Apart from the vexed economic question of who benefits from it, outsourcing however has become a politically sensitive issue for both the developed and developing countries. I am not going to provide an exhaustive list of the complex problems that envelop the phenomenon. It suffices to say that a welter of issues ranging from racism to gender structuring, bedsides the perplexing economic questions that it raises, permeate current discussions on the topic.(October, 18, Singapore, Sri Lanka Guardian) More than a decade ago, I had an occasion to visit an IT park located in a small village in Kerala, India, adjoining the provincial capital. There were barely more than thirty companies in the Park, none of which had even a semblance of the high profile or staff strength of the IT companies in the post-modernizing techno-polis of the Mega Cities in India such as Bangalore. However, in one of the shop floors I could see several hundred young men and women prolifically copying some data from a thick pile of detached papers or ledgers resting beside them.
When I tried to see the pages they were copying, a long list of European names and addresses met my eyes. Unable to contain my increasing curiosity, I approached the supervisor of the company who was overseeing their work. His answer was a bit shocking at that point in time- he said they were preparing the voters list for the upcoming European parliamentary election. The connection between the small Indian village in a developing peripheral economy and capitalist West entailed in the process of the preparation of voters list for European parliament election by the suburban Indian youth professionals a decade ago is increasingly being understood today as the twin processes of annihilation of time and dematerialization of commerce.
Apart from the vexed economic question of who benefits from it, outsourcing however has become a politically sensitive issue for both the developed and developing countries. I am not going to provide an exhaustive list of the complex problems that envelop the phenomenon. It suffices to say that a welter of issues ranging from racism to gender structuring, bedsides the perplexing economic questions that it raises, permeate current discussions on the topic. The most alarming evidences of the tensions the phenomenon has triggered off come from call centers in Asian countries. A spate of reports point to the increasing incidence of telephone tirades aimed at call center workers involving sexual and racial slurs by North Americans who are reportedly angered by the job losses due to outsourcing.
Addressing the question of technology in Asia is increasingly becoming difficult even though the analytical modes by which we can grasp the leaps and bounds of technical change are ever expanding. We have an accumulated knowledge of what technical change entails although this understanding is far from satisfactory given the complexities of the experiential dimensions of everyday technologies.
The two typical cases of internet café scandals, one from Rawalpindi in Pakistan and another from Guntur in India are illuminating in this regard. Both cases related to illegal digitization of indecent acts at the Cyber Cafés using hidden cameras installed inside the cabins which later appeared on several websites all over the world. Expectedly, the blackmail, publicity and ostracism were devastating for the victims. Scandals involving MMS through mobile phones have rocked the sub continent on several occasions in recent years.
Few years ago, in a coastal village in India I met some fisher folk who were described in international media as beneficiaries of the services of a rural internet kiosk established by a civil society organization with external funding. The kiosk provided them with weather information downloaded from either CNN or US Navy websites. I was not surprised to hear from the fishers that the indigenous knowledge helps them to predict the weather almost accurately and perhaps the information was at best redundant. They are compelled to venture out into the sea disregarding the weather as a consequence of their abject poverty. Technology perhaps only exacerbates the fear for the natural terrors.
Experiential dimensions of convergence technology thus provide a range of interesting scenarios. On the one hand, it appears to us as an enormous opportunity for changing the way in which social and economic organization will be reoriented in future. The extra ordinary enabling capabilities predicted for 4G technologies, for example, present themselves as a set of limitless development of extensibility, mobility, accessibility, speed and convenience. On the other hand, we cannot overemphasize the point that there is a strong sense of ambiguity about what the cumulative and individual impacts of these changes would mean to societies in Asia. It is a pressing economic and social question to be addressed by the Governments, business and the civil society at large.
(The writer is an Assistant Professor, Communication & New Media Programe ,Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences ,National University of Singapore. Email-sreekumartt@gmail.com .)
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