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Backlash not on top-of-mind, media hype is

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CIOL Bureau
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BANGALORE: What do you call an issue that all the speakers in the keynote session of a summit decide to focus on prominently–without exception? Top-of-mind is just a mild adjective to describe the industry’s concern on Indian media focusing on what many of them call not such a big issue.

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In the inaugural session of Nasscom’s ITES-BPO summit in Bangalore, there were only to things common. One of course is the customary tribute to the city of Bangalore. The other–media’s role in highlighting the job loss in the US/UK that is happening because of companies moving processes to India.

Speaker after speaker focused on the issue, though in slightly different ways. The voice of the industry representatives–Kiran Karnik, president of Nasscom and Som Mittal, Chairman of the association–were, expectedly, not that of complaint. They asked the media to "continue cooperating" as they have done always, while reminding them that writing about this issue is not in the best interest of India or the global community.

The two representatives from Karnataka government–the IT secretary Vivek Kulkarni and the minister DB Inamdar–were a little more matter-of- factly. Kulkarni advised the media to treat it as an economic issue, not as a political issue.

Rajiv Ratna Shah, the IT secretary, government of India, was more straightforward. "When the international media reports about this, they start with reference to an article or a news item that has appeared in the Indian media," he said unequivocally. He also echoed Inamdar’s observation that when "you treat this as an economic issue, the advantages of outsourcing to India for all concerned becomes so much more visible."





"It is a choice between not offshoring resulting in the extinction of the company or offshoring. The choice is between all job losses and some job losses," he said.

Vikram Talwar, CEO of EXL Service, while speaking in a similar forum organized by Voice & Data BPOrbit recently had expressed similar views, which were echoed by many other speakers.

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