[Reader-list] George Monbiot: The flight to India (The Guardian)

[geert lovink]

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.