For India's Youth, New Money Fuels A Revolution
BOMBAY, India -- Late at night, Nisha Kalro goes to work dialing Americans and urging them to pay their overdue credit-card bills. Her family finds her career choice unsettling. "There are still people who do not know what a call center is and have the wrong impression," says Ms. Kalro's mother, Sheela, adjusting her red-and-black sari. In her day, she says, women who worked at night were presumed to be call girls, not call-center workers.
To Nisha, 25 years old, her family is stuck in an outdated India of arranged marriages, excessive deference and rigid notions of fate. "What my parents want is simple; it's for me to get married," says Ms. Kalro. "But marriage and me will never mix."
As outsourced jobs pour into India, they are bringing much more than money to this nation of one billion. They are also creating a young, affluent class absorbing Western attitudes at the office, far from parental supervision. The independence of these twentysomethings is helping to unravel time-honored social mores in India, where young people are expected to marry someone their parents choose and live with an extended family. The idea of women working at night was unthinkable until recently.
The social shifts go hand-in-hand with huge economic change. Ms. Kalro's parents grew up under a socialist-inspired system that kept out foreign goods and stifled competition. There were only two brands of car, a new telephone line meant a yearlong wait, and state-run television ruled the airwaves. Starting in 1991, India dismantled the system, and a flood of imported products followed -- from cellphones to Ford Motor Co. sport-utility vehicles to eagerly awaited broadcasts of "Friends." Foreign companies began sending jobs here to take advantage of less-expensive labor.
With all of it came foreign attitudes and behavior. Young people such as Ms. Kalro prefer to spend, not save. They chat on cellphones, buy using credit cards, zip around on motorcycles and eat out at restaurants or cafes. And they are targeted relentlessly by companies that have long waited to see India develop a Western-style consumer class.
"I call these kids 'liberalization children,' " says Rama Bijapurkar, a Bombay-based marketing consultant who sits on the board of Indian software giant Infosys Technologies. "This generation has a hunger in the belly for achievement and all the good things money can buy."
India's economy is set to grow at least 7% this year through March, thanks to a resurgent manufacturing industry and a sizzling service sector. Some parts of the economy are expanding far faster, including consumer lending and the outsourcing industry, which runs the gamut from software development to call centers to claims processing.
The changes aren't happening everywhere. Agriculture dominates the vast countryside. Large parts of the country are mired in poverty. And India continues to be closed in certain ways: Foreign retailers still aren't allowed to invest in the country, for example.
But each month, the outsourcing wave gathers up more upwardly mobile young people, from Bombay and New Delhi to Bangalore and lesser-known Indian cities. More than 170,000 people work in the $2.3 billion call-center and back-office industry. Another half-million are employed in information technology.
Nowhere is the cultural transformation more intense than among call-center workers, mostly in their 20s, who spend their nights working for companies such as American Express Co., Dell Inc. and Citigroup Inc. The centers largely recruit fresh graduates from India's colleges or technical schools, looking for outgoing English speakers willing to work nights.
For many young people, especially women, call-center work means money, independence and an informal environment where they can wear and say what they like. Along with training in American accents and geography, India's legions of call-center employees are absorbing new ideas about family, material possessions and romance.
Frederick Hamilton, a manager at Wipro Spectramind, India's largest call-center company, says the father of a young female employee recently came to him with suspicions that she was secretly dating someone at the office. "He said, 'Her values have changed, and I blame it on this business,' " recalls Mr. Hamilton. "Parents think they've brought up their children well, with conservative values -- and a year later they come back hip."
Nikesh Soares, who worked at Wipro last year, was a "little gentleman" before he got into the call-center business a little over three years ago, according to his mother, Alisha. He wore button-down shirts and refused to wear sandals, even in Bombay's sultry weather. He wouldn't watch Hollywood movies because of all the "sex and smooching," he says. He knew exactly the kind of woman he was going to marry: demure and old-fashioned.
Today, the 29-year-old Mr. Soares says, "The only thing that hasn't changed is my haircut."
His outlook began to change when he joined eFunds, a Bombay call center, in 2000. Each night, he answered calls from Americans responding to infomercials, selling them tummy crunchers, diet pills, miniature rotisseries and orthopedic insoles. The $220-a-month salary -- more than double his wages at previous jobs -- was a revelation, as was the company of fun-loving colleagues his own age.
Telling his mother he had to work late, he and his friends headed for all-night bars and drank until dawn before stumbling home for a few hours' sleep. "Girls do it also," he says. "They say they're working when they're actually out with their boyfriends."
Mr. Soares married one of those girls, Sophia D'Souza, who sat in the next cubicle and didn't hesitate to strike up a conversation. With an independent streak and a preference for jeans, she is neither demure nor old-fashioned. "My friends all say, 'Nikesh, what happened? We thought you wanted someone traditional,' " he laughs.
In a culture where women rarely wear shorts or skirts above the knee, the work itself was an eye-opener. Mr. Soares and his future wife found themselves fielding calls from people who wanted to buy "Girls Gone Wild," a hit video featuring scantily clad or topless young women frolicking on vacation. One night, a father called from the U.S. to buy the video as a birthday present for his college-age son, something Mr. Soares could never imagine an Indian parent doing.
Outside the office, it was a different world. When Mr. Soares picked up his wife on his motorbike at the end of the shift, sometimes the police stopped them and asked what they were doing out so late.
Ms. D'Souza saw colleagues shear off their long hair and trade traditional salwar kameez -- a loose-fitting tunic over pants -- for tight tops. When Mr. Soares announced that he and Sophia were getting married, he told his mother that they planned to buy an apartment and live on their own, despite her strenuous objections. His mother had assumed they'd all live together, as her extended family did when she was a child.
With Mr. Soares and his wife each earning about $250 a month, the couple secured a loan to buy a simple but sunny two-bedroom apartment in one of Bombay's far-flung suburbs.
In the U.S., "there is this idea that at 18 years old, you go out, work, and parents don't interfere," says Mr. Soares, who like most call-center workers has never left India. "I think that is very excellent."
To his mother, it felt like abandonment. "I felt a part of my life was gone," she says. She also faces the possibility of losing another son: Mr. Soares's 18-year-old brother also works at a call center and is becoming more independent.
Arundhati Roy, a novelist and activist in India, sounds a broader concern. Call centers, she argues, strip young Indian workers of their cultural identities -- by making them use American names on the phone, for example. Ms. Roy wrote in India's Outlook magazine in 2000 that the centers show "how easily an ancient civilization can be made to abase itself completely."
Increasingly, call centers are becoming sensitive to the change they are effecting. Some have instituted "family days" where they throw open their doors to their staff's relatives in an effort to dispel any lingering doubts about where their children go at night.
When Nisha Kalro arrived at the office on a recent evening, many of her colleagues were standing in the stairwell, smoking before the start of their shift. (She asked that her company not be named for fear it could affect her job.) One young man with an earring, goatee and jeans talked about his part-time job as a hip-hop DJ. Conversation bubbled around plans for the weekend and the potential for getting better salaries at other call centers.
Rising out of a run-down Bombay suburb, Ms. Kalro's office is part of a brand-new cluster of call centers that comes to life after sunset. On an open floor, some 300 employees sit in front of computer screens amid a constant hum of voices. Some have taken off their shoes. Others stand and talk into their headsets as they pace around their desk.
On a slow night, there's time between calls to gossip in a mix of rapid-fire English and Hindi -- about their last customer, their boss or who's seeing whom at the office.
"He claimed he was driving and couldn't pull over" to talk, mutters one 22-year-old woman about her latest call to someone in California who's late on a credit-card payment. The young man next to her leans over and asks whether that's a hickey on a supervisor's cheek, sending them both into peals of laughter. They discuss plans to meet at an all-night eatery for breakfast when the shift ends at 4:30 a.m.
Seconds later, they're calmly urging Americans to pay overdue balances. "Have a wonderful day, you take care," says the young woman, her Indian accent flattened out enough to sound plausibly American.
On breaks, employees pour out into the cafeteria, where music videos play on a wall-mounted television screen. Others gather on the leather couches in the lobby to chat and make calls on their cellphones. At 1 a.m., Ms. Kalro and a friend use a break to step outside the building, walking around the small garden in the compound and swatting away mosquitoes.
Sitting in a cafe around the corner from the call center after her shift, a Britney Spears song blaring in the background, Ms. Kalro says that some of her friends are now pushing the envelope of accepted behavior.
One of her friends not only rejected the mate her family had chosen for her, but began dating a colleague from a different religious background -- she's Sikh and he is Muslim -- without her parents' knowledge. In an incident now legendary among Bombay's call-center workers, three young employees -- two men and a woman -- were recently found in a compromising position on a terrace at one suburban office. They were fired.
Sometimes, it is all too much for a generation that still decries public kissing. At an outsourcing center in Madras, a deeply conservative city in Southern India, two distressed parents recently showed up in the reception area demanding to take their daughter home, according to a manager there. The parents had just discovered she had been having an affair with an older colleague. They were later persuaded to let her keep working.
Ms. Kalro says she isn't dating anyone at the moment. She has other ambitions. She's just received a sought-after promotion, and if that doesn't go well, she would consider moving to Dubai, where salaries are higher for similar work. Such prospects take her further and further away from her mother's world.
Every afternoon, the 52-year-old Mrs. Kalro spends a couple of hours at the small Hindu temple near her home, lighting prayer lamps and singing hymns. The rest of her day is spent cooking meals for the extended family, which includes an elderly mother-in-law and her husband's three siblings.
The idea holds no appeal for her daughter. "I want to be working and standing on my own two feet," says Nisha. "I tell my mother, 'I would never be able to live your life.' "
印度青年：金钱带来革命
深夜，Nisha Kalro开始工作。她打电话给一些美国人，催促他们尽快支付过期还没支付的信用卡帐单。她这份工作让家人非常不安。"还是有些人不知道什么是客服中心，他们对这个职业往往有误解"，Nisha的母亲Sheela一边整理身上红黑相间的纱丽（印度传统服装）一边说道。她说，在她那个年代，夜晚工作的女人会被认为是应召女郎，而不是什么客服中心的职员。
在25岁的Nisha眼中，她的家庭受困在一个已经过时了的印度──父母包办婚姻，子女绝对顺从，对命运有著严肃的态度。"我父母的要求很简单，就是要我结婚，"Nisha说。"但是我和婚姻这个东西永远都不会凑到一块。"
随著外包工作大量涌入印度，它给这个10亿人口的国度带来的不仅仅是金钱，同时还在创造一个年轻富有的阶层。这些年轻人在工作中逐渐接受西方的生活态度，远比从父母的管教中学到的要多。在印度的传统道德观念中，年轻人要跟父母选定的伴侣结婚，并和众多家庭成员一起生活。如今这些二十来岁的年轻人独立的生活观正日益打破这些悠久风俗的约束。直到最近几年，女人在夜晚工作对很多人来说还是不可想象的。
社会变迁总是和巨大的经济变化相伴。Nisha的父母在一个受社会主义思想影响的社会体制中长大。在那样的社会中，排斥外国货，抑制竞争。那时只有两种牌子的汽车，安装一条新电话线意味著长时间的等待，电视也由国家来经营。1991年印度开始改革社会体制，紧接著进口货就像潮水一样涌进来：从手机到福特公司的运动型多用途车，还有观众每晚急切等待的电视剧《老朋友》(Friends)。外国公司为利用印度廉价劳动力，开始在这里设立工作岗位。
跟随这个浪潮进入印度的还有外国的生活态度和行为方式。像Nisha这样的年轻人喜欢花钱，而不是省钱。他们用手机聊天，用信用卡买东西，骑摩托车四处兜风，到饭馆和咖啡厅吃饭。他们毫无疑问成为众多商家瞄准的目标。这些厂商一直在等待印度出现一个西化的消费阶层。
"我把这些年轻人称为"自由的孩子"，"孟买营销顾问、印度软件巨头Infosys Technologies董事会成员Rama Bijapurkar如是说。"这一代人渴望获得成功以及一切钱能买到的好东西。"
得益于制造业的日渐复苏和服务业的蓬勃发展，预计印度经济今年将以至少7%的比例飞速增长。有些部门的增长还更迅速，比如消费贷款和外包工业。外包业务已经渗透到了各个行业，从软件开发到客服中心服务。
但并不是每个角落都在经历变化。农业在广大的农村仍占据主导地位。大面积的地区仍然十分贫穷。印度在某些方面还是没有开放，外国零售商至今不允许在印度投资。 但外包浪潮每个月都在吸引更多上进年轻人加入，从孟买到新德里、到班加洛，还有其他一些不太出名的城市。有17万多人在规模已达23亿美元的客服中心和后勤系统企业内工作，还有50万人供职于信息技术领域。
文化转变在客服中心的年轻职员中表现最为明显。这些人多数二十来岁，晚上给一些外国公司打工，如美国运通(American Express Co.)、戴尔(Dell Inc.)和花旗集团(Citigroup Inc.)等。这些中心招聘的大多数是刚从印度高校或技术学校毕业的学生，他们性格开朗、会说英语、愿意在夜晚工作。
对于很多年轻人──尤其是女性，在客服中心工作意味著收入、独立和一个无拘束的环境。在那里，他们爱怎么打扮就怎么打扮，想说什么就说什么。大批在客服中心工作的印度青年在接受美国口音和地理知识培训的同时，也在接受家庭、物质财富、浪漫生活等方面的新思想。
弗雷德里克?汉密尔顿(Frederick Hamilton)是印度最大的客服中心Wipro Spectramind的经理，他说最近有位年轻女职员的父亲来找他，怀疑女儿正在和某个男同事秘密约会。"她的价值观全变了，我觉得都是这个行业的弄的"，这位父亲对汉密尔顿说。他说，"父母们认为自己把孩子养育的很好，培养了他们保守的观念，但没想到一年之后就都变得很时尚了。"
Nikesh Soares去年在Wipro工作。他的母亲Alisha说，他在三年多以前进入客服中心时，还是"略有绅士风度的"。那时他穿旧式的领尖钉纽扣的衬衫，甚至在孟买闷热的天气下也拒绝穿凉鞋。他不喜欢好莱坞电影，因为里面有太多的"色情和亲吻"。他很清楚自己想娶什么样的女孩：端庄、守旧的。
现在，已经29岁的Soares说："除了发型，一切都改变了。"
Soares在2000年加入孟买的客服中心eFunds，他的视野从此开始改变。每天晚上，他接听美国打来的电话，回答信息广告方面的问题，向顾客推销tummy cruncher（一种运动器材）、减肥药、微型烤肉架和整形鞋垫。220美元的月薪──是他前一份工作薪水的两倍多──足以让人吃惊，还有的就是一帮年龄相仿、喜欢玩乐的同事。
他一方面告诉母亲要工作到很晚，而实际上却和朋友们到通宵酒吧去喝酒，直到天亮才打著踉跄回家睡上几个小时。"女孩们也是这样，"他说。"她们跟家里说去工作，其实是和男朋友出去。"
Soares就娶了这样一个女孩：Sophia D'Souza。之前，Sophia坐在他旁边的隔间里，毫不犹豫就跟他搭起话来。Sophia性格独立、喜欢牛仔装，既不端庄也不守旧。Soares笑著说，他的朋友都说"Nikesh，怎么回事？我们以为你会娶一个传统的女孩"。
在印度传统中，女性很少穿长度在膝盖以上的裤子和衬衫，因而这份工作著实让年轻人大开眼界。Soares和未婚妻就接到一些要求购买《疯狂女孩》(Girls Gone Wild)影碟的电话。这部片很火，里面有些袒胸露背的少女在度假时打闹嬉戏。有天晚上，一位父亲从美国打来电话，要买这部片作为生日礼物送给已经到上大学年龄的儿子。Soares很难想象印度的父母会这样做。
然而，办公室之外又是另一个世界。下班时，Soares用摩托带著妻子，有时有警察拦住他们，问他们这么晚还在外面干什么。
Sophia同事们纷纷剪掉长发，把传统的salwar kameez（一种传统的宽松长袍）换成紧身衣。当Soares宣布要和Sophia结婚时，他还告诉母亲打算买一间公寓两个人住，尽管这遭到母亲的强烈反对。他母亲以为儿子会跟家人一起住，就像她小时候在大家庭中长大那样。
Soares和妻子每人月薪都有250美元，因而夫妇俩能稳当地获得一份贷款，在孟买远郊买一间简单但阳光充足的公寓。
Soares说："在美国，人们的观念是，一个人长到18岁就要走出家庭，工作，父母不加干涉。"而Soares跟大多数客服中心职员那样从来没有离开过印度。"我觉得这真是很棒。"
但对Soares的母亲来说，感觉就像被抛弃。"我感觉生活的一部份失去了"，她说。她还面临著失去另一个儿子的可能性：Soares的18岁的弟弟也在客服中心工作，也日益变得独立。
印度小说家和活动家Arundhati Roy引起人们对一个更深层问题的关注。她认为客服中心的工作剥去了印度年轻人身上的文化独特性，如在电话中使用英文名。2000年，Arundhati在《展望》杂志(Outlook)上发表文章，阐述了客服中心"如何轻易地让一个古老文化沦为自贬的境地。"
客服中心也对自己造成的影响越来越敏感。一些客服中心特设"家庭日"，向雇员的亲人敞开大门，避免家长怀疑孩子晚上都干什么去了。
最近一个晚上，当Nisha到办公室时，许多同事正站在楼梯间里，利用换班前的时间抽口烟（她要求不要公开公司的名字，担心会影响工作）。一个戴耳环、留山羊胡子、穿牛仔裤的男青年正在讨论做兼职hip-hop DJ的事。这些人的话题多半是周末计划，或是在其他呼叫中心找更高薪水工作的可能性。
Nisha的办公室位于一群崭新的客服中心楼群中，这些楼房在孟买破落的郊区中显得鹤立鸡群，日落之后更像苏醒过来一般耀眼。办公楼层没有间隔，大约300名员工坐在电脑前，在一片不断的嗡嗡声中工作。有的人脱了鞋，有的站起来，一边绕著桌子踱步一边对著耳机麦克风说话。 在不太忙碌的晚上，这些人利用电话的空当闲聊几句，英语里夹著印度语。他们谈论刚回答的顾客、他们的老板或者办公室里谁正在看著谁。
一个22岁的女孩正在嘟哝著谈论她刚刚打电话给一个到期还未支付信用卡帐单的加州人。"他说正在开车，不能停下来说话。"她旁边的男孩侧过身来问是否得在上司的脸上亲一下，两人顿时笑开了。他们还相约四点半下班后到通宵餐厅吃早饭。
但几秒钟后，他们又开始用平静的语气催促那些到期仍未结帐的美国人。"祝您有美好的一天。多保重！"年轻女孩的印度口音几乎听不出来，很像美音。
工作休息时，职员们纷纷挤到自助餐厅去，餐厅里有挂在墙上的电视，正放著音乐电视。另外的人则聚到走廊的长沙发上聊天，用手机打电话。凌晨一点，Nisha和一个朋友在休息时间走出办公楼，绕著楼群中间的小花园散步，不时拍打蚊子。
下班后，Nisha坐在客服中心拐角的一个咖啡厅里，背景音乐正是布兰妮的歌曲。她说，有些朋友现在正在挑战约定俗成的行为方式。
她有个朋友不仅拒绝了父母给她选择的伴侣，还瞒著家人和一个不同宗教背景的同事约会。女孩是锡克教徒，而男孩是穆斯林。在孟买客服中心的职员中流传著一件堪称传奇的事：近来有三个员工──两男一女被发现在郊区办公楼的露台上干不体面的事。他们都被开除了。 有时，对于仍然谴责当众接吻行为的一代来说，这种变化太难接受了。在Madras（印度南部一个非常保守的城市）的一个外包中心，一名经理说近来有两个郁闷的家长到接待处来，要求带女儿回家。他们刚发现女儿和一个比她大的同事来往。最后他们被说服了，让女孩继续工作。
Nisha说她现在没有跟谁约会。她有其他的志向。她刚刚被提升到一个让人羡慕的职位，如果情况不错的话，她会考虑搬到杜拜，那里同样工作的薪水要高些。 职业前途使她离母亲的那个世界越来越远。
每个下午，Nisha的妈妈都要在家附近的印度教小寺庙里花上一两个小时，点亮祈祷用的灯，一边哼唱赞美歌。她一天的其他时间都花在给家人煮饭上，家里有位年迈的婆婆和丈夫的三个兄弟。
这样的生活对女儿一点吸引力都没有。"我要工作，自力更生"， Nisha说。她跟妈妈说，"我永远都不可能过你那样的生活"。
