Information Society Watch

February 7, 2008, Shyamal Majumdar, Business Standard

Information technology companies have been traditionally excellent paymasters and yearly hikes for employees in this sector have often outperformed other sectors. However, it seems that external pressures like the rising rupee are having significant impact on the growth of IT salaries and a distinct slowdown can be expected.

December 7, 2007, Deccan Herald

Citing pressures of work, long hours, and job insecurity as their reasons, employees in ITES sectors -- including BPOs and call centres -- are increasingly joining employee unions. This article presents some of the findings about industry-employee relations in the BPO sector that are revealed by an independent study by the Strathclyde Business School and IIM-Ahmedabad that surveyed several hundred members of the Union of IT Enabled Services Professionals (UNITES Pro).

2006, Dr. Carol Upadhya, National Institute of Advanced Studies

The IT industry in India is often represented as providing employment opportunities to wider sections of the population than is the case for most managerial, professional, and white collar jobs in other more traditional industries. Support for this claim is based on the assumption that employment in this industry does not depend on social connections (influence) or ascriptive social status, but rather is based entirely on merit. This, together with the spread of higher education (especially engineering colleges) in semi-urban and rural areas, have created new employment opportunities for rural youth, the socially and economically disadvantaged, as well as for women.

September 28, 2007, Indiatimes Infotech

Business process outsourcing (BPO) is fast rising among India's major industries, and this news article describes the government's plan to institute a dedicated health policy for the BPO sector by 2008. Workers in the sector, from call centre operators to IT executives, are suffering from high blood sugar and cholesterol levels, heart attacks in their 20s and 30s, and other health problems caused by the stress of their jobs.

September 7, 2007, Indian Express

Steep and unsustainable high wages have been often criticised as the bane of the Indian IT industry. These wages are attributed to the high costs of living in those cities whose economies run exclusively on IT, thereby making it almost impossible for people in non-IT sectors to afford a decent standard of living.

May 19, 2007, Carol Upadhya, Economic & Political Weekly

The Indian information technology industry is often represented as providing employment opportunities to a wider cross section of society than has been the case with other professional and white collar jobs. However, available data suggest that the social composition of the IT workforce is more homogeneous than is often supposed, in that the workforce is largely urban, middle class, and high/middle caste.

October 14, 2006, Amandeep Sandhu, Economic and Political Weekly

This article argues that call centre employees do not want to be part of trade unions because they associate the latter with “blue-collar workers” and not with their own perceived upward mobility.

2005, Reena Patel , Mary Jane C. Parmentier, MIT Press Journal

As women in India enter the rapidly expanding Information Technology (IT) workforce, it could be predicted that their active participation in this sector will change their socio-economic status within the employing organization and the communities in which they reside. It is often expected that women’s participation in the professional realm will contribute to a breakdown of traditional gender roles. And indeed, the data illustrate that women are working in the IT sector in India in increasing numbers.

May 18, 2007, Times of India

While multinationals are rushing into India to take advantage of the IT boom, one company, Citigroup has decided to put up it's BPO (Citigroup Global Services) up for sale. The company has decided to do this after finding it difficult to keep its costs down, arising out of rising salaries and advertising costs.

April 28 , 2007, Indian Express

Anticipating a slowdown in the US economy, Indian software companies have started to reduce their dependence on the US market and diversify to newer markets. Though some IT companies feel that India might actually stand to benefit from a slowdown, which according to IMF's World Economic Outlook expects US growth rate to fall to 2.2 per cent from 3.3 per cent in 2006.