Information Society Watch

February 13, 2008, Deccan Herald

Mobile blogging is a relatively new activity in India that is still establishing its presence in the online world. The article looks at the growth of this phenomenon and opines that this can become an extremely important generator of content. It also analyses some of the problems that are hindering the expansion of mobile blogging, among which low GPRS penetration is a major one.

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.

February 5, 2008, Kyung Han, Deccan Herald

This article takes a look at the growing role of social media (blogs, for example) in societies like India vis-a-vis the West. It points to three aspects of India's social media from which lessons could be learnt, viz., its use for goodwill and nobler purposes, forging of online relationships and moblogging or blogging from a mobile device such as a cell phone.

Infochange India

The article looks at the growing role being played by social networking websites in promoting causes among the community. A recent example is the Mumbai Unplug campaign which focuses on global warming and attempts to involve people by a token act of switching off electrical appliances for a short while.

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.

October 22, 2007, Harsimran Singh, Indiatimes Infotech

With initial registration beginning in early 2008, Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs) are opening up to the Indian market. The first domain names, available in Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, Punjabi and Sanskrit, aim to promote diffusion and accessibility of the Internet to rural areas, by facilitating websites' use of local languages in domain names as well as content. However, the opening up of IDNs to India also faces many challenges.

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.

2 September 2007, Nishant Shah, The Hindu

Social networking websites, which are the new (virtual) communities of today have become extremely popular recently, especially among the younger generation. However, the tragic deaths of two young people have thrown up larger issues with such relationships forged in cyber worlds and have even led to demands for regulation or censorship of such sites.