other hand, the most vulnerable communities in Britain are
losing the jobs which were supposed to have rescued them. Almost two-thirds 
of
call-centre workers are women, so the disadvantaged sex will slip still
further behind. As jobs become less secure, multinational corporations
will be able to demand ever harsher conditions of employment in an industry
which is already one of the most exploitative in Britain. At the same
time, extending the practices of their colonial predecessors, they will
oblige their Indian workers to mimic not only our working methods, but also
our accents, our tastes and our enthusiasms, in order to persuade customers
in Britain that they are talking to someone down the road. The most
marketable skill in India today is the ability to abandon your identity and
slip  into someone else's.


So is the flight to India a good thing or a bad thing? The only
reasonable answer is both. The benefits do not cancel out the harm. They 
exist,
and have to exist, side by side. This is the reality of the world order
Britain established, and which is sustained by the heirs to the East India
Company, the multinational corporations. The corporations operate only in 
their
own interests. Sometimes these interests will coincide with those of a
disadvantaged group, but only by disadvantaging another.


For centuries, we have permitted ourselves to ignore the extent to
which our welfare is dependent on the denial of other people's. We begin to
understand the implications of the system we have created only when it
turns against ourselves.

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