- In a number of states and in the American Congress, legislation
is being advanced, usually under the deliberately misleading heading of
the "consumer's right to know," to restrict the ability of companies
and government agencies to use call centers abroad. The legislation is
nothing less than the kind of non-tariff barrier so castigated by the same
American legislators when one appears in another land. The legislation
dangerously plays to the considerable xenophobia found in America.
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- John Kerry is a leading figure in this enlightened effort
to close off opportunity to ambitious Third World countries. Were the same
principles somehow to be applied to the products of American corporations,
there wouldn't be any merchandise left on the country's shelves. Most domestic
shipping would close down because American merchant ships are virtually
all flagged in foreign ports to excuse them from taxes and regulations.
Hollywood would close since most of its films are shot anywhere but Hollywood.
As the Internet becomes a truly international method for exchanging information
and commerce, instead of one dominated by Americans who because of their
wealth were first in with a large population of computers, you will unquestionably
see politicians like Kerry seeking to limit it, too.
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- It is a globalized world, and that is not a slogan. Since
Elizabethan times at least a remarkable economic process has been underway,
changing society and its institutions throughout the advanced world. The
scale of economic production and its associated trade has grown from craftsmen
in the homes of tiny villages to specialized factories in growing cities;
then to regional firms and to great national corporations and retail chains.
Now these changes move inexorably to world-scale, bringing with them the
benefits of economic growth to regions of the world long frozen in poverty
and ancient custom. So long as this change is fairly administered by a
parallel growth in international treaties, laws, and organizations, it
will gradually and peacefully bring the same benefits to dark corners of
the world that it brought to dark corners of America.
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- Narrow-minded American legislators bore considerable
responsibility for the sustained nature of the Great Depression with the
foolish Smoots-Hawley bill unilaterally limiting trade. Unenlightened American
trade restrictions against the ambitions of Japan as it entered the modern
era helped push that country eventually to attacking the United States.
With globalization an important part of the world's economic landscape
through this century, comparably selfish efforts by American legislators
can produce comparably destructive results.
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- The call-center legislation will affect a number of countries,
especially India, a country using its relatively high proportion of educated
people and sizeable pool of English speakers as comparative advantages
in new businesses like global call centers. Indian companies have adopted
the practice of training their employees to speak with an American accent.
Employees also typically adopt simple American names rather than spend
several minutes of each call trying to explain names like Chandrascar or
Gojsumal.
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- Under the legislation, those calling from outside the
United States will not only have to identify themselves accurately but
to offer the person being called an opportunity to transfer to an American
call center. This is particularly interesting coming, as it does, in a
country where felons are often the people handling your business on the
telephone and whose legislators generously tolerate a huge home-grown population
of con artists and chiselers. One can just imagine some of the calls that
will hum across the planet under the legislation.
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- ______
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- In a call center in Bangalore, India, an attractive young
man speaks into his headset. Above him in his tiny cube is a framed copy
of his degree in engineering, opportunities in a developing country like
India fully to use your education being very limited. He speaks American-style
English with a reasonably good accent, having been trained in it.
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- "Hello, Mrs. Jones, I am calling you about an important
new opportunity."
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- "Whatcha sayin'?"
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- "I'm calling about a new opportunity"
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- "Could a swore ya said ya was callin' 'bout some
damn community. I ain't interested in no communities, that's fur sure."
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- "That's fine, Mrs. Jones, in a minute I'll be glad
to explain about the opportunity. First, though, I have to inform you,
in keeping with new legislation in America, that I'm calling from Bangalore,
India."
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- "Huh? Ya callin' 'bout bingo in Indiana?"
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- "Sorry, Mrs. Jones, no, that's Bangalore, B-A-N-G-A-L-O-R-E,
in India."
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- "Never heard of it."
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- "That's okay, Mrs. Jones, as I was saying, in keeping
with new legislation in America, my name is Yogesh. "
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- "I ain't got time ta be guessin' no names."
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- "Yo-gesh, Mrs. Jones, Yogesh Vajpayee is my name,
Mrs. Jones."
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- "Hold on there. What the hell kinda name is that?
You ain't no 'merican are ya?"
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- "That's right, Mrs. Jones, I'm calling from India,
and I am obliged to ask you if you would prefer that I transfer this call
to an American call center?"
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- "Well, a course, why'd ya think I wanna be talkin'
to some guy with a weird name like yours callin' from some damn place I
never hearda?"
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- "Okay, Mrs. Jones, I am now transferring you. This
may take a few minutes. So you hang on. Very nice speaking with you."
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- Mrs. Jones waits, holding the phone, muttering about
foreigners.
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- In a large, dingy room of a privately-run Texas medium-security
prison, one of dozens of prisoners working for a subcontractor of the company
running the prison, a man with a long purplish scar on one side of his
face and cigarette dangling between chubby, yellowed fingers, receives
the call and grunts into his headset. On the computer screen in front of
him, Mrs. Jones credit rating comes up along with her address and other
personal information.
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- "That Mrs. Jones? The name's Jake."
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- "God, it's nice hearin' a real 'merican."
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- "Yeah, I know jus' what ya mean there, Mrs. Jones.
T'aint much fun tryin' ta figure out what some monkey from Iraq is yakkin'
'bout."
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- Jake takes a long drag on his cigarette, smiles at a
grotesquely-pornographic photograph taped to his keyboard, and scratches
his shaved head.
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- "I'm callin' ya for Jerry Franklin."
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- "Jerry Franklin? Why God bless, what a fine Christian
man!"
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- Jake takes another big drag on his cigarette and scratches
the crotch of his orange prison jump suit, war-on-terror surplus the private
prison contractor obtained from the Pentagon.
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- "Sure 'nuff is. Well, M'am, they all got somethin'
for ya"
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- "Somethin' fur me?"
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- "Yup. Jerry's askin' folks like you if they got
themselves focused on Eternity?"
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- "Oh, you jus' tell Jerry, I sure am."
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- "Yes'am. Jerry figures good Christian folk got special
needs."
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- "Well, I s'pose they do."
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- "Jerry's thinkin' what with the End a comin'"
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- "Oh, he's right 'bout that, ya can sure tell when
yer gettin' foreigners botherin' ya at home an' all."
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- "Well, he jus' thought maybe ya was interested in
some in-surance. Ya know, ta leave somethin' fur those lef' behind after
the Battle of Armageddon an' the Rapture an' all."
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- "In-surance? I ain't interested in no damn in-surance."
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- There's a loud click, and Jake's left with a hum on the
line, but it only lasts a second or two, as another call is transferred
from Bangalore.
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