Kashmir valley opens door to IT

SRINAGAR, INDIA: In a cheerful hall humming with voices, rows of young men and women handle calls from irate cellphone subscribers in eastern India in perfect Hindi.

It could be an outsourcing center in Bangalore or Hyderabad. But this is insurgency-scarred Kashmir, where association with India has always been regarded with suspicion.

As call centers go, the 230-seat office in a run-down industrial quarter of Kashmir's summer capital, Srinagar, is small compared with offices that pack in up to 3,000 workers in India's big cities.

The center, run by Essar Group's business processing arm, AEGIS, is the first of its kind in the region.

But if the steady stream of 25 to 30 youth who show up at the office each day looking for jobs is any gauge, the rapid growth of India's giant economy is finally exerting a pull on the troubled Kashmir Valley, the heartland of a 22-year revolt.

Over the next few months AEGIS will  add another 270 seats, employing up to a thousand shift workers. Its executives, many of them Kashmiris who have worked in Indian towns and abroad, say it is only the beginning, given the opportunities exploding in one of the world's fastest growing economies.