Hewitt Lets Side Down

Interesting perspective on Hewitt's recent bumbling in the HoC entitled "Bodyline Blows to Indian BPOs" by one Rashmee Ahmed.

Bodyline Blows to Indian BPOs

RASHMEE Z AHMED

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

SATURDAY, JANUARY 24, 2004 08:55:53 PM

As befits the people who invented cricket, it's hardly surprising the British have appeared magnificently fair-minded so far about the haemorrhage of call-centre jobs to India. But never forget their other invention, bodyline bowling.

England's 1932-33 'bodyline tour' of Australia caused such a stir Down Under that historians soberly classed it as a pivotal moment in the young country's evolving sense of nationhood. For England, it was a way of trumping the colonial upstarts at their own game. This they did, with ease and vehemence.

Something similarly insidious, almost unsportsmanlike may now be underway in the former Empire's sober but 'high-minded' race to secure – and keep – call centre jobs on the British Isles.

The faultline is quality. Or rather the alleged lack of it from Indian call centres. Expect to hear more on these lines from British government ministers. "On the issue of quality, some of my honourable friends know that Littlewoods recently announced that it is moving its call centre operation back from India to the UK in order to secure its required quality of customer service". The speaker was Britain's Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt and she was answering parliamentary questions on Thursday from MPs exercised about the flight of jobs from their constituencies to India.

Politically-charged or not, it is an undoubted coup for Britain's harried workers so suddenly to recover jobs they thought had forever disappeared overseas. That too, because the Indians come across as incompetent. They were, it seems, just not up to dealing with the grey world of British catalogue-shopping by people with a low credit rating and an insatiable thirst for consumer goods.

Barely a fortnight ago, an independent industry report by a British analyst, metaphorically shook its head over the Indians' inability to match the British standard of excellence.

So to Ms Hewitt and her bodyline blows. She added: "I am also clear that we can protect people in this country without resorting to the protectionism that the honourable gentleman seems to want. We will go on growing call centre jobs and other good jobs in our country by competing on quality and skills, not on costs".

Geddit anyone? The Indians have a fair chance to compete. Britain won't quibble over India's main advantage - low wages. Shame about the quality though. Can't do much about the cultural differences, the unbridgeable divide.

Unlike their trans-Atlantic cousins, the British are not about to legislate against out-sourcing, off-shoring, the whole caboodle described at Davos by Morgan Stanley chief economist Stephen Roach as "global labour arbitrage". That is, the phenomenon of high-wage jobs in the developed world metamorphosing into low-wage jobs in the developing world. But in the interests of fair play, London will stand up for quality, for standards, the mark of excellence, the very gold standard of corporate care.

Is it only me, or could one almost hear the refrain go up from the green benches of the House of Commons: "And England's fair, and Honour a name". But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks: "Play up! Play up! And play the game!"

It would seem then that even feisty, arrogant Sheilas can't please/fool all of the people all of the time (though obviously Mr Ahmed has been well and truly taken in by the 'airs and graces of UK establishment' routine).

New Dawn