Media Vichar Manch

Of Roman slave ships, Kiran Karnik and call centers

I did not expect this kind of reaction to my story on call centers in Hindustan Times (Oct 24 and 25). The mighty information technology industry of India appeared rattled on Monday evening press conference.

"Have they gone and seen how a Roman slave ship looks like?" thundered normally-cool looking Kiran Karnik, the boss at Nasscom at a hurriedly called press conference of 'select' journalists to clarify the position regarding my report in Hindustan Times on labour practices in call centers.

"How can they write such things, when we have contributed so much to the real estate boom in the country?" reasoned another bigwig of the BPO industry. "We are getting invitations from presidents of Romania, South Africa, come and do the same thing here. And within the country, we are being criticised", argued yet another IT ceo specially called to brief the friendly press. Most of the house - barring the reporters from the Hindu, ToI, IE and myself - nodded in silence, taking down quotable quotes from their hosts.

"We follow law of the land", declared Karnik. I interjected "you have been expempted from following labour laws of the land, so how can you say you follow law of the land". But, Karnik said, that is legal. We have been legally allowed not to follow labour laws of the land!!!

"Tell me do media houses have better working conditions?" was another gem from Karnik, which the 'press' gladly took and responded.

"We have not seen the report. But we know it is bad" - it is surprising that Nasscom with all the resources at its command could not get a copy of the report from the labour institute. It was clear that the labour issue has touched raw nerve of the IT industry. Even when there were highly damaging sting operations on identity theft, they did not call a press conefernce but only issued a brief statement. Not even there was half a million dollar fraud in Pune. That time Ramadorai, who was heading nasscom at that time, did not even consider it an industry issue.

One thing is clear - the IT industry likes a friendly press, a press that keeps feeding the same old story of India being an IT superpower in the making. Clearly, PR agencies of all hues are doing a roaring business in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Delhi. Anything that is unpalatable is not only rejected by the industry but also by the "kept" press. I know news values have changed a lot, but did not know that the new equation is news =pr =advertising!

More than the industry response, the press reaction has saddened me.

posted by Dinesh C Sharma @ 4:47 PM