Center for Indic Studies Seminar
March 1, 2004
Umass Library Browsing Area
11 - 12 Noon
Video Link Quick Time
Speaker : C.M. Bhandari
Joint Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India
Topic: Business Process Outsourcing Politics Vs. Reality
ABSTRACT:
Can
the businesses survive without BPO? The simple answer is an emphatic No.
Anyone wanting to do otherwise would be committing Hara-kiri. In an effort
to save some jobs from going overseas, they would be rendering their own
businesses and industries uncompetitive and thus killing the goose that laid
golden eggs.
If the world has to move towards globalization in a free and fair market
economy, there is no option to business outsourcing where-ever required. In
India, thousands of businesses have closed because they were rendered
uncompetitive after the opening of the Indian economy from 1991 onwards.
India's textile sector employed hundreds of thousands of people but today,
with state of the art textile mills of gigantic capacities, the old mills of
much smaller capacities and employing a large work-force, have been closed
and these jobs have been abandoned. For, doing otherwise would mean
incurring recurring losses year after year since the produce is unlikely to
sell or the government would be forced to ban imports of cheap textiles from
abroad and deny the consumers value for their money.
The BPO revolution has spread in India because it is not capital intensive.
It is knowledge intensive of which there is no dearth in India. In the past,
if India did not catch up with the rest of the world in industrialization,
it is because that was both technology and capital intensive and it lacked
capital and initially even technology. In the 56 years of our independence,
India now has abundant technology and also sufficient capital resources. It
has therefore been possible for India to exercise required changes in its
economy in a bid to become internationally competitive, and in many
instances complementary to strengths of other nations.
For further information please contact:
Professor BalRam Singh
Tel: 508-999-8588
Email: bsingh@umassd.edu
Video link:
