In dictator Museveni's Uganda, the 'best' education is the military one -- how to use AK47, etc., at Kyankwazi!
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>From: "Mitayo Potosi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>To: undisclosed-recipients: ;
>Subject: ugnet_: The Dark Side of the Outsourcing Revolution
>Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 02:27:06 +0000
>
>The Outsourcing Revolution.
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
>India now produces 60% more engineers and scientists than the USA.
>And what scares the shit out of the USA is that they are even
>smarter.
>
>Over 7 years ago we were crying here on this net, to Hon J NKuuhe
>and our very beloved Higher Education Minister, Hon Dr Abel
>Rwendeire, to change/overhaul Uganda's curricula.
>
>i.e.
>
>1. Introduce Triple Maths in all schools - including 'Discrete
>Maths'.
>
>2. Throw away the old crazy Biology where teaching was that "a tree
>consists of three parts: the leaves, the stem and the roots", and
>replace it with a new Biology that prepares students for the new
>world of molecular Biology.
>
>3. Introduce basic computer science.
>
>4. Get the whole country, from m7 downwards to zero in on this
>National effort.
>
>I sent them Canadian up-to-date syllabi for Maths, Bio, Comp Sc,
>etc.... to compare with. I even sent some to Teachers' college -
>Kyambogo.
>
>But the Church/Mosque wanted more timetable slots for religion
>instead. They made Hon Rwendeire a political liability to m7, and he
>was moved from Education to Industry.
>
>Now we hear Uganda is banking on sending all her children to go
>abroad to wash latrines - 'kyeyo'.
>
>As was mentioned then, with an exceptionally trained workforce, tons
>of jobs and billions of $ will always flow to Uganda. It is still
>true today.
>
>Maybe it is time to take stock and see how we are doing!!
>
>Mitayo Potosi
>____________________________________________________
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>
>The Dark Side of the Outsourcing Revolution
>
>By Naeem Mohaiemen, AlterNet
>January 25, 2004
>
>Two years ago, I lost my credit card on a trip. Dialing the American
>Express 800 number, I asked the polite customer rep to read the list
>of recent charges. As she went through each charge, I noticed
>something familiar about the way she said words like "Duane Reade"
>and "Blockbuster."
>
>"Excuse me," I interrupted. "Where are you?"
>
>"Oh, we're the American Express Call Center in Bangalore, India,"
>she replied.
>
>Over the coming months, I started noticing this phenomenon more
>often. When I called AOL trying to cancel my account for the fifth
>time, the helpful woman giving instructions was in India. Palm
>Pilot's "Level 1" help desk seemed to be in America, but when they
>were stymied and bumped me to "Level 2," an unmistakably Indian
>voice came on. Recently, I even started getting sales calls hawking
>credit cards from India.
>
>A few months back, a new pattern began to emerge. Suddenly, the
>customer service reps weren't eager to divulge where they were from.
>"Oh, we're not allowed to disclose location," said one nervous
>voice. It was very cloak and dagger. Maybe it's some new security
>measure, I thought to myself.
>
>Then the New York Times article, titled "We're From Bangalore (But
>We're Not Allowed To Tell You)" revealed all. Indian call centers
>now had to acquire American accents and generic Anglo names,
>displaying a new-found nervousness in the face of an incipient
>backlash: Dell was closing its Indian call center in the face of
>protests; New Jersey was trying to pass a bill blocking outsourcing
>to India; and an angry Indiana politician huffed, "I represent
>Indiana, not India!"
>
>All Roads Lead to India
>
>India is at the red-hot center of the Outsourcing Revolution. Thirty
>percent of all new Information Technology (IT) work for U.S.
>companies is now done abroad, mostly in India. McKinsey Consulting
>estimated that three countries received $20 billion in outsourcing
>revenue from the U.S. in 2002: Ireland ($8.3 billion), India ($7.7
>billion) and Canada ($3.7 billion). Analysts forecast that by 2008
>Indian IT services and back-office support will grow to a $57
>billion a year industry with four million workers.
>
>International multinationals have had offices in India for almost a
>decade, and they include Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Intel, IBM,
>Cisco, Motorola, HP, Oracle, Yahoo, Ernst & Young, HSBC, and, of
>course, the trailblazer in "discovering" India, Microsoft. But
>Indian offices whose main business is outsourced work from the U.S.
>are a relatively new phenomenon. Recent high profile firms include
>MphasiS, which processed tax returns of 20,000 Americans this year
>(analysts predict that 200,000 U.S. tax returns will be processed in
>India next year). Then there is OfficeTiger, which employs 1,200
>people to do research and analysis for eight Wall Street firms.
>Finally, GE Capital's four Indian centers design statistical models,
>prepare data for GE annual reports, write software, and process $35
>billion of global invoices
>
>India dominates outsourced IT, accounting and financial services.
>Ambitious firms have now expanded to food-stamp paperwork, auto
>engineering, drug research, airline industry and work for the U.S.
>Postal Service. India has two key strengths: hundreds of thousands
>of technology graduates each year and the use of English at all
>stages of education. Armed with this combination, India's potential
>is huge as knowledge-based service work expands. China dominates in
>manufacturing, which is only 14 percent of the U.S. economy. By
>contrast, the service industry, where India has laid its stake,
>makes up 60 percent of the U.S. economy.
>
>White Collar Labor Wars
>
>Of course U.S. firms are not outsourcing work out of benevolent
>desire to help Indian workers. These new moves come in an
>ever-expanding desire to cut costs and increase profit margins. The
>stage is set for a struggle between western and Asian white-collar
>labor. Just as the success of H-1B visa workers during the Internet
>boom led to an anti-immigrant backlash, the outsourcing revolution
>faces its own pushback.
>
>Critics argue that every time a project is outsourced, jobs are lost
>in the United States. Estimates vary from a projected loss of
>600,000 jobs by 2005 (Forrester Research) to 2 million by 2008
>(Deloitte). But it is also impossible to calculate how much of these
>job losses are also an effect of the overall recession.
>
>As anger builds over claims of lost jobs, American unions have
>emerged as aggressive opponents of outsourcing, and their rhetoric
>often displays thinly disguised xenophobia. Even inside the U.S.,
>unions create their own hegemonies, often leaving
>immigrant-dominated industries out in the cold. When it comes to a
>globalized labor market, "workers of the world unite" is not their
>motto. TechsUnite.org (CA), Alliance of Technology Workers (WA) and
>Rescue American Jobs have all been pushing politicians to pass "Buy
>American" legislation to limit federal agencies from sending jobs
>overseas. In New Jersey and Indiana, bills to outlaw shifting state
>jobs overseas were narrowly defeated. Maryland, Michigan and North
>Carolina are planning similar legal battles in the future. Incessant
>complaints about "bad service" and "strange accents" forced Dell
>Computers to shut down one of its call centers in India,
>representing a major victory for the "America First" lobby.
>
>A Dilemma for the Left
>
>The traditional left has been caught off-guard by the outsourcing
>debate. It is very hard to make the argument that Indians are being
>exploited. Studies show that jobs in outsourcing firms are some of
>the most highly sought-after, and often pay much more than jobs
>servicing the local economy. There is still a knee-jerk reaction
>among Indians, reflected in editorials that deride these workers as
>"cyber-coolies."
>
>But does that jargon apply everywhere? As hordes of freshly minted
>IIT graduates put on their starched white shirts, or crisp
>salwar-kameez, and march into brand-new "cyberpark" offices in
>Bangalore, are they really anybody's "coolies?"
>
>Not everyone accepts the unions' arguments. In England, George
>Monbiot in the Guardian applauded the irony of the new power
>structure: "Britain's empire is striking back. Former colonies have
>found a silver lining in the bitter legacy of conquest: English, the
>language of former masters, is a competitive advantage in the global
>economy." After Norwich Union sent one of their centers overseas, a
>spirited debate erupted on the BBC website. From London, Theresa Law
>wrote, "Give me an intelligent, well-educated, polite Indian on the
>end of a telephone handling my customer queries, over an ignorant,
>rude, unhelpful and unwilling British call handler any day!" In
>reply to numerous e-mails about "stolen jobs," Henry wrote, "What a
>breathtaking display of economic illiteracy and downright racism.
>Why shouldn't people in India have a crack at earning a decent
>living if they can do it more effectively than can be done in the
>UK?"
>
>Outsourcing is an incredibly complex economic and ethical issue,
>with winners and losers on both sides. Yes, why shouldn't Indians
>(and by extension, my native Bangladesh) have a chance to improve
>their living standards through hard work? On the other hand, as
>thousands of jobs are lost in the West during the present recession,
>much of the blame will fall on outsourcing. But free trade means the
>flow goes both ways. If the West demands open access to global
>markets for its exports, doesn't the Third World have the right to
>demand free access to labor markets?
>
>Finally, the unions need to make the connection between outlandish
>CEO salaries and lost jobs. Outsourcing is not the only reason for
>all worker woes. To take one recent example, if Boeing were to ever
>open a factory in India, many would scream about "lost jobs." But
>aren't far more jobs going to be lost to cover the damage from the
>Pentagon contract kickback scandal, which has already led to the
>resignation of Boeing's CEO?
>
>The Human Face of a Global Economy?
>
>In this ongoing debate, a startling new entry is a multimedia
>theater piece "Alladeen," now touring the U.S. after a successful
>run in England. Produced by England's Motiroti and multimedia
>wizards Builders Association, the play is an antidote to media
>stories about faceless Indians taking jobs away.
>
>Call centers are the Ground Zero of the outsourcing debate. Because
>western customers have to interact directly with an operator in
>India, all of the coded racism, and anxieties come boiling to the
>surface. In previous recessions, similar misdirected hostilities
>targeted H-1B visas, green card holders and other shades of new
>immigrants. But because the targets were inside the country and able
>to lobby for their own rights, demonizing was not easy (witness the
>death of California's Prop. 187).
>
>In this new battle, the targets are in a distant high-tech call
>center – which makes it much easier to scapegoat and destroy. There
>is a subtle interplay of racism in this whole debate. Would
>outsourcing be a political hot potato if the jobs were going to
>Norway, Israel or Portugal? In fact, no one complains about job loss
>to Ireland, even though it is the global leader in outsourcing.
>
>"Alladeen" tackles this issue head-on. Through a combination of
>actors, simultaneous video displays, computer screens and taped
>video footage from a real-life Indian call center, the play breaks
>through the clutter of economic and ideological debates. Finally,
>the anonymous Indian at the far-away call center is given a voice, a
>name and a life. We see what is created, and also what is lost.
>
>Alternating skillfully between documentary footage and
>re-enactments, "Alladeen" takes the audience through the life cycle
>of a call center. We start with the training sessions, where eager
>Indian graduates are told to neutralize "mother tongue influence." A
>white supervisor explains that Indians always say "w" for "v" and
>then patronizingly adds to one candidate, "There's no extra marks
>for going fast. I'm not going to give you a chocolate bar." Just as
>Indians rote-memorize scientific facts in high school, these
>trainees memorize city names, to "switch on and off" American
>accents and learn cultural facts ("potatoes are important in
>Montana"). Overhead projectors are used to explore football ("the
>pork skin"), baseball ("a model of sacrifice") and TV shows that tap
>into the zeitgeist of a city ("Ally McBeal" for Chicago, 'Buffy' for
>California and 'Friends' for New York).
>
>Later, each freshly minted trainee will channel their favorite
>"Friends" character. But are they creating an illusion for the
>caller, or living in a dream world of their own? One where they live
>on "Central Perk West?" In this phase of cultural globalization,
>"being American" is a job requirement – even if some "real"
>Americans want nothing to do with you.
>
>As the trainees become more confident, they deal with stoned
>callers, buck-naked pranksters and suspicious matrons. Internet
>websites flash trivia about the callers' hometown, and eagle-eyed
>supervisors monitor every call – all is perfectly calibrated to give
>the caller the impression they are dialing their neighborhood call
>center, and talking to a cheerful Phoebe, Monica or Chandler.
>
>But all contradictions are laid bare when "Phoebe" receives a call
>from an Indian-American from Redwood City. Even though she
>recognizes a fellow Indian, protocol demands that she lie and say
>"I'm in New York City." Discovering that the man is a software
>engineer, Phoebe tries to ask him about life in America.
>
>Disguised half-questions are blurted out in the tiny window of
>opportunity before the call ends. Finally, desperately trying to
>semaphore her own situation, Phoebe blurts out, "But is it easy
>there? I mean what if you were Indian?"
>
>"My dear!" comes the puzzled reply, "I am Indian!"
>
>Alladeen's most poignant moments are in two real-life documentary
>clips. In one segment, the Bangalore call center operators are
>asked, if they had one wish, what would it be. The answers come
>rushing out: To be "handsome," "rich," "five inches taller,"
>"married." But one exhausted operator, who talks earlier about the
>grind of the midnight shift, can only look at the camera and say, "I
>wish this were a nine-six shift!"
>
>In the other segment, an operator named Aarthi Angelo talks about
>the endless quest to hide Indian accents: "People are so sensitive
>to accents. Especially after the World Trade Center incident, people
>started asking me, are you Muslim? You know, we've been taught to
>transcend barriers of caste and religion. But here we had to answer
>that question." Then after a pause, she adds, "Even Muslims had to
>say, no we're not Muslims!"
>
>Outsourcing will continue to be debated at union meetings, political
>rallies, Senate chambers, Fortune 500 seminars and journal pages.
>Yet, Alladeen succeeds in painting a picture that is often missing
>from this debate over globalization. The show puts a human face on a
>complex economic system, highlighting both the gain and loss for
>each human player.
>
>The last word goes to Simon, another visitor to the BBC website:
>"What we are seeing is capitalism working in a totally uneven
>playing field and it will carry on until the playing field is evened
>out. That is going to be a long and painful process and the world
>simply isn't going to be able to support its entire population at
>the standard of living we would like to continue to enjoy."
>
>Naeem Mohaiemen is a historian, media activist, and the editor of
>Shobak, a magazine devoted to South Asian issues. Additional
>research for this article was provided by Udayan Chattyopadhyay.
>
>Mitayo Potosi
>
>cc Ronald Kayanja - Aloppe, Syria
>
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