The Indian BPO professional has never felt as threatened by the world as now, and mind you, this has nothing to do with protesting crowds in front of state legislatures in far away Ohio or Indiana; no, this is all because of Channel 4.
Channel 4 who, or rather what? Well, this guardian of truth, the harbinger of liberty, has unleashed an 'unpleasant' truth on the world: India's not a safe place with your private information. And to prove this point, it uses a technique so the rage nowadays: a 'sting' operation. I wonder who got stung and by whom.
Channel 4 journalists are all set to reveal how a couple of unsavoury miscreants endeavoured and actually were ready to arrange for private and personal details of British citizens, collected by a BPO in India in the course of its interactions with them. Such details are by law required to be kept absolutely confidential, and only revealed if the individual concerned has no objection to it, and has explicitly stated so. So, clearly someone's breaking the law. Fine, bring out the guillotine, we have work to do.
But hold a second. Is Channel 4 insinuating that BPOs worldwide suffer from such problems, or is India the only culprit? Has Channel 4 conducted a sting in all countries wherein BPOs are located, and evaluated the standards of information management therein, and if so, what are the results? By results, I don't just mean India's; rather I am keen to see where India stands vis-a-vis the rest of the world. Because I refuse to accept that India is the only devil in this piece.
I mean, in the US, 148 cases of theft worth over $33 billion was reported last year. Worldwide, a French company has calculated frauds worth something like $60 billion. When these notables have shown their worth, surely one cannot grudge India her faults? I do not seek to be jingoistic or even suggest that the world is against India, and this is all part of a grand conspiracy to derail her progress in the world order. Hardly, because it don't make no difference to India.
But if Channel 4's only investigated India's BPOs and primarily because they happened to be in India, then I have reason to question the motives of the channel. Benevolent reporting is quite one thing, and malevolent mud-slinging is a different matter altogether. And mind you, this sting doesn't directly interact with a single BPO; rather it bases its conclusions on its interactions with two middlemen, men of questionable repute. I could advertise that I was in possession of such data, but that doesn't mean anything, does it? And hackers can hack into any secure system; so who's to say that these infamous gentlemen don't subscribe to the anarchist tendency of keeping all information open for all to see?
I may be wrong, maybe these allegations, these charges are true. If there be even an iota of truth in them, let those who have brought infamy on this sunshine industry be punished, and stricter control mechanisms put in place. Let us show to the world that we will not tolerate such nonsense, not now when we are seeking to conquer the world.
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